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If I may post a contrasting experience to @yalgaar's... I am the newest newbie when it comes to options trading. After being a long stock investor for decades, I decided this year, after the crash, to figure out what options could do for me to provide a hedge. I did some free online courses, listened to a lot of podcasts, and then managed to lose thousands of dollars buying puts on a stock in an industry I am intimately familiar with, learning the valuable lesson (again, but with options this time) that the market doesn't care what a fair valuation is, and that it could stay irrational much longer than my options' expiration. I now realize this is a fairly typical entry for many a new options trader. I then sampled a few trade advisory services and then ended up here, intrigued of course by the returns, but also by @Kim's articles here and on Seeking Alpha. I joined SO in July. Since then I've done 7 trades: 6 official (BYND, UBER1, UBER2, LOW, BBY, BILI) and one unofficial (XLNX). Only one has been a loser (UBER2) My tips, all of which have been gleaned from advice from members here: 1) As everyone here seems to repeat Ad Nauseum, "Don't chase the entry!" For me, this means that if I can't get in within 2-3% of margin on official, I let it sit. From a post here I learned how to plot the strategy price so I can see it move during the day. I might place a day order for the first day, or even 1-2 days after the official notice, at the official price (or within 3% of margin if it looks like it will not go down), and then I just wait. If it doesn't get filled, I just walk away from the trade. As Kim has pointed out, the prices do sometimes go well below the official. 2) Once I get a fill, I immediately set a GTC close order because I'm on the other side of the world, and I can't be bothered to sit in front of the computer all night. For an earnings trade, if it doesn't get filled prior to the earnings announcement, I would plan on walking up before market close to close it, but I have not had to do that yet. My average GTC target has been around 10% return on risk, but I'm not stuck on that. Apart from SO, I'm playing with both VolHQ and ChartAffair, and I realize now that I'm going to need OptionNet to visualize potential trades better. I use IB but their option "Performance" visuals are lacking. But that is all I plan on getting. I am now reading books by Wolfinger and Augen, and I'm fully aware that this journey is going to take years. The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know. My results thus far: for the 6 winning trades I have averaged around 10% (unsurprising I guess given my target, but very surprising to me given that the average time in market was around 3 days per trade), and I lost 0.5% on the one loser. I'm glad to report that my first 2 months have more than paid for my subs! More importantly, I've learned A LOT in just a few weeks, and the curve remains very steep, but here I feel there's a culture of mentorship, something I'm going to need.

All: Steady Options is planning on expanding its forums and offerings to further benefit the members. We're considering several possibilities, which are described below. Immediately following this post will be a poll, asking for member feedback. Here are the forums we are considering: 1. Options Basics -- this will have regular covered calls, basic iron condors, and other similar trades. The goal here isn't to knock anything out of the park, but rather to provide regular basic options trades for people to learn from and participate with; 2. Do it yourself annuity -- most life insurance company products are nothing more than collars or similar structures, but with ridiculous fees attached. This would build out a similar product that members could follow. It's goal would be something along the lines of "target a 7% per year return, with a 10% max, and a max draw down of 7%." (Numbers are purely made up for now). This is different than your "normal" Steady Options trade, but it certainly would have a place in most individual's portfolios; 3. Gamblers Paradise -- this would list regular swing for the fences type option trades. A LOT of discussion would be given to risk management, but we would target more "exciting" trades with huge potential for gain -- and for loss. Obviously this should never be a large part of a portfolio, but it can have a place, and is something many traders enjoy; 4. Modified Hedge Fund -- some of the original and most successful hedge funds were long short funds. These can be recreated, sometimes with even greater leverage, using leverage. This would explore stock picking and creating long short funds using options. 5. Fundamental Options -- these are option trades that derive from fundamental analysis of a company. For instance, if we look at stock ABC and think its PEG is to low, debt is great, and generally looks like a stock we would like to own, how to construct an option position that is "better" than simply being long. That may be a deep in the money position, a diagonal, a covered call, etc. It'll be a forum for discussing individual stocks, our opinions on them, and THEN building option trades from those positions. If you don't like any of the above options, and would like to see something else, just post it and we'll consider it. This is the chance for all subscribers to say "I wish you did this." We won't promise to do it, but we will take all comments into consideration when creating a new product.

