Options trader reddit

It is interesting how I remember the losers more than the winners. They were defined risk credit spreads, but I freaked out and closed the positions once they had recovered a bit just to get out of them, locking in a loss of money. This way, your portfolio is constantly growing. One guy I worked for was a market maker on PCX for a few years. They offer limited upside with little risk which allows you to stay in the game. My biggest lesson in 2014 was that I placed a lot of trades, thinking I was diversifying my portfolio. Are you averaging down on the same losing call? Now I only use CurrentIVpercentile and ImpliedVolAndHistoricalVol on the bottom graphs and Bollinger Bands and Ichimoku Clouds in the top price chart.

Might sound dumb, but its all about managing your position size and GETTING PAID for risk. Doubling down is what carries most investors out as there are simply to many variables to ever be sure of anything! It uses IV ranges and has contingency plans for every move. So, we will see how the future holds. The loss of money due to price movement of 100 shares of stock can be devastating to a small account. Instead, close those positions and take the loss of money. Not caring about direction makes trading really not difficult and keeps research and technical analysis to a minimum. Also, you would need a spectacular win percentage to be profitable.

And maybe some tips you learned from your early days of options trading? Some of my early trades turned out to be big losers initially. Best not to put all of your dollars in one basket. ITM because they will be exercised, leaving you in a very dangerous and stressful position. With options you have to understand you are going to lose money so you must ask yourself how can i reduce the risk? FXE due to the volatility of the Euro so I sold a bunch of iron condors in it, exposing myself to outsize risk compared to my account size. AAPL, and anything that has no correlation with the rest, if I ever find one. How far out is the expiration? So, now, the goal is protect your gains.

SD Iron Condors and strangles. If you want to discuss strats, just PM me. Lastly always spread your wins to make it harder for the market to take them back off you. Of the gains and expected return from the FI, you can now trade part of those in options. Pretty cool story, I might be able to get him to do an AMA. Why not let profits run and treat it as a trailing stoploss? NFLX, SBUX, and AMZN. For those of you who have stuck with it for awhile and have achieved some success, would you mind sharing your story here?

Lost once and won twice. Profit on Canadian National Railway Co. This subreddit is for everything related to options trading. Trades 60 second and 30 second Binary Options. We should grab a beer together; this is exactly how I feel. English is not my first language, sorry if something is not clear enough. AMA after replying to a few questions. Very curious to hear from people who are consistently successful, chime in if you can. Options Market Making for awhile so I guess one could say I have. Are you talking about people whose only job is trading?

It is as you say, not a solid premium selling method. What happened to the VIX? SPY, IWM, AMD, GLD, etc. So, instead of making about 50 trades per account per year, I actually only trade about 25 times per year. My intent is always to sell contracts on Mondays that expire that Friday. That may have reduced my income, but it also may have increased the account values. Specifically, using your own capital, or as a one man operation. Sell puts on relatively large cap stocks as they dip, and sell calls on them as they rise. Why was it worth getting out of bed for back then?

No condors, butterflies, or other complex strategies. Would be interested in hearing your method; how you find, choose, and execute over the course of a month. VIX is higher there is always a higher chance of something unexpected to occur. Currently my trading profit is less than what I make at my day job. After that, if you want to do this for a living then you need to have a large enough account and really have a passion for trading and everything that comes with it. Yoloing will get your nuts chopped. No, the intelligent premium seller manages risk effectively.

Or those with a regular job who make just enough or even more to cover their daily life expenses with trading so that they can save their entire salary? What tickers do you mostly trade to achieve this? IV, and manage early. What strategies do you mostly employ? Now i just trade with retirement funds and play money. What do you do that you can trade while at work?

Maybe one day trading will be my only source of income. As my account grows, at some point my trading profit will be more. The question is a bit unclear to me. Wake up one hour before the market closes. If something looks ripe I pick it. If no, I return to bed. Check to see if any of the stocks that I have sold puts on have tanked. When the puts expire, I reload. IV crush, but surely they are those with time to recover.

