Money can be quite an emotional topic for many of us. Emotions can enhance our experiences and relationships in many ways, but they can act as mental roadblocks especially when trying to make wise financial decisions. One of the most common emotional roadblocks I come across when working with individuals is an unwillingness to invest idle cash to meet long-term goals.
"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money." Everett McKinley Dirksen. Let’s begin with the bottom line: When I talk to anyone about the concept of choosing an option strategy (or two) to adopt for trading, I stress that the strategy should have certain characteristics.
Anchor and Leveraged Anchor investors frequently ask why the strategy only trades SPY and SPY options rather than individual stocks, other indexes or commodities.We avoid individual stocks because of tracking and divergence issues.
Every options trader must wonder whether any connection will be found between the company's fundamentals and stock prices (and in turn, option valuation as well). Because options are derived from stock price behavior, the analysis of stock movement is crucial to selecting options wisely; and that relies on volatility in the reported profit and loss over several years.
A bullish short strangle sounds like a complicated strategy, but it’s really quite simple for those familiar with option terminology. A short put is combined with a short call to where the position starts with some amount of positive delta overall. This distinguishes itself from a delta neutral strangle, where both the short put and short call are sold at the same delta.
The forex market is currently the largest financial market in the world and, due to its highly liquid nature and low barriers to entry, is only expected to grow. Becoming a forex trader requires minimal effort and with a decent internet connection, a laptop or computer, and some spare money to invest, you can start in no time.
Put/call parity is a term options traders use to mean one of two things. The simplest definition and the one most applicable to most options traders compares the similarity in the bid/ask spread and the net debit or credit resulting from this.
When selling puts, such as we do in our Steady Momentum PutWrite strategy, there are many questions a trader must answer: What expiration should I use? What strike should I sell? Should I choose that strike based on delta or percentage out of the money?
News followers may have seen the recent stories on UBS being sued by its clients and investors who participated in UBS’s “Yield Enhancement Strategy (YES).”Evidently, numerous UBS clients signed up to participate in an iron condor strategy that lost a lot of money.They’re angry, and they’re filing a lawsuit.
What many people on SO have in common is that they have read the books of Jeff Augen on options trading. Although written a decade ago they continue to be an interesting source of strategies for the retail investor. Retail investors have particular constraints that make most of the broad theoretical musings on options rather moot.
"Every once in a while you must go to cash, take a break, take a vacation. Don't try to play the market all the time. It can't be done, too tough on the emotions." - Jesse Livermore
One way to learn from your past mistakes is having to go through the painful and challenging experience of explaining them. Another way is to listen to others who might have lived through some disgruntling trades. Joseph Trevisani goes deep into the rationale he followed during the volatile EUR/JPY days of 2007 in this article.
