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Like many other new members, I went through a frustrating time on Steady Options. I almost gave up on it very early on, but luckily, I hung around. Having been here a while now, I’ve seen other newbies come full of enthusiasm and leave full of disappointment, walking the same frustration-filled path that I left behind. I’ve examined my own journey, and can break it down into various stages. So, here they are. Other peoples’ journey may be very different, but I hope that my pathway may shed some light, or give some hope to others who find themselves shouting at the cat for no reason, like I once did. 1) Initial Enthusiasm I joined full of hope and excitement, lured by the mouth-watering annual returns, thinking “If I can make even half of those returns, then I’ll be a happy-chappy”. Motivation Level : 10/10 2) Frustration with Fills Okay, I’ve been a member for a few weeks, and have tried to enter a few trades, but each time, I cannot even get close to the official entry price. I give up on many trades and enter others at the wrong price, resulting in more losers than winners. Motivation Level : 7/10 3) Frustration turns to Fury (well almost) It’s now many trades later and the fills are not getting any easier. It’s getting annoying seeing others open trade after trade and close it two days later at a profit, whilst my GTC order to buy is sitting idle on some exchange gathering dust. I’m a mild-manner guy, who wishes no ill-will on anyone, and thought I didn’t have a dark side, but the ugly monster of jealousy is tapping me on the shoulder and saying “Damn, there’s another guy who’s just closed the GOOG calendar for 30% ….AND….he’s gone in and out twice already this cycle, whilst you can’t even get in once?”. I'm anything BUT a happy-chappy. Motivation Level : 3/10 4) “I’ve had enough” Months have rolled on, my SO portfolio is not showing any gains whilst the official portfolio is showing a healthy number. I don’t even bother trying to enter any SO trades now, and hardly logon to the forums. I’m bitter and just waiting for my membership to expire. Motivation Level : 1/10 5) The last Attempt Over a year has gone by, and the anger and frustration has turned to “Let me give this lousy service one last chance, before my membership expires”. I register with one of the two charting services (ChartAffair/VolatiltyHQ), and spend the whole weekend reading up on old trades, and asking myself “Why did Kim enter this calendar at this price? How does he know that it should be a 1-week or a 3-week calendar?” I look at the RV charts and start to see that the official trades are entered at very low RV’s and every time I over-pay, I’m reducing my chances of profitability. I’m seeing patterns in the calendar RV charts – a ramp up as we get to earnings, a zig-zag pattern that allows others (who I envied) to go in-and-out of trades multiple times. Same for the RV charts for straddles. I’m starting to see why Yowster thinks something is a good buy or not. My head is filled with little “ah-ha” moments and learnings, and the next few days I watch live prices and then I do the un-thinkable – I open my own calendar trade on PANW for 0.89. The very next day, Kim opens the same Put calendar for 1.05 – Bingo! I feel a sense of un-controllable excitement, not just cos I received validation that my trade was correct, but that I actually got a better price than the official. (https://steadyoptions.com/forums/forum/topic/4106-trades-panw-november-2017-calendar/?tab=comments#comment-87397) Motivation Level : 7/10 6) Creating my own Trades I spend Nov and Dec ’17 coming up with tons of my own trades – calendars and straddles. I'm not really too sure of what I'm doing, so some are winners and many are losers. I’ve started doing something else – I’m now keeping a proper journal. Every trade is logged together with the rationale behind it. If it goes wrong, I try to understand why. I’m trading full-time and this has become all-consuming, but I am enjoying it. My knowledge and skill level is rapidly increasing. For the first time, I make a profit for the month (12.9% for Nov ’17). I’m on a high. I still try to enter official trades, but don’t get upset if I miss many. I do this for a few months, averaging around 6% monthly profit overall. I also increase my portfolio size. Motivation Level : 8/10 7) Consistency at Last Two years later, and I have traded several earnings cycles, done literally hundreds of my own trades, and I rarely take the official SO trades. Fills are not a problem, as I’m normally in the trade already, and I’m also trading