YOLO stock went bankrupt. The gains shown are skewed because I sell and add to the positions all the time; for example I might have 20 contracts on whatever on tuesday but only 5 or less by friday showing smaller numbers by the end. Then as familiarity increases, place puts on daily, weekly, and monthly for FANG stocks, QQQ, and NVDA? Come ye faggots of little knowledge. Options sound like a good time. Then start looking at where the open interest is a few weeks out, and place trades in the most interested strikes.

Walked away with some nice gainz doe. Dabbled since and lost enough money to buy someone else a yacht. AAPL, JPM, FB, VOO, CBS, and CSX. It took me a while, but I like their method of going around 30 days out or so and selling premium, and taking profits early, instead of trying to win big in a big gamble. Is the bulk of this thread selling premiums or simply purchasing stock? What percentage of capital do you allocate to daily vs. The Profit with options book really helps teach you. Where did you all learn your options trading? Got curious and took online classes from an options exchange. Now I profit a few thousand per year selling covered calls.

Buy long term call options in a bull market. Ha I suppose the odds would point in that direction. Saved up 8 grand and bought some contracts on meme stocks like wsb told me too. Make half million in 5 months. Make your own opinions and dont buy too far out of the money and get a expiry of two weeks or a month. Lose 25k learning basic shit.

Ever notice how a big move in the morning makes your calls rip up then never achieve the same profit? Their trading platform with a good rate structure. What in particular helped you on reddit? Your suggestion forgot to mention not to get fucked by theta decay. DM you screenshots I took. Now I just buy entry positions during dips and thank Donald trump for letting me retire at 33 and the insane and unbelievable part is. Yes exactly options profit calculator is where I learned and gained confidence. Are you just buying with a big spread and hoping volume picks up closer to expiration?

Sometimes I time the dip just right I think last time was in June and I make both ways. Thank you so much for this link! For those of you putting up these massive gains. And the other reason is If I love the stock so much long term just buy the stocks shares. Having to deal with this long term is just not good for my stomach. It takes away risk to a already risky thing by having some safeguards. Ha more like just asking! Would you agree that testing out trades with optionsprofitcalculator.

No way to get around losing money. Really, its about formulating and creating a method that works for you. Get approval to hedge. Wish I could leverage with puts. What are you guys trading though? You can count the people here that actually make massive gains with options on one hand.

First, with options you have decay, and bunch of types of volatility and unforeseen catalysts and premiums. Or are you trading ITM? Start buying QQQ and FB and NVDA calls. Jan 2019 270 Calls and around that time frame it looks like volume is near zero. But I also think there has to be a few that thoroughly study options, and this is simply the best subreddit for stocks that I have found! The rest of the people that like to brag only show you the good stuff. How did you learn on this sub? As for my method I use finviz to do most of my research.

It was around the time trump was releasing his budget. How long have you been trading? Look at their products and pipeline, look at their past history. Let me know if you have any other questions and good luck! For example I am currently researching and learning about hemostasis. EDIT, NVDA, and DLPH.

When it got near the support I bought options. What background do you have? My method is to look for industry that I think will outperform the market as a whole and then narrow it down to a company I can invest in. Hemostatic Patch in the works and want to know why it is better than other alternatives and how big of market is there for it. Read through there past conference calls and earnings. My favorite filters are Industry and Market cap. From that research I decide which one to invest in. Do you mind me asking what the haemostatic patch is? SEC, but luckily they were a small quantity. Finviz has a great stock screener that lets you set filters for stocks. Good guessing or good accounting? My 2015 and 2016 options returns were more in line with WSB! Ill have to see.

