Real-time options education and strategies
Paul There are two key ingredients in any successful options position. The first is trade location. This is the most difficult step even for experienced traders. Just look at most any price chart and it seems like a series of random moves in either direction. I have spent many years trying to interpret those price moves … Read more
For the purposes of this post I be focusing on the longer-term charts, primarily the weekly chart. The weekly chart is particularly useful for finding entries into option positions with 3+ months of duration. Of course they can be used for shorter-term trades but a balanced option portfolio will be comprised of bullish and bearish … Read more
In the inventory of positions that I’m currently carrying in my portfolio I have a bearish trade in MSFT and a bullish trade in AAPL. That doesn’t make much sense does it? If AAPL goes up then MSFT will likely move in the same direction and vice versa. That’s probably true. On the other hand, … Read more
Trading is hard. That’s not breaking news. We all know that. The hardest part of trading for most is once in a trade when to exit. Often a trade is initially profitable only to have it reverse and take back all of the profits and then some. After that experience it’s easy to exit a … Read more
A lot of range bound trading this past week. It’s too easy to get chopped up during those times and directional positions almost always lose value regardless of which direction you’re trading. Good time to sell Iron Condors, right? If the range is small enough, yes. However, if the range is fairly large then short … Read more
Last week showed the potential for an important reversal in the stock indexes as prices were rejected early Monday morning after a large gap up due to positive news on a vaccine. It is not unusual to see price top on good news and rally on bad news. So, while it’s entirely possible that’s what … Read more
Unless you’re brand new to option trading you’ve likely heard of the Iron Condor trade. That’s a trade where you typically sell an OTM Call and Put Vertical credit spread as a way of initiating a non-directional position. I rarely utilize an Iron Condor but I often have it’s cousin, the Condor, in my portfolio. … Read more
I often refer to price acceptance in my posts and tweets. In many cases it’s quite obvious whether or not price has been accepted or rejected at a certain level and there are other cases where it’s not as clear. If that sounds a little frustrating, welcome to the world of trading! If everything in … Read more
Anybody who was long FB had a good week. After price appeared to be breaking down on Monday when it closed below the previous week’s low (blue box showing the previous week’s high, low and half-back prices) it rallied strongly into Friday’s close. I labeled 2 candles with a number; Tuesday’s candle is #1 and … Read more
Part 1 This post will outline a step by step process where I’ll show you when a trade setup would have been triggered and how it could have been traded. Even though I use this strategy literally hundreds of times in a year with my own trading, this is not one of my actual trades. … Read more