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There is a lot of buz lately related to tastytrade, Tom Sosnoff, Karen Supertrader etc. so I thought it would be appropriate to open a discussion topic where members can discuss tastytrade and exchange ideas and opinions. Here are some links to articles and posts about tastytrade. Karen Supertrader: Myth Or Reality? Karen Supertrader: Too Good To Be True? Karen The Supertrader Interviewed by tastytrade Why 'Karen the Supertrader's' Story Never Made Sense Tastytrade: A Shill with Skills Can We Profit From Volatility Expansion Into Earnings? Buying Premium Prior To Earnings - Does It Work? Another garbage study from Tasty Trade Reviews of TastyTrade.com at Investimonials While the shows can be entertaining, here is one opinion that summarizes what tastytrade do:

Tom Sossnoff a business man in the trading space has now created his own brokerage firm. Ugh! He seems to make money in creating businesses with in the trading space as he has been on the wrong side of the market as a trader for the past 6 years. It seems he wants all commissions instead of a portion hence his relationship with TD Ameritrade. Thoughts?

Dear community! I would like to get an opinion about the following video. I posted the link below. After making some research, I made the following assumptions and conclusions. - Options are probability-based financial instruments. The premium paid for buying a straddle is supposed to include all risks related to the potential change of IV, theta, gamma. - The chances of gain are 50/50 similarly to any short time predictions of the market price. Besides, you lose the spread and pay commissions. - Options pricing already includes any potential increase in IV and time decay is more likely to kill the potential trade. - As the markets are very efficient, Options pricing already includes information about historical volatility. Even if we find stocks with high historical volatility during previous earnings, the greeks are always balanced between each other to make your chances of win to 50/50 minus spreads & commissions. So, what you think? As options are

I thought you might find this interesting. TastyTrade previously did not like Calendars and swayed viewers against it, as seen in their older videos. At the beginning he states how very much against it he is (you can skip the rest past the first minute): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywu1AueH2b8 In this video he spends the whole video attacking Calendars in general: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgSbfGXdDx4 But, their newer video is showing they are surprised how Calendars work as of Feb 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWR0pWmhlYo In this last video they claim Calendars 1 Strike OTM had a crazy high success rate of 68.97%. Whereas before they say they studied and said it was never worth it. Do you have any thoughts on this, especially the last video, where he shows the backtesting stats making Calendars look amazing, but only for 1 Strike OTM, at minute 2: https://youtu.be/NWR0pWmhlYo?t=2m19s Given their service is about Options, I'm surprised that they are surprised and previously hated Calendars, and I'm surprised by the results myself.

It's amazing the flawed studies these guys assemble and promote. Every one seems to have a severe deficiency or two and is misleading in some way. Here is another one regarding the profitability of selling weekly credit spreads in SPX that was scrutinized very well by another options site: http://sjoptions.com/spx-bull-put-spreads-taught-by-tasty-trade/ I've learned to take everything they say with a rather large grain of salt and use it to learn to think for yourself.

In one of my previous articles, I described a hedge fund manager called Karen the "SuperTrader". She was featured few times by tastytrade as "one of the most successful and fascinating traders". Tom Sosnoff admitted that he "admires" her. What Sosnoff fails to mention time after time is the amount of risk Karen is taking, compared to her returns. This is a critical issue that many traders don't fully understand. To understand the real risk this lady is taking, I would like you to take a look at Victor Niederhoffer. This guy had one of the best track records in the hedge fund industry, compounding 30% gains for 20 years. Yet, he blew up spectacularly in 1997 and 2007. Not once but twice. Click here to view the article

In one of my previous articles I described a study done by tastytrade, claiming that buying premium before earnings does not work. The title of the study was "We Put The Nail In The Coffin On "Buying Premium Prior To Earnings". ​I demonstrated that their study was highly flawed, for several reasons (strikes selection, stocks selection, timing etc.) It seems that they did now another study, claiming to get similar results. Click here to view the article