For example Delphi and Editas I have been watching for awhile and owned stock in both. Your background may help in understanding certain results from trials or how important the technology can be. Was tempted to hold longer but figured I better take my profits. Mobileye gains I still consider it solid seeing how it was only over 5 months so far. CRISPR and decided to pull the trigger. It was for a risky play thats why I picked a Feb 18 call so I had plenty of time. It dropped on a scientific article that was flawed. These are my favorite because they fit into my trading method. So first I would sort by the industry I like then I will filter by market cap.

Im a accountant at a big4 firm mostly do tax stuff for large corporations. Or do you believe you got lucky? Does having a scientific background lend to trading in biotechnology? You are probably the textbook definition of a gambler. First of all, I do the same thing. After all was said and done, I actually made a lot of money trading and came out ahead, if money is the only measure. And on the trades where you lost big, how much time was left on those calls when the underlying went against you? However there is always the risk of the wipeout when unexpected things happen. Do I keep at it and try and rebuild knowing full well that I still need to make drastic changes to prevent the same thing happening?

Set profit margins ahead of time for when you start pulling money out. If you enjoy it, do it. If that trade went well, it would have gone to 6 figs. Anybody can win big if they assume enough risk, but they can also lose big, like you have, twice. Hahaha, I actually do my own taxes. OUT OF YOUR ACCOUNT and put it away. Like all gambling, the deal here is to quit when you are ahead. My wife works as an attorney so combined we do pretty well. When I told her how much I had made, she knew that it could also disappear just as fast.

So I can see which companies are attractive to you and understand your game a bit better. PM, would love to talk more about this stuff. Now I just sell credit spreads on indexes, comparatively safe but lower returns. Pacer between the various law firms, the great debates on ST and ProBoards, etc. AMD was on a tear at that point. How much time was left on those calls when you sold them? Oh well, you live and learn. DM me if you want. Consider your trading losses to be tuition in the school of investing.

My accuracy rate in determining direction and range is fairly high, and I can create a trading account out of 50 bucks and a discount broker. Maybe I just got really lucky. It was foolish of me to not have purchased a decent amount of puts anytime I was riding one of my longer contracts through earnings. You have a great relationship! Or you can keep your ego and switch over to a place that will tell you what you want to hear. The last sentnece on your comment brings back some painful memories. All I see here is people telling you that you are gambling.

So, make 20k remove 15k and put it into safer investments. Everyone has losers, you just need to make those losers small as possible. SO doesnt mind I think you are supposed to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and throw yourself right back down again. You have to want to win more than you want to play. Consider this a cheap lesson. Not even spreads or anything more fancy. The worst trades that I have made to date were trying to call a bottom in oil. It takes a ton of skill to get on the positive side of the sum. The larger the stakes, the more thrill, but also more consequences.

We own our house and still have 25 years left on the mortgage. If you want to bet on sports, go to Las Vegas and at least get free drinks and stuff out of it. Do you keep at it? Good option writing should help take the gamble out of the stock market. It teaches options starting with the safest, easiest to understand option trades. Unless you are able to devote all your time to this, you are really just gambling. Psychology, what a killer. The key thing for me that I learned, is to have proper risk management. Why would you risk wiping out when you have shown that you can consistently build your wealth with good trades? Want to quit your job and turn your life around? You should be asking me how I failed twice!

Both times if you had banked your winnings when you had a 5x return and then gone back to playing with your initial investment you would be hugely ahead. Please provide more details on the trades where you lost everything. Even so I should have had downside protection at the minimum four times a year. The biggest toll I paid with all of this was psychological. In terms of stocks, I look for a lot of the same. You are clearly gambling to win that much and lose that much. After a while I got fancy and started shorting. No one I know is interested in any of this. Try being less aggressive by buying options that are a good amount in the money or just buying shares on margin.

USDCHF are fairly cheaply priced now as well, according to bloomberg, so that one is on my potentials as well. When I want to mitigate risk I just trade a smaller portion of my account and make sure I have gtfo criteria for when the underlying is not doing what I thought. Did you put or call, what sectors did you trade in? Gambling is fine and fun, just be responsible. In order to make such meteoric rises I was taking on some fairly large risk relative to buy and wait method. The easiest thing to do is to make some money then take it out and put it somewhere safe. What was the method based on? No one gets 10x return consistently.

