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Performance Dissected Check out the Performance page to see the full results. Please note that those results are based on real fills, not hypothetical performance, and exclude commissions, so your actual results will be lower, depending on the broker and number of trades. Please read 2024 Year End Performance By Trade Type for full analysis of our 2024 performance. We have extensive discussions about brokers and commissions on the Forum (like this one) and help members to select the best broker. The 116% annual return was pretty typical, compared to our long term averages. We are very pleased with this return. We continue delivering the most consistent and stable performance 13 years in a row! It's nice to call a 116% return "typical". And the beauty of our trading philosophy is having different strategies in our model portfolio that compliment each other. As I mentioned in one of the discussion topics, our performance reporting is very conservative. We rarely have more than 5 trades open at the same time, but with 5 trades open, you are basically only 50% invested. If you made 10% on the invested capital, we would report as 5% return on the total account. No service is doing it, but this is the only correct way to do it. But it also means that members can invest more than 10% per trade on trades that are more conservative and more liquid. Also there are tons of unofficial trades that don't make it to the official portfolio due to their size.being too large for 10k portfolio. If we reported performance like most other services do (return on investment and not on the whole portfolio), our reported performance would be 300%+. More details: How We Calculate Returns? Thank you again to everyone for their support, and of course special thanks to our contributors @Yowster @krisbee @TrustyJules @cwelsh and @Romuald After 13 years in business, SteadyOptions maintains its position as the most stable and consistent options trading service, with 122.5% Compounded Annual Growth Rate. We proved again that we can make money in any market. As one of our members mentioned: "I would rate the 3% profit for March 2020 as even MORE successful than the 25% profits for Jan/Feb. If someone can make a profit in a month when there was total carnage in the markets, then that shows resilience and security in the trading strategies. It shows that even during a black swan event, the system works, and the account will not be blown." Our strategies SteadyOptions uses a mix of non-directional strategies: earnings plays, Long Straddle, Long Strangle, Calendar Spread, Bitterly, Iron Condor, etc. We constantly adding new strategies to our arsenal, based on different market conditions. SO model portfolio is not designed for speculative trades although we might do some in the speculative forum. SO is not a get-rich-quick-without-efforts kind of newsletter. I'm a big fan of the "slow and steady" approach. We aim for many singles instead of a few homeruns. My first goal is capital preservation instead of doubling your account. Think about the risk first. If you take care of the risk, the profits will come. What makes SO different? We use a total portfolio approach for performance reporting. This approach reflects the growth of the entire account, not just what was at risk. We balance the portfolio in terms of options Greeks. SteadyOptions provides a complete portfolio solution. We trade a variety of non-directional strategies balancing each other. You can allocate 60-70% of your options account to our strategies and still sleep well at night. Our performance is based on real fills. Each trade alert comes with a screenshot of our broker fills. We put our money where our mouth is. Our performance reporting is completely transparent. All trades are listed on the performance page, with the exact entry/exit dates and P/L percentage. It is not a coincidence that SteadyOptions is ranked #1 out of 723 Newsletters on Investimonials, a financial product review site. The reviewers especially mention our honesty and transparency, and also tremendous value of our trading community. We place a lot of emphasis on options education. There is a dedicated forum where every trade is discussed before the trade is placed. We discuss different strategies and potential trades. Unlike most other services that just send the trade alerts, our members understand the rationale behind the trades and not just blindly follow the alerts. SO actually helps members to become better traders. Other services In addition to SteadyOptions, we offer the following services: Anchor Trades - Stocks/ETFs hedged with options for conservative long term investors. Simple Spreads - simple spread strategies like diagonal spreads and vertical spreads. Steady Collars - our version of lower risk collar trades SteadyVIX - Volatility based trades. SteadyYields - Treasures trading We offer all services bundle at $3,100 per year. This represents up to 63% discount compared to individual services rates and you will be grandfathered at this rate as long as you keep your subscription active. Details on the subscription page. More bundles are available - click here for details. You can also get the yearly bundle with one month trial at $100. Subscribing to all services provides excellent diversification since those services have low correlation. We also offer Managed Accounts for Anchor Trades. Summary 2024 was another excellent year for our members. We are very pleased with our performance. SteadyOptions is now 11 years old. We’ve come a long way since we started. We are now recognized as: #1 Ranked Newsletter on Investimonials Top Rated Newsletter on Stockgumshoe Steady Options Review: In-Depth Analysis Top 10 Option Trading Blogs by Options Trading IQ Top 4 Options Newsletters by Benzinga Top 40 Options Trading Blogs by Feedspot Top 15 Trading Forums by Feedspot Top 20 Trading Forums by Robust Trader Top Twitter Accounts to Follow by Options Trading IQ I see the community as the best part of our service. We have the best and most engaged options trading community in the world. We now have over 10,000 registered members from over 50 counties. Our members posted over 190,000 posts in the last 13 years. Those facts show you the tremendous added value of our trading community. I want to thank each of you who’ve joined us and supported us. We continue to strive to be the best community of options traders and continuously improve and enhance our services. Let me finish with my favorite quote from Michael Covel: "Profits come in bunches. The trick when going sideways between home runs is not to lose too much in between." If you are not a member and interested to join, you can click here to join our winning team. When you join SteadyOptions, we will share with you all we know about options. We will never try to sell you any additional "proprietary systems", training, webinars etc. All our "secrets" are included in your monthly fee.

