We all would like all our trades to be winners, but we know this is not possible. We know some of the trades will be losers (at least I know that, I hope you don't expect all your trades to be winners). Many traders think that if a trade has lost money, it was a bad trade. They try to identify what errors they made that lead to losses. Why? "Because I lost money! So surely I have made a mistake somewhere?”
When it comes to options trading in order to make money you need a strategy that treats options as trading vehicles in their own right and not as mere leverage tools. But a lot of people that get into options trading do not do this. I know because I wrote a top selling investment book titled Strategic Stock Trading and run the financial blogging site wallstreetwindow.com so I get emails from hundreds of new traders a month.
SteadyOptions continues to deliver outstanding gains. Our alerts produced a 69.2% ROI in the first quarter of 2014.That's over 40% return on the overall portfolio, based on 10% per trade allocation. We closed 45 trades, 32 winners and 13 losers. Check out the Performance page to see the full results.
Please note that those results are based on real fills, not hypothetical performance, and exclude commissions, so your actual results will be lower. Commissions reduce the monthly returns by approximately 2-3% per month, depending on the broker. Please refer to Performance Dissectedtopic for more details.
Perhaps the most often asked question we have heard is if now is the right time to invest. There really are no answers because the equity markets are not static. To be sure, when an investor reflects on the following questions, perhaps they can answer for themselves:
I'm asked many times which product is better to trade: Index options or ETF options? Is IWM better than RUT? Is SPX better than SPY? There is no simple answer to that question. If one product was superior to other, the other would not be trading anymore. There are pros and cons to each product, and this article describes different aspects of trading Index options vs. ETF options.
For those not familiar with the long straddle option strategy, it is a neutral strategy in options trading that involves simultaneous buying of a put and a call on the same underlying, strike and expiration. The trade has a limited risk (the debit paid for the trade) and unlimited profit potential. If you buy different strikes, the trade is called a strangle.
Here is the inconvenient truth about successful trading. It’s work. Trading is more than just numbers — it is a three dimensional fight that rages primarily inside the traders themselves. Missing any crucial element can ruin a trader quickly. The trader must first develop a robust trading system that fits their own personality and risk tolerance. Then they must trade it with discipline and faith consistently through ups and downs.
The contemporary financial market is distinguished by a number of variable factors, not least its unique and constantly evolving range of product and derivatives. From carbon units to the contract-based options market, modern-day traders have the opportunity to create an optimised portfolio that suits their knowledge base, experience and individual skill-sets.
Selling naked put options is (mistakenly) considered to be a 'very risky‘ proposition. Stockbrokers who spread that message are doing their customers a major disservice, because they are steering them away from a prudent strategy. 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.
The stock market is going through rough times. The major indexes are down 5-7% in the last couple weeks. At the same time, SteadyOptions model portfolio is up more than 30%. We are not trying to predict where the market is going. Our latest earnings trades performed very well, including:
As many of our readers know, we have been playing earnings very successfully in the last 2 years using variety of strategies. We had some nice winners, but the trade I'm going to describe in this article is fairly unique. The reason is that it actually comes from one of our members.
2013 was a strong year for Steady Condors even while our preferred underlying, RUT (Russell 2000), managed to hit all-time highs on almost a daily basis to the tune of nearly 40% for the year. As most of you know Steady Condors is a market neutral, income generating, manage by the Greeks strategy. Our trades are primarily risk managed variations of iron condors. If you haven’t already, please see our introduction to the strategy here.
