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Anyone else experiencing any issues with emails?

Closed trades since inception.

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.

I just checked and all emails are sent properly. We had this issue in the past when gmail was delaying our emails. Then all of them came at once after few hours. Looks like it's happening again, my last email from SO was at 10:37 and I'm using gmail as well. So far reports are only from members who use gmail, so it must be the same issue. Meanwhile, I can recommend checking New content or All activity on the forum. it refreshes automatically.

The model portfolio was up 40.1% on total account for the month of April.

IV has value but RV encompasses both and so is often more useful - nevertheless you cant completely ignore it because if its low (historically) and some event might make it move you could get more oomph out of your IV than otherwise. People vary in the importance they attach to it - I find it still relevant but check RV to mitigate being too optimistic. The stratospheric rise of IV before earnings is after all partially an outcome of the fact that IV is a basket to catch what the mathematical models cannot (earnings). @Christof+ always points this out and he is right. With RV over average and decline strong I find it less compelling - the second point about the outsized return however doesnt concern me so much. Its more important to see how many losers there are and how big they were. If they are low and we could be in line for a 75% one every 10 times we do this then it could be well worth it.

Member of the month award for April goes to @Vkleniko for his continuous contribution of trading ideas and analysis.

My thoughts on AMAT straddle: Regarding the IV, of course it will have a large spike because earnings day is only one day from expiration. But because RV decreases a majority of cycles, the IV increase doesn't fully compensate for the negative theta in those cycles. Looking back over the last 3 years, RV drops 3 out of every 4 cycles. The rising cycles tend to be larger spikes, so if you are in a straddle on those cycles you'll see a nice gain. There are also a few cycles where the stock price had a larger move over the last 2 days and these were nice winners. In summary, an AMAT strangle has more downside risk than those we typically use because losses of over 10% happen more often when RV drops and stock price doesn't move. But, when RV rises it tends to be a larger rise and stock price had some decent stock price moves so if you hit a cycle like that you can see a nice sized gain.

One of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite movies.

We will not be affecting the largest market in the world (Treasury), I assure you. Petrodollar system is a very convincing reason.

We are pleased to expand our services offerings with a new strategy called SteadyYields. We target April 1st as a starting date, and will offer 2 months of free access to all current paying members. On June 1st it will become a paid service for everyone. If you are a current member of any of our services, do NOT sign up before June 1st, as you have free access util then. Here are the service parameters: Tailored for short term traders Minimum portfolio size - $10,000 Underlying -TLT, TMF Average holding period - 2-3 weeks Number of trades per month - 3-4 Profit target - 200%+ annually The impact of commissions is minimal (unlike VIX), but we still recommend trading with low or no commission broker (like Tradier or FirstTrade). TMF & TLT are extremely liquid, scaling up will not be a problem. SteadyYields is a trading strategy that takes advantage of the correlation between long dated Treasury Bonds and Crude Oil. The correlation has treasury yields trailing the price of crude oil by about three weeks +/-. Here is some good research on this phenomenon: https://seekingalpha.com/article/3271415-is-crude-oil-correlated-to-the-10-year-u-s-treasury-note https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030142072100502X https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isv9WUzVeHA The strategy uses credit and debit spreads about 30-45 days from expiration. The spreads are designed to take advantage of the direction oil has provided, whether that be long, short or neutral. Please see this thread for an example of a live trade: https://steadyoptions.com/forums/forum/topic/9468-crude-oil30-year-treasury-yield-correlation/ Here is an excerpt from the thread: There is a definitive correlation between Crude Oil prices and the 10 year Treasury yield, led slightly by crude. That's the edge. The option trades around this are endless. It makes sense, higher crude price, higher inflation, higher yields. However, in my opinion it is mainly driven by the petrodollar system. 1 year chart 10 Year Treasury Bond: 1 Year chart Crude Oil: Sure looks like the 10 year yield is about to move higher very soon. And there's the bounce: As can be seen above, the direction of crude about 3-4 weeks out is used to determine the direction of near term Treasury yields. Treasury yields and bond prices move inversely, so yields and crude move inversely to the price of TLT/TMF. The $10,000 model portfolio will hold 50% in the strategy spreads and 50% in hedges and neutral positions. As always, we will report returns on the whole account. I estimate the max drawdown to be about 20% in a massive Black Swan event, where the strategy spreads were 100% bearish on treasuries. However, the target for each trade is about 40% and I expect to average closing two trades per month. The trades were up about 70% on risk for the SO March portfolio. The strategy does not require PM (Portfolio Margin). How do we report performance? The monthly returns are calculated as the sum of all trades closed for the month. The P/L is always calculated on the entire account. For example, the April credit spread required $5,020 capital and was closed for $2,360 gain or 47.0% on $5,020 capital. This was reported as 23.6% gain on the entire account. A total of 3 trades (credit spreads or iron condors) have been closed in April, for a total return of $4,010 or 40.1% gain on $10k account.

first of all, I think it’s called tradier pro now. probably you are looking for this video? https://tradehawk-support.helpscoutdocs.com/article/131-getting-started-with-tradehawk

"I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it." "There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path." Matrix Wisdom

There is a definitive correlation between crude oil prices and the 10 year Treasury yield, led slightly by crude. That's the edge. The option trades around this are endless. It makes sense, higher crude price, higher inflation, higher yields. 1 year chart: Sure looks like the 10 year yield is about to move higher very soon. 5 year chart: Absolutely remarkable. Directional trades can be huge winners here. Crude leads the 10 year yield (therefore their prices are inversely correlated).

@Sunshine25 I use TOS. I put up with the .65 fee for a while and after I showed a little volume they took me down to .45 on my main account but left the .65 on my IRA's. I called and whined the next year and they gave me .40 on all three accounts. That's where I am now. I know at least one person that has gotten them down to .25. That's my target after this year, I may not get .25 but I think I can get it down a little further. We'll see. Several SO members have mentioned Tradier (I think) that has a flat fee per month, I'm just so accustomed to TOS that I don't want to change.

Hi Kim, looks great, but what about futures and options to futures (CME)? They allow that?