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I agree with most all of the points raised here, and have brought up many of the same things when proposing good candidates for calendars to hold through earnings. As Kim mentioned, we use several sources to identify stocks that have a history of staying within implied move on earnings. The one statement that I would disagree with is " If IV is compared to anything other than it's OWN history, it has no meaning. " While it is important to know a given stock's IV history so you have a good indication of what the post-earnings IV drop will be, IMO the IV in general does come into play in two major ways with these calendars you hold through earnings: The higher the pre-earnings IV, the more of a post-earnings move that can be tolerated and still have the calendar be profitable. The IV differential between the short and long legs is important too - but you'll almost always see a decent sized differential when you short leg is expiring the same week as the earnings announcement. A stock with a lower pre-earnings IV% will see its calendar value go close to zero post-earnings on a much smaller stock price move than stocks with much higher IV%. The higher the pre-earnings IV, the higher the max gain percentage on the trade if the stock winds up near your strike. Stocks with high pre-earnings IV can have their calendars make 200%+ if you hit the strike and its late in expiration week, mid-level IV stocks can make around 50-100%, but for lower IV stocks your max gain is much less - and for a cheap 0.10 to 0.30 cost calendars, the 0.o3 typical round trip commission to open and close makes up a significant percentage of the calendar cost and will consume a lot of the profit.

I was a student at Sheridan Mentoring in 2006 and built Dan's web site, then worked for Dan from Jun 2007 through Nov 2013. After I left SOM, I did some work with other firms such as SMB and Option Elements (Tony Sizemore) and ended up creating Capital Discussions. Dan has a long history of deleting posts or kicking people out of his community that he doesn't like or deems a competitor as Kim mentioned earlier. Many of us have moved on. Dan is good for teaching the basics but he doesn't trade so you can only go so far with him. In a typical week, Dan used to teach 30-35 mentoring sessions. Now it's 0-3 per week. It's kind of like learning to be a surgeon from someone who hasn't operated in 12 years. As far as the admin fee goes, anyone who paid for mentoring before 2012 does have lifetime access, but you have to ask them to waive the annual admin fee. They sent one email out about this, but only 30% of people open emails on a good day, so the majority of mentoring students are likely unaware of this fact. I'm sure there are people who should get the admin fee waived but are paying it as they are unaware they are entitled to a waiver. I'm attaching the Sheridan Student Agreement from 27 March 2010. Paragraph 7 outlines "Termination of this Agreement." They can terminate your account if you "breach the terms of this agreement" but it never says anything about posting messages that Sheridan doesn't like or approve of or if Sheridan perceives you are a competitor. It is sad to see the SOM community dying as it was once the only game in town and quite active with many traders interacting with each other, similar to the Steady Options forums or Capital Discussions forums are now. Mark Fenton does trade and does nearly all of the mentoring. It should probably be renamed to Fenton Mentoring. SheridanMentoringStudentAgreement.pdf