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Please welcome two new mentors @krisbeeand @rasar I'm sure most our members know those two members very well. They helped hundreds of members, are well respected in our community - we just making their status "official".

Congratulations @krisbee and @rasar! I have wondered several times why you both are not mentors yet! Thank you for your service - I will gladly continue learning from you!

Great choices!

Two good choices, welcome to you both!

Well thank you all for the kind words - I shall do my best to be helpful. I see @craigsmith posted some of his background. First of all I am Dutch, I live in Belgium, I have a French education and grew up in Brazil and in my professional life not a small part of my clients are American. I have been investing since very early days as my parents encouraged me to manage the small portfolio of stocks I inherited as far back as when I was 15. For those unaware of this bit of history the first options exchange in Europe was opened in Amsterdam under the then name European Options Exchange shamelessly copying much of the good work of the CBOE. I got quite interested in this and my first trade involved the purchase of a LEAP on the Amsterdam index and writing short options against it. LEAPS were (and are) undervalued compared to shorter term options and the thought was to recover the full purchase price and then some over the course of the process. This was in 1980ies in a bull period and I found rather sooner than later that the cash lay-out required to buy-back the short option and sell a higher option eliminated my liquidity rather more quickly than I expected. Selling deep ITM shorter options would not give the necessary return so my first trade was a (modest fortunately!) bust. I read more on options - but frankly for a long while I found all the so called strategies to be unsatisfactory as they were to my mind all variants of a long (or short/neutral) punt. Nothing wrong with those but to my mind it didnt make use of what options offered in terms of mechanism. Certainly I wasnt doing this full time and with the usual job, wife, children, house obligations I lacked resources for trading anyhow. In the meanwhile I managed a family trust but that did not lend itself to options trading. I came back to serious options trading when I had more capital and time to devote to it. Like most on here I looked a long time in both books and OL resources finding absolutely nothing that told me something new - its all very well to know about butterflies or condors - what you need is something where as the small guy you can make use of things that larger parties cannot adequately make use of. A few years ago I came across Jeff Augen's books which were quite an eye opener - for the first time it gelled in my mind how to use that odd derived value volatility for something more interesting than just option (mis) pricing. Looking into volatility traders turned out to be an (initial) disappointment - they certainly talked very complicated language but I got the distinct impression that most were types that claim to have a winning strategy to play Baccarat, just gamblers with a big mouth. Through SeekingAlpha and another site I came across SO and was immediately interested - however i had been disappointed before so for a long while I watched from afar and read the many publicly available articles on SO. Then there was a rather nasty public spat in which Kim got drawn in by a disagreeable fellow on the other site - Kim's responses impressed me by their cool and reasonable manner. This gave a whole new credibility to the 'claims' on the SO site and I decided to join, so whilst its true that I have been here less than a year - I lurked for a long while before. What I picked up on SO has really helped me and i am now trading very frequently and much more structurally successful - the CA part of the offering was new to me but after paper trading in a first stage, I have been diligently following on here ever since. SO made me trade better and hopefully I can assist some of you to get better too.

Below is historical data for the Dimensional Equity Balanced Strategy Index since 1970. All figures are annualized. Average 12 months: 14.74% Best 12 months: 83.06% Worst 12 months: -51.27% Don't put your emergency fund in stocks. Average 3 years: 13.98% Best 3 years: 38.27% Worst 3 years: -19.01% The average investor thinks 3 years is a long time. Average 5 years: 13.96% Best 5 years: 34.18% Worst 5 years: -5.55% The average investor thinks 5 years is a really long time. Average 10 years: 14.38% Best 10 years: 24.61% Worst 10 years: 3.13% The average investor thinks 10 years is an eternity, yet history shows us that the difference between best and worse case scenarios can be in excess of 20% per year. Average 20 years: 13.31% Best 20 years: 20.71% Worst 20 years: 8.26% Best 20 years for risk-free 1 month T-bills: 7.73% At this horizon, the worst 20 year period for the equity index is greater than the best 20 year period for T-bills. But only those with the education, patience, and discipline to endure short term volatility will earn market returns. Global equities would have produced large positive returns, on average, since 1970. But by definition, half of the time returns are below average over any particular time period. Also, in the short term, we see that returns can be substantially negative. This is why the positive average returns of equities in excess of risk free T-bills is known as a risk premium. Investors must be thoughtful about their time horizons and their willingness to take risks when investing. Historical outcomes over various time horizons are great starting points for determining how much equity risk belongs in a portfolio to suit investment objectives. Jesse Blom is a licensed investment advisor and Vice President of Lorintine Capital, LP. He provides investment advice to clients all over the United States and around the world. Jesse has been in financial services since 2008 and is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional. Working with a CFP® professional represents the highest standard of financial planning advice. Jesse has a Bachelor of Science in Finance from Oral Roberts University. Jesse manages the Steady Momentum service, and regularly incorporates options into client portfolios.