In fact, the majority of that came from rolling AMD call options forward at higher and higher slightly OOtM strikes. The last 30 days on options are quite vulnerable. Getting lucky and striking big a few times, but losing it all after continuously repeating that same process is textbook gambling and borderline gambling addiction. If you manage to lose everything once more, I would move on. Couple of nice vacations, but not the end of the world for you by the sounds of it. You have a gambling problem and by trying to justify it, you are just digging your hold deeper. If you stop increasing your bankroll it sounds great. Celebrated when they won the trial, but nearly had a heart attack when the floor fell out.

That feature is limiting and controlling risk. My student loan is just over 100k so you can imagine my elation. Just learn the secrets from THE GRINDER! The formatting is kinda poor, and the dude seriously probably would benefit from a good editor. And also not selling all of my BAC contracts for massive gains before Dec 31st. Now the most i do is covered calls. Honestly, it sounds that one of the reasons why you were able to make so much is that you were willing to take huge risks, even if they were calculated ones, because you thought it was funny money. Go read anything by anyone that has made millions in the market. Sometimes the best trade is a small loss of money.

The whole system is a racket set up to take our money away from us one way or another, so the best bet is to take a more conservative approach instead of trying to get rich quick. But never to offset an investing method. Feel free to pm me if you have any specific questions. You know the pain then my brother! Cut your losers quick and the winners let run will make up for the small losers. OP for sharing this story, as it may teach others how your own results affect your behaviour, and why you should never dismiss crash risk. Assuming he can afford to lose the grand in the first place of course.

So I was paying attention to vega the most and underlying implied volatility. Whenever you win, cash out, bump your bankroll slightly and start again. The growth rate is still pretty damn high, and you will never wipe out unless you are trading really small companies. Options traders are supposed to calculate Theta, Delta, and the various other Greeks to ensure that their money makes responsible gains. The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent, I know now how much this is true. This this this this this. It seems like you were taking too much risk and had too much of your capital exposed at once, in other words you got greedy. Did you diversify your option bets?

If you feel otherwise, read Fooled By Randomness. It sounds like this guy has issues with the fundamentals of options, and is using options to gamble instead of to safely hedge his portfolio. There is ALWAYS another trade around the corner. Well, that works well enough for me. You have a great job! You, too, can turn pennies to millions gambling with OPTIONS! What are the two best things about gambling? Turns out I could have kept squeezing but oh well. You have a house! To contrast, now I do occasional trades on the stock market, I max out my 401K for work, and have been putting more money into my personal finances to keep my debt down and be able to pay for my house faster.

But my commonsense tells me that once I hit milestone like 100k, I would keep aside 50k and keep trading with the remaining 50k. The problem here is bank roll management. The article got the attention it did because of who the author is. Nonetheless, the information is solid and presented logically. As a result, I prefer to spend my hobby money on other things. You may lose it ALL, including the money. Have you read the market wizards books? It seemed like a scam and I sold it once it started going south but it was nice while it lasted and even though I sold the stocks technically at a few dollars loss of money, those dividends more than made up for it. At least spread yourself off next time.

So I actually wrote you a response on my phone and sent it, apparently that never went through considering it was about a week ago. Whatever your percents with stocks, eventually you will be making ridiculous money without the wipeout risk. Buy a proportionate amount of calls and puts on riskier trades. What was your avg holding time on your big winners? How much do you want? The only way I would be able to consistently make money with options is to be able to write them, and charge a commission for doing so. Jesus christ with returns like that id would have walked away and took a vaca for a month and forgot about the world. Unlike stocks, options settle at the end of the day. Never bet more than you can afford to lose. Some of my contracts that I lost huge on were for Jan 2016, so I figured even if earnings is bad I can recover.

