SteadyOptions Trading Blog

It's been a while since I wrote just a pure column for members, and I think it is about time to update everyone on where my firm is, how the Anchor strategy is performing, and my general thoughts on the markets before the end of the year. Since most people care more about the markets, I'll give my general thoughts on those, and I'll save the professional updates to the end.

We are pleased to introduce an addition to SteadyOptions - the "Steady Condors" monthly income strategies. Steady Condors is a combination of low maintenance and market neutral options income strategies with a strong emphasis on risk management and proper position sizing, as well as minimizing drawdowns. In addition to providing trades and education on the forum, we are offering the Steady Condors portfolio as a separate service.

Those who have been trading options on major indexes like RUT, SPX or NDX know that those options behave differently from regular options. They usually stop trading on Thursday however the settlement value is not determined until the market opens the following day (Friday). (SPX weekly options are an exception). But that's not all.

Last year I wrote an article for Seeking Alpha Google Options Underestimated The Risk Again. Looks like history repeats itself. On Thursday Google reported blowout quarter and the stock rallied the next day a whopping 122 points (13.8%). The options markets implied a 33 points move.

Over the last few years, Apple used to report earnings during the week after the monthly options expiration, meaning the fourth week of the first month of the earnings cycle (January, April, July and October). This cycle was expected to be no different. However, two days ago Apple surprised the trading community and announced that they will report earnings on Monday, October 28. What does it mean for the options traders?

This article includes a simplified explanation of the basics of options trading. Stocks, mutual funds, and gold are some of the common forms of commodities in the stock market today. Unfortunately, not a lot of people know about options trading, especially the non financial-savvy people.

As some of you know, Investimonials.com is "a place to discover the best financial products...and to weed out the worst." In fact, many of current and former SteadyOptions members found us on Investimonials. What you might not know is that SteadyOptions is currently ranked #1 out of 705 newsletters on Investimonials. This is a remarkable achievement after being in business for less than 2 years.

A mathematician who lived from 1170 to 1250 named Leonardo Pisano Bogollo introduced the Fibonacci sequence to the West, and tools based on that number sequence are still used by traders and other occupations today. What Leonardo found was a mathematical property that exists throughout nature and his sequence of numbers, called the Golden Ratio.

I'm pleased to present a guest post from Mercedes Oestermann van Essen. Mercedes is a trader, author and trading psychology coach. She has traded her own account since 2001, trading stocks, futures, FX and commodities. She is an author of the Buddhist Trader.

I'm pleased to introduce the Ez Trade Builder to SteadyOptions members. Ez Trade Builder was developed by EzTrade, company that since 1996 has been a leading player in the Option Analytic Software space. EzTrade was founded by Vladimir Furman, mathematician by training who worked with world famous option traders to developed cutting edge software and advisory services.

When we are looking at potential options trades, one of the most important things we need to consider is the options liquidity. This is a very important factor that needs to be considered before trading options. There are few factors that impact the options liquidity:

In the first half of 2013, SteadyOptions produced a 75.6% ROI (Return On Investment), based on maximum of 6 open trades. By allocating 10% per trade (and leaving at least 40% of the account in cash), the account would grow by 45.3%. Please note that those results are based on real fills, not hypothetical performance, and exclude commissions, so your actual results will be lower.