Added support for long stock in the return matrix (the heatmap).

Great News @Kim and @luxmon! I'm new to SO and am truly a newbie to more complex and structured option strategies. I'm very experienced in the world of stocks and futures - have learned the good, bad and ugly of it over the years. So - I'm very happy to be here - am learning a lot and am very impressed with not only HOW Kim has structured this site and various groups, but also with the amount of talent, experience and knowledge that folks bring to the table. This is exactly what I need - and I am doing the work to absorb the education that is available. Good Luck Luxmon!

I am honored to be asked to help mentor the CA PV forum. A little about my background: I started self-directed investing in stocks 25 years ago and augmented that with covered call selling and collaring about 10 years ago. I wanted to get more serious about trading options and spreads, so after a lot of research I decided upon SteadyOptions forum in 2013. It was here I really learned the importance of key principles like position size, portfolio balance, risk/reward planning, and often overlooked trade execution skills. I still trade a few pre-earnings names I follow when conditions setup and time allows. In the last few years with the air getting thin in stock market valuations I began to work on long equity portfolio hedging techniques. I focused my learning time (with the help of a mentor) to establish a background in taking advantage of market conditions to create low cost ways to add long gamma and vega positions to offset the risk with long equity exposure. I’m excited about the strategies in the CA forum and continuing to learn amongst the members there. -Tim I use (not intended to endorse any of them, just fyi): Tools: LVX, ONE, TOS, VolatilityHQ, custom Excel/Python tools for scanning, and more recently testing out TradeHawk Brokers: TDA, Tradier, IB Stock research services for fundamental analysis: Stansberry Research

Would any of the mentors be willing, with Kim's approval obviously, to do webinars on different topics related SO strategies. It would be great if we could watch and learn and then have the ability to ask questions on a regular basis in a more concise setting. They could be recorded and we could repeatedly go back to the topics when we have forgotten something or had missed something. Also new members could be directed there and would help get them up to speed quicker. The webinars that Kim have done in the past were great and i have watched them several times. I have found new info i had missed or wasnt able to comprehend at the time but when i returned i was able to digest. I think this would be a real asset to allot of less knowedeable members.

Wanted to write a short bio as well. I trade options since about 20 years. I started very young with the idea to double my money every few weeks needless to say I burned my account a few times back then. Thankfully very low amounts but it still hurt as back then that was a good chunk of my (non existing) savings. It still inspired me to pursue a career in option trading. So for 12 years I traded options for a number of banks. I survived the financial crisis while trading bank stocks and options (fun times). But I left years later when banks got out of trading due to more regulation, compliance and margin pressure. From that time I think I have a very good technical option knowledge. I traded my own money full time for a year after that. I was surprised how different that was from trading at a bank. I learned more about position sizing, discipline, psychology and myself as a trader than in the years before and I found that SO helpful for that. I had time to do extensive research on every trade Kim suggested and find my own trades and I would have my own timing and entry levels. I was quite active on the forum in that time and many of the well over 1,000 comments/posts I made are from that time. I’m back to a ‘normal’ day job since a few years now so have a lot less time for all of that and scaled my trading back to a few systematic, low maintenance trades – Steady Condors is one of them (I have my own setup and timing but its not too different what SC does). I’m trying to add a few single stock earnings trades back into the mix so I’m getting a bit more active again on the forum as well and will try to be helpful when I come across a question and as time allows. I will tend to pick up question that are option or trading specific (Greeks, assignment, trade setup… etc) as I will only be in a handful of trades a quarter so will have little to say about the specific setup of a particular trade unless I’m in it.

My experience starts in the 90's when I used to do phone trades with commodities. With the internet and such I passed the Series 7 and started trading stocks with Bright Trading in 2001 for a few years in their heyday. That tapered off a few years later with the introduction of high frequency trading. I just couldn't compete. I traded both stocks and options on my own after that with mixed success. Good enough to keep going but not making much. I have tried many services and am surprised when we actually get openings for new members, as Steady Options is easily the best out there for retail option traders from home. I hope to contribute by answering questions from these new traders as they come on line with us. The regular newbie questions that get asked again and again, whenever spots become available. I trade and understand the official Steady Options strategies and will help there as much as possible (allocations, how to get well priced fills, some of the whys), although there are obviously quite a few very advanced and knowledgeable people here. I trade full-time and am usually available, however I have been traveling the past few weeks.