Think of what you could have done if you just cashed out and then diversified. So you essentially made approx 335k while trading and instead of paying down your mortgage you were addicted to the thrill of the risk vs reward of options trading. YOU, can know how! Lastly in relation to the main story, always spread your wins to make it harder for the market to take them back off you. It sounds like you are good at a lot of things! If not why not? You have 25yrs left on a lien against it. Just to be clear, you are completely gambling with options.

You kept gambling it tall. Did you ever strongly consider taking the gains and leave it at that? Anybody can be good at options trading if they assume enough risk, which you have. With those kinds of returns, you are at a risk level where any small setback will not difficult wipe out your account. The Rookie Guide to Options, 2nd edition. Also anyone have a resource on how to perform these kinds of option trades, and options in general? So let me give you some background.

If you are capable of trading thousands of dollars or more on options you must be using spreads and writing options! You apply the irrationality of the market to your losses but not to your gains. Once you have a decent size of disposable cash to play with, fucking go all out. Let me know if you have specific questions. Write an investment plan that includes you moving certain amounts of your winnings into savings and allocating percentages you feel comfortable with towards certain options ONLY if they meet the criteria that you held when you first started. What are your go to resources for researching companies? The stock has since dropped like a rock again; I check it once in a while and I can feel some anxiety if I imagine I am still stuck. Also takes me out of the daily grind of always needing to know where the market is heading. They all despise debt.

What was the process for selection of a company to trade options in? That was in June 2012 and she opted to let me takeover all of it since she was tired of sleepless nights worrying. Even though we are just the same financially it hurt my ego maybe even the worst. Their value went up incrementally over the next few months and I ended up with more than I started with, but nothing to get excited about. Do you not call that getting extremely lucky? The asset itself is being used to make money. Look at it another way. If your system always ends up losing it all, stay away from options and invest in the underlying. You are seriously gambling.

What I was doing came with a high degree and I know it, so does my wife. Whatever your trading strats you should always work out the max you can lose from a position. Has anyone else gone through something similar? Please ask me questions. Options are a suckers game. Actually most of them do not have min requirements for cash accounts. The Moral: NO ONE has a damn clue where the market is going. So that my losses are minimum. Gotta be willing to risk losing a little to profit a lot.

Expert financial advisors hate him! Protect yourself, from yourself. Instead of paying your debt you pushed the limit and went all in. Hedge Fund Market Wizards. It sounds like you really do have an edge but your money management sucks. Obviously if I had downside protection I would have done better. Did you move the market on the last couple trades?

So you can trade once daily. Its one thing to use options to hedge a risk, but this guy sounds like the textbook gambler. Oil is bound to make a rebound at some point, but the market is still quite volatile in those terms so I would assume various options plays are still fairly expensive at this point. So surreal, I feel like you just described me. Seems you know half of what you are doing though which is picking good options. You seem to have pretty good instincts if you did that twice in two years. Are you just buying puts and calls, or naked selling them? Slowly trying to get back into it now, but yeah.

But do not risk your future for a quick buck. Be happy at 5x and take it. KNOW WHAT PEOPLE ARE GOING TO DO! Full disclosure: I dabble, and am no where near that level of skill. Not good for expiration day trading. In the end, the company had one day, less than 24 hours, when the price rocketed based on rumors. You could continue to trade like you do but by putting some aside for long term investments you could reduce your risk of blowing everything again. After ups and downs for a bit, she wanted to pull out everything and stop. The tool itself is not intrinsically gambling, how you use it is. The part you are failing at is financial management. Example I loaded up with calls a couple months before AAPL did the stock split because the companies fundamentals were very cheap, and so were the contracts.

Fuck man, of course you should. If I were you, I would read up on risk management. You guessed right on AAPL and AMD and got totally lucky. Here is my problem with what you have done so far though. Options and commodities are dominated by some very highly skilled people, and they love to