Real-time options education and strategies
Over the past couple years on this blog I’ve shown countless option strategies and chart setups with the goal of educating traders on ways to reduce risk in trading. Still, there are many, actually I’d say most, traders who are confused and suffering from information overload and I may be guilty of adding to that. … Read more
This will be a short post which I will revisit and add more content if/when I have time. The topic is the short Diagonal which is a Credit spread. Being a Credit spread means that the short leg is closer to ATM (at-the-money) and the long leg is further OTM (out-of-the-money). Credit spreads have a … Read more
This SPX chart reflects my current analysis of the daily time frame. The 8 SMA bands are still upsloping which represents a price uptrend although good location for a new long is currently down around 4050. That’s well below Friday’s closing price of 4105 but I’m not basing my current trade on the rising lower … Read more
Who doesn’t like to buy less expensive stuff and sell more expensive stuff? Everyone loves buying stuff on sale, especially if they can turn around and sell it for a higher price, right? In fact, I can honestly say if you don’t like buying less expensive and selling more expensive things then you’re going to … Read more
When back-testing an options strategy I want to first test the potential profitability of the strategy against the best possible outcome. The home run outcome. If it doesn’t perform well under the best potential outcome then I can safely abandon the strategy and continue my search for a better one. Of course I also need … Read more
I’m just a student of Paul’s Vega Option’s method. But as I see it, the Vega Options strategy has three steps: One of the keys to successfully trading this strategy is understanding where your current portfolio is in this three-step process, so that you can have a clear understanding of what is driving your trade. … Read more
One of my favorite and most profitable strategies is buying a directional Diagonal spread for a debit and then rolling that Diagonal into a Calendar spread when the opportunity to get to zero cost arises. Simple! No? Ok, let me translate that for you! It means when I can sell the Vertical spread that ‘converts’ … Read more
The title of this post is a little deceiving, it should read ‘Risk On…Risk Reduced’. The only truly ‘risk off’ trade is an exited trade! If that’s not clear what I mean by that it should be clear after you’ve read the post. Over a period of just less than 48 hours I made 7 … Read more
There are plenty of references to the RS+ trade on the blog and in my twitter feed. It’s certainly one of my favorite option structures. Basically, a RS+ is a version of a 1×2 (or 1×3) Ratio Spread in one expiry plus 1 (or 2) long options in a later expiry. It could also be … Read more
Yesterday I tweeted that there was an opportunity to add long /ES (bullish) Deltas on the potential 30-minute bullish reversal. The buy zone was 3971-74 and the stop was 3964.50. That’s 10 points of risk. That’s important because I didn’t know that it was a bullish reversal, only that it had the potential to be … Read more