There are many reasons to that. Barbara A. Friedberg mentions few of them: People lose money in the markets because they don’t understand economic and investment market cycles. People lose money in the markets because they let their emotions drive their investing. People lose money in the markets because they think investing is a get-rich-quick scheme. Some people will claim that it is related to lack of skills, poor risk management, poor selection of strategies etc. But the simple fact is that it is mostly related to human psychology and human emotions. Still need a proof? Fidelity Investments conducted a study on their Magellan fund from 1977-1990, during Peter Lynch’s tenure. His average annual return during this period was 29%. This is a remarkable return over the 13 year period. Given all that, you would expect that the investors in his fund made substantial returns over that period. However, what Fidelity Investments found in their study was shocking. The average investor in the fund actually lost money. How is it possible? Lynch himself pointed out a fly in the ointment. When he would have a setback, for example, the money would flow out of the fund through redemptions. Then when he got back on track it would flow back in, having missed the recovery. This isn't about trading skills. The only skill those investors needed was to stick around. But what they did basically was "buy high sell low". If this is not about human emotions, then I don't know what is. The main reasons for the poor performance of individual investors are: Human Psychology: Individuals make decisions everyday with their emotions assisting their judgment. Performance chasing: Investors who chase performance are highly likely to lose money over the long term. Casino Investing: Many people think they can make money by winning the lottery. The “me too” lemming investment strategy: This is a common strategy of people who don’t know what they are doing with their investments. Fear and Greed Investing: Those are the most powerful motivations for investors. Unfortunately, investors tend to alternate between these potentially destructive emotions. A recent Dalbar study showed how investors are their own worst enemy. From 1997 through 2016, the average active stock market investor earned 3.98 percent annually, while the S&P 500 index returned 10.16 percent in returns. The reasons are simple: Investors try to outsmart the markets by practicing frequent buying and selling in an attempt to make superior gains. Again, if anybody still needed proof that 90% of success in investing comes from human psychology, Fidelity and Dalbar studies provided that proof. Here is some advice from Barbara: To avoid losing money during a market-wide drop, your best bet is to just sit tight and wait for your investments to rebound. To avoid losing money in the markets, don’t follow the crowd and don’t buy into overvalued assets. Instead, create a sensible investment plan, and follow it. Don't follow the outrageous claims of penny stock and day-trading strategies. Similar behavior applies to trading services as well. As soon as a few losing trades and/or a drawdown of any kind occurs, some members hit the eject button and continue in their search for the Holy Grail strategy that always wins. They often come back after the next winning streak, missing the recovery. Isn't it the very definition of "Buy High, Sell Low"? Barbara A. Friedberg's final advice: To avoid losing money in the markets, tune out the outlandish investment pitches and the promises of riches. As in the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare, a “slow and steady” strategy will win out: Avoid the glamorous “can’t miss” pitches and strategies, and instead stick with proven investment approaches for the long term. Though you might lose a bit in the short-term, ultimately the slow-and-steady approach will win the financial race. Drawdowns are a fact of life for a trader. They happen. Big Drawdowns Are Part Of The Game. Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet… All among the largest and most revered companies in the world. All have returned unfathomable amounts to their shareholders. All have experienced periods of tremendous adversity with large drawdowns. Apple investors from the IPO would experience two separate 82% drawdowns. Amazon experienced a 94% drawdown. Microsoft largest drawdown in history occurred over a 10 year period, a 70% decline from 1999 through 2009. Google had a 65% decline from 2007 through 2008. If you sold those amazing stocks during the drawdowns, you would miss their incredible gains. Conclusion There will be bad days and bad weeks and bad months, and periodically even a bad year. Focus on following your trading plan not the short term results of it. Robust strategies are profitable in the long term time frame. Please do not become part of the next Dalbar statistics. If you found a solid strategy, try to stick around. Related articles: Are You EMOTIONALLY Ready To Lose? Are You Ready For The Learning Curve? Why Retail Investors Lose Money In The Stock Market Why Simple Isn’t Easy Thinking In Terms Of Decades Can you double your account every six months? Learning To Win By Learning To Lose How To Avoid Emotional Mistakes In Trading 10,000 Hours Of Trading