stocks which are not on the SO list. Profits are decent, but I get some big losses, and the occasional losing month. I don’t like those, so I ramp-up the commitment. I decide to REALLY focus on this from 01-Jan-20. And then a dark-cloud-with-a-silver-lining comes along – COVID lockdowns. They suit me just fine: 7-8 hours a day – just me, the PC screen, charts, Excel sheets, Word documents detailing my ups/downs, cups of Earl Grey tea…..trade after trade. Total immersion. I love it. The wife has become a trading-widow. The cat is happy to be around me, cos I am no longer shouting. My profits rise to new levels, the March crash comes and goes without a dent to the bottom line. As we head towards the end of the year, I can finally say to myself that I have matured into a proficient SO trader – my risk management has improved enormously, my position sizing is as it should be, and my ability to distinguish between good/not-so-good trades has improved. I still screw up, but I keep a list of the mistakes I’ve made each month, and it’s satisfying to watch that list become smaller as the months roll on. I have finally found consistency – I’ve made a profit every single month this year. And my SO portfolio is far more profitable than my other ones. But the learning never stops – every week I read some post on the forum and think “Oh, wow, I didn’t think of that.” I’m no longer a SO member for the trades, but for the ideas and the discussions on the forum. They are gold. And I’ve learnt skills that I’ve been lacking for a long time – patience (no more “FOMO”), discipline (sticking to the rules, no doubling-down etc), no emotional trading (no revenge trades, not getting upset when a trade loses etc) The next stages are to get to grips with different trade types, like ratios. Motivation Level : 10/10 I’ve written this not with the view of “Hey, look at me”, but in the spirit of “If a dunce like me can become a competent trader, then anyone can”. If you’re a frustrated newbie, then rest assured that many of us have been there, many others are still in that place, but with determination and dedication, it’s possible to come out of the pain barrier, and see the sunshine on the other side. Happy trading.

As has become my year-end tradition, I’ve broken down the Steady Options 2021 trade performance by trade type. Numbers were taken directly from the data in the Performance screen. Here’s are this year’s stats along with some comments from my perspective. Where applicable, I added totals from prior years for comparison. I should highlight up-front that 2021 saw SO’s highest ever yearly Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of ~201%. It was a start to a return to a more “normal” market behavior – although VIX did have a few spikes into the 20’s and 30’s, it spent a large portion of the year below 20 which means we were able to do many of the SO standard bread and butter trades like calendars and straddles. Pre-Earnings Calendars 110 Trades – 87 win, 23 loss (79% win) – Average Gain +12.82% 2020: 33 trades (85% win) – Average Gain +21.97% 2019: 54 trades (65% win) – Average Gain +9.27% 2018: 40 trades (78% win) – Average Gain +9.61% 2017: 31 trades (84% win) – Average Gain +13.81% 2016: 44 trades (80% win) - Average Gain +15.07% 2015: 51 trades (80% win) – Average Gain +12.67% 2014: 48 trades (71% win) – Average Gain +13.80% 2013: 24 trades (88% win) – Average Gain +20.60% Comments: Highest ever number of calendar trades by a large margin at roughly twice the highest total of prior years. I attribute a large part of this increase to the RV analysis tools we now use all the time. Despite the higher number of trades, both win percentage and average gain per trade were on par with prior years - which means the calendars portion of the overall SO profit was very high this year. Straddles/Strangles (earnings and non-earnings) 129 Trades - 87 win, 40 loss, 2 break-even (68% win) – Average Gain +3.27% Breaking down further by hedged and non-hedged: Hedged – 27 win, 11 loss (71% win), average gain +2.11% Non-Hedged – 60 win, 29 loss, 2 break-even (67% win), average gain +3.75% 2020: 118 trades (67% win) – Average Gain +2.80% 2019: 106 trades (68% win) – Average Gain +3.58% 2018: 72 trades (83% win) – Average Gain +5.40% 2017: 77 trades (79% win) – Average Gain +5.02% 2016: 18 trades (72% win) – Average Gain +5.19% 2015: 44 trades (68% win) – Average Gain +2.61% 2014: 74 trades (62% win) – Average Gain +2.54% 2013: 104 trades (57% win) – Average Gain +1.35% Comments: Note that this data contains both earnings straddles and non-earnings hedged straddle (NEHS) trades. Highest ever number of straddle/strangle trades, up slightly from the number of trades during the last few years. Like calendars, RV analysis tools have helped identify more trades than before these tools were available. The straddle/strangle contribution to the overall SO profit was a yearly high. This is calculated as the number of trades multiplied by the average gain per trade. Hedged straddle average gain was hurt by several larger losses. Digging into these trades showed that they were all trades where we held the long straddles beyond the last short expiration and into earnings week, had the trades been closed on the day of the last short expiration losses would have been much lower. This will be a take-away for me going into 2022, when we have a losing trade as of the last short expiration, if I do hold the trade into earnings weeks I will add shorts to help protect against further RV decline. Very low risk trades as it takes RV levels going much lower than prior cycles for these trades to be significant losers Flys and Verticals 21 trades – 15 win, 6 loss (71% win) – Average Gain +4.81% Comments: New trade type, so no prior year comparisons. Directional, delta positive trades playing for stock price increase. Most trades were hedged. Used to replace call verticals as they handle falling RV better. Ratio Trades 9 trades – 3 win, 6 loss (33% win) – Average Loss -7.96% 2020: 10 trades (70% win) – Average Gain +2.50% 2019: 28 trades (64% win) – Average Gain +2.01% Comments: Poor performance caused by not having enough stock price rise scenarios, or having the gains on the rise offset by RV decline. For delta positive directional trades like this, we switched to unbalanced flys and call verticals, as they handle the scenario of stock price rising coupled with RV falling much better than the call ratios. Index trades (TLT, EEM, SPY, USO, EEM) No index trades this year: 2020: 19 trades (63% win) – Average Gain 9.54% 2019: 20 trades (60% win) – Average Loss -7.71% 2018: 22 trades (86% win) – Average Gain +15.35% 2017: 9 Trades (89% win) – Average Gain +19.72% 2016: 27 Trades (67% win) – Average Gain +3.01% Comments: We didn’t do index trades this year. Not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Other Trades Only one “other” trade this year. Summary 2021 Steady Options model portfolio gain is around +201% for the year, and as stated earlier it’s the highest yearly return we’ve ever had. While not everyone will be able to match this performance, the key takeaway is that the SO-style trades work – which means learning these trades and “making them your own” is well worth the effort. Again this year, I’d like to highlight and thank the SO community. We really have a bunch of very smart people who share their ideas and knowledge – this is what makes SO great. This year saw many new members make positive contributions to the community. Looking forward keeping things rolling in 2022! 2020 Year End Performance by Trade Type 2019 Year End Performance by Trade Type 2018 Year End Performance by trade type. 2017 Year End Performance by Trade Type 2016 Year End Performance by Trade Type 2015 Year End Performance by Trade Type

This is actually an excellent question. Lets take an example of 5 trades per month returning 10% each. Some services would report it as sum of all trades (50% return). This assumes that you had just one trade open at any given time and allocated 100% of your portfolio to each trade. But some services would report it this way even if they had more than one trade open which would make it simply impossible to allocate 100% to each trade. The next method is to report an average of all trades. This assumes you allocated 20% per trade, with no cash balance. Some services specifically recommend to keep at least 20% of the portfolio in cash, but report performance based on full allocation. This is simply not realistic and not reproducible. I report model portfolio performance based on my recommended allocation of 10%. So in the above example, I would report 5% since I allocated 10% per trade and had 10% return per trade. For my portfolio, I have maximum 6 position at any given time, so 40% of the portfolio is in cash, but I still report return on the whole portfolio, not on the maximum invested capital. This reporting is called cash adjusted because it takes the cash reserves into consideration. Reporting returns this way grossly underestimates the return compared to other services, but I want to be as realistic and transparent as possible. My model portfolio performance reports what was possible with fairly conservative allocation.