SteadyOptions Trading Blog

When markets are volatile, and especially when that volatility is on the downside, it costs more cash to buy your entry into the positive-gamma game using market neutral strategies because the options are more expensive. This should make sense because “everyone” wants to buy options when the possibility of a big market move has increased.

2022 marks our 11th year as a public trading service. We closed 147 winners out of 215 trades (68.4% winning ratio). Our model portfolio produced 90.5% compounded gain on the whole account based on 10% allocation per trade. We had only one losing month in 2022. 

The Steady PutWrite service consists of two separate strategies available to subscribers known as Steady PutWrite and ETF BuyWrite. Steady PutWrite sells monthly at the money puts on equity indices targeting total notional exposure of 125% and then invests collateral in bond ETF’s.

Theoretically, anyone can trade options. After all, there are listed options that you can buy for as cheap as $1.00. So what is the right amount of money you need before you can officially dip your toe in the water and give yourself a fair shot at becoming a profitable options trader?

Delta is one of the four main option Greeks, and any serious trader needs to have a thorough understanding of this greek if they hope to have any chance of success in the trading options. If you’re a beginner, you can visit my blog to learn more about understanding option delta. 

Ask a handful of traders what they deem a “small account” to be and you’ll get probably get a few different answers. For the sake of this article, we classify a small account as having less than $5,000. There’s a number of obstacles you run into trading a small account, like the options in certain underlyings being too expensive for you to trade, as one example.

Options Trading can be very exciting and rewarding. But you should not be trading options before learning at least some basic facts about options. Options are very different from stocks.  This article presents 7 basic options trading facts that every options trader should know. Don't start trading of you don't understand them.

LEAPS stands for Long-Term Equity Anticipation Security. Which is just a long-dated option, typically referring to those with expirations more than a year out. There’s no technical difference between LEAPS and shorter-term options other than the expiration date. They’re traded on the same exchanges and have the same rules surrounding margin and whatnot.

It was brought to my attention that Seeking Alpha now restricts the number of articles people can read for free, so I will reprint few of the key articles I wrote for SA. This one was my fist article, written in 2011, and it gives an introduction of the earnings long straddle strategy that we have been using for the last 10 years with great success.

IV (Implied Volatility) crush happens when the implied volatility of an option takes a nosedive shortly after the conclusion of a catalyst like an earnings report or corporate action. The uncertainty around a company’s earnings report (or other significant catalyst) drives option prices up in the lead-up to the announcement, and down following the announcement, once the uncertainty is gone.

In a nutshell, a calendar options spread involves buying longer-term options and selling an equal number of shorter-term options on the same underlying stock or index, with identical strike prices. The beauty of this calendar spread strategy is its flexibility: it can be executed using either calls or puts, and the results are virtually the same if you stick to the same strike prices and expiration dates.

There are two main goals of the scanner: show you hidden opportunities and save a lot of time with automated scanning. Let’s see what the top features are and how NinjaSpread can help your trading life.