@DubMcDub I'm actually glad that this topic has been created and it's open to non-members. I believe that prospective members can read posts from members like you and see the real value of the service. It also helps to set the right expectations and filter people who are not willing to put an effort or those who "cannot sustain losses". Of course everyone will see what they want to see, but we have nothing to hide, and we are trying to be as open and transparent as possible. "We are different" has to be proven by actions, not words.

Thank you, that made me laugh. No I do not have a background in marketing. I'm an engineer from college, lawyer, and then finance. I'm more of the "I could care less what its called or what color is it, how does it work?" type mindset. Sometimes clients don't like the pitch "quit being stupid and listen to me" approach though.

I don't mean to sound indifferent as I remember feeling like this too. I remember getting so excited about the official SO performance and I was day dreaming about all that money I was going to make. Each time I saw Yowster and other make profits when I was losing money felt like a knife being jammed into my heart. It sucked. I get it. Based on my own journey - the sooner you stop trying to duplicate the official trades and admit to yourself that you cannot duplicate them the better. Unsubscribe from the SO alerts and just follow the unofficial trades and the trade discussion group to see what people are looking at (many times you find these trades before the official ones giving you a chance to get in early). Are Kim and Yowster trying to pull a fast one on us? No - but you also cannot replicate their trades exactly because some of these trades have low liquidity. As soon as any market maker sees 100s of orders coming in at the same strike they are going to raise the price of the options. This means you will always get filled on the losing trades and maybe get filled on some % of the winning trades. This can easily flip a strategy that makes 50% a year to one that makes 0% per year. So - once you admit that to yourself you have two options: 1) Give up. Move onto the next guru who claims they can make you a millionaire. 2) Figure out how you can make this strategy work. Whenever you miss a trade you can complain which won't change anything or instead ask Yowster what exactly he was looking for when he entered. Learn from him so you can spot your own trades and maybe get in before everyone else. I went from complaining about SO and quitting here to just closing out several calendar trades for 30% each. None of them were official trades or even mentioned on the board here. Just used the information Yowster teaches us and VOLHQ to find my own setups.

Options Basics, Modified Hedge Fund and Fundamental Options are all of interest to me. By using the words: (1) "annuity" and (2) "gambler's paradise", you have proven to me that you do not spend money on marketing. So that this is not misread, I mean it as a compliment.

So that's very similar to what I had in mind for 5. Here's something I model and watch: -- Pick very liquid company, let's say ABT; -- Pick three major valuation metrics (I like PEG, Debt ratio, net profit margin); -- calculate the averages of each of the three categories over the last X quarters (more is better); -- If the metrics are x% out of line with the average on all three metrics, buy using options. So if the PEG, Debt Ratio, and Net profit margins were all 30% "better' than their averages, purchase a DITM call (then all of the derivatives from that as well). That's just an example, but I think we're in the same line.

The point's been made before, but even very high liquidity options can have their prices (and especially spread prices) temporarily disrupted when a sudden influx of orders hits. This is the algos trying to predictively front run the order flow. So I second @FrankTheTank's remarks. But also, I say again, there is no such thing as an options advisory service that doesn't suffer from this problem, especially ones that trade spreads or multilegged strategies. Also, maybe it's been mentioned, but I want to give Kim some kudos for allowing this discussion on a non-member board. Any prospective SO subscriber can see this. If this whole thing were a ruse or whatever, you'd think he'd prevent threads like this from being publicly visible on his own site. (You'd also think he wouldn't allow monthly memberships that can be canceled any time.)