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I have been with SO for only 3 mo now and am 90% close to their results. You have to know how not to try ditto them. Ditto should not be the goal. I am here for ideas only. Execution (entry and exit) is upto me. I some times get better fill and some times not. The goal should not be to beat SO performance. I often make changes to the original idea.

@yalgaar Take a look at what the tools provide and then make your decision.... ONE offers P&L analysis of option positions, and allows you to enter orders directly from there into certain brokers. Many SO members use it. However, there are certainly other P&L charting tools out there... some may be less robust and don't have the ability to execute trades directly from within them, but they may work fine for you depending on your needs and some of them may even be free (or have both free and premium/pay levels of service). VolatilityHQ and ChartAffair provide RV analysis, specific to SO-style trades. They also offer some backtest and scanners as well as data on pre and post earnings stock price moves. I believe both offer a trial period, so people could try out both and see what they prefer. Optionslam shows earnings info and pre and post earnings stock price moves and straddle moves, as well as some backtests and scanners. It used to have a free level that went back a few cycles and a premium level to went back many years, not sure what is available on the free tier now. The RV charting tools provide quite a bit of the same data that OptionSlam does, so if you have a RV charting tool you'd have to look at OptionSlam to see if the stuff that isn't in the RV tools is useful to you too to warrant paying for it. It's easy to go overboard with tools and wind up buying more than what you use. As you get experience with all of them, you can decide which ones you really need that are integral to your trades. People will have different needs and requirements, so the tools that are integral to one person may not be as important to another. I think a lot of it depends on somebody's knowledge and experience with options trading (greeks, volatility, complex multi-leg trades, etc). The more experience and knowledge you get, the less reliant of a multitude of tools you will likely become.

Hi Mav, I've been here for about 2 months and I've been trading in my Roth with Level 2 options approval (Schwab) so I can execute the trades discussed here. Though I've been trading options for over 10 years, they've primarily been vertical spreads and diagonals. The core strategies used here (Hedged Straddle / Strangle) and the Calendar, are newer to me and it does take some studying. Try the trades, try to understand how they were identified, entered, managed and exited, not just rely on the email alerts. I can tell you that I've already recouped my investment for the annual subscription, but I've also done my own trades along side the ones discussed here. I consider the subscription fee my tuition to learning a few new strategies. Losing money on poor trades or poorly managed trades can also be considered 'tuition.' Paying the subscription fee here is a financial outlay I can control and I get my value in return. Trading options without a solid understanding of sizing, risk management, exit, etc., can be a far more expensive "tuition". Either way, it's a great community here and with a bit of effort, one can definitely learn a lot, regardless of their experience.

Regarding the rates, we are very competitive in the market place and provide a substantial value over other services unless your sole purpose is to purchase the lowest price product possible. We recognize that is the goal of some traders, however, many traders appreciate the value we provide in terms of performance, community, education etc. We encourage everyone to do their due diligence and compare us to other services. Many members tell us that we could charge double and still be the biggest bargain in the industry. We believe in work and long term commitment, not in "get rich fast" schemes. Like any professional education program, our programs require work and discipline. We are only interested in serious traders dedicated to their professional development. If after browsing our website you believe that $4/day for a service like SteadyOptions is "really high", then you probably shouldn't subscribe.

I'm using 2.0.54. Hope you used our link to get the discount.

Today I want to talk about risk. If you have looked into some other options services, you probably have seen it: "Learn to Trade in Just 7 Minutes a Week" "This strategy brings money into my clients account weekly. Every Sunday my clients access their accounts and see + + +" "Selling credit spreads is a safe option strategy because we’re combining an option purchase with an option sale resulting with a credit into your account.” "Trading with just $25,000, our members can earn between $2,500 to $3,000 in monthly income" Those are real examples from real services. You won't hear such promises from me. Options trading is not easy and involves a lot of risk. Let me repeat it: OPTIONS TRADING IS RISKY. Let's see some examples of the risks. You buy a call. Then you set a stop loss of 25% and think you are safe. The next day, the stock gaps down 10%, your option gaps down 60% right through your stop loss. You sell a credit spread. You think you are safe because you hedged yourself with another option. But if the stock goes beyond your purchased option strike, you still lose 100% of the margin. You buy a covered call. You think you are safe because you protected your stock. Then 2008 crisis comes. Your stock is down 60%. Your covered call reduced the loss by 5%, but you are still down 55%. I can go on and on, you got the idea. Now let's talk about our earnings plays. The idea is to buy a straddle (or a strangle) and let the increasing IV to offset the negative theta. As you could see from our results, even if it doesn't happen, the loss is usually fairly small, most of the time in the 7-12% range. Sometimes the loss can be 15-20%, and our biggest loss this year was 25% (two 25% losers out of over 100 trades). However, it is possible to lose much more than 25% on those trades. When it can happen? The biggest risk for those trades is earnings pre-announcement or early announcement. It happens when a company releases its earnings earlier than scheduled. It happened to us two times this year: with ORCL and COF. In both cases, we were lucky enough, the stock moved after the announcement and the trades have been closed around breakeven. In fact, some members waited and were able to close the COF trade for 30-50% gain (this was pure luck, and we don't want to rely on luck in our trading). Now, imagine what would happen if the stock didn't move. We owned the COF 55 straddle, the stock was sitting right on the strike, and it was 1 day before expiration. With IV collapsing, and very little time value left in both calls and puts, the risk of 70-80% loss was real. The fact it didn't happen so far doesn't mean it will never happen. Why I'm telling you this and how can you mitigate the risk? My goal is not to scare you. I still think this is one of the safer options strategies. But "safer" is not equal to "no risk". Every strategy has its risks - if someone tells that he found a holy grail, please don't believe him. I want my members to be aware of the risks and to handle them. The most obvious way to control risk is via position sizing. Never allocate more than 10-12% to a single position. One way to reduce the risk is to allocate less capital to weekly trades. By its nature, they are more risky since most of their value is in IV and there is very little time value. Be especially aware of companies that have a history of pre-announcements. On a separate note, I would not trade very large amount of contracts for those trades (or any options strategies). I don't want you to put all (or most) of your trading capital into my service (or any other service). No strategy will work all the time or under all market conditions, so please diversify. Be always aware of liquidity. Always look at the OI (Open Interest) - as a rule of thumb, don't trade more than 10-15% of the OI. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks. I could probably write it off. Just exploring alternatives at this point in time.