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This topic is includes some of the more useful links to my articles and the forum posts. Please feel free to suggest new links. Seeking Alpha Articles Seeking Alpha Articles by category Exploiting Earnings Associated Rising Volatility How To Rent Your Options For Free Why I Dislike Holding Strangles Through Earnings Lessons From Earnings Plays Could This Strategy Be The Holy Grail Of Investing Forum posts How To Use the Forum Determining a good entry price for pre earnings straddles SteadyOptions strategies and Allocation Guidelines The importance of position sizing Tools to analyze the earnings trades Vega vs gamma Best Practices/Tools The process of placing the earnings plays Balancing your portfolio Straddle strangle or reverse iron condor Be aware of the risks Brokers and Commissions How we trade Iron Condors How we trade Calendar Spreads How we trade butterfly spreads How we trade straddles and strangles How we trade pre-earnings calendars How we Trade Calendars Around Earnings How we Trade Reverse Iron Condor Around Earnings How we trade VIX When we Roll Straddles Trading and getting fills with IB Recommended reading PayPal Billing My Seven Stages of being an SO Member

I'm often asked: if the price changed after the trade alert, what should I do? Should I enter at higher price or be patient and use limit orders? I decided to do a little exercise and check our latest trades. Out of 10 current open trades (some are half allocation), ALL of them could be entered at prices lower than the official alert price. Same is true for previous 10 closed trades. NO EXCEPTIONS. Sometimes it took few hours, sometimes you needed to wait for the next day. But eventually a limit order at price equal or lower than the official price would get filled. I think you get the answer. ALWAYS use limit orders. Never chase the price. If in some rare cases the stock moves and you are not filled, so be it. Better to miss a trade than overpay. Also debunks a myth that our performance cannot be replicated. Patience always pays off. And if not always, then 90% of the time.. On a related note, it is usually also possible to enter the trade before the official alert comes out, based on the information in the discussion topic.

We are trying to find the best setups at the best possible prices. Overpaying 5-7% on each trade will make a huge difference in the long term. In short term trading, it is even more important. Yes, if we knew that all trades will work and make 20-30%, then overpaying 5-7% makes no difference. But this is not the case. There are losers as well. And some winners are pretty small. Overpaying 5-7% means small winners turn into small losers, and moderate losers turn into bigger losers.