SteadyOptions Trading Blog

AutoZone Inc (NYSE:AZO) has earnings due out tomorrow, 9-19-2017 before the market opens and we can look at a slightly advanced option trade that starts two calendar days after AZO earnings (9-21-2017) and lasts for the 19 calendar days to follow, that has been a winner for the last 3 years. 

How would a trader like you decide to do early exercise? Say you bought calls when they were trading in the 1.0 -> 2.5 range, now underlying has risen so that calls trade bid-ask at 4.0 / 4.8 and there is strong possibility of it going higher. Also assume in another case that they trade in the 6.0 to 7.0 range.

It’s no secret that selling far out of the money options, as opposed to buying them, is a trading strategy with a high probability of success. Low-delta options have a proclivity to expire worthless. The dramatic downward moves required to make low-delta options profitable don’t happen all of the time.

One of the requirements when developing a trading method is that traders have to fully describe how to start and settle trades. However, when they are forced to describe how to adjust and manage the size of their positions, few traders have a concrete answer.

There are some psychological dangers in the market that you should know about. It is important that you know how to deal with your emotions and what steps you must take to achieve your investment goals. Therefore, you must equip yourself with the right tools to be able to implement your operations in a profitable way in the long run.

'Volatility skew' is one of those topics that many traders ignore.  It's not something that was understood in the early days (1973 +), when options began trading on an exchange. According to Wikipedia: "equity options traded in American markets did not show a volatility smile before the crash of 1987, but began showing one afterward."

I've had three emails in the past month on people being assigned on positions and receiving margin calls, and generally not knowing what happened. I advise everyone to completely research and become familiar with the exercise/assignment aspect of option trading. If you don't you can find your entire account blown out over a weekend.

The trigger to this article was a discussion I had with someone on Reddit. There is a common misconception about calculating gains on trades that require margin, like credit spreads and short options (naked puts/calls, strangles or straddles). I believe it is important to explain how to do it properly.

It does not matter how good your trading system is - you will not win 100% of the time! A fact! The way you deal with this fact will go a long way toward determining how big a winner you become. In fact, after so many years spent in the financial arena, I have absolutely no doubts in my  mind that one of the most essential keys to winning is learning how to lose.

The wings of an iron condor options trading strategy consist of two vertical credit spreads; i.e., a bull put spread and a bear call spread. The process of "Legging In" offers the promise of higher yields and enhanced probabilities of options trade success, but the question is whether it is worth the risk.

I'm sure most traders are familiar with this situation. You find a good setup, watch it for a while, then enter a trade, and it goes down right after you entered. Should you double down and add to your losing trade, or should you cut the loss and exit? That depends who you ask.

There are a lot of myths and misconceptions about options trading. Many traders refrain from trading options because they consider it too risky. The only dangerous part of options trading is the risk-insensitive trader who buys and sells options with little or no understanding of just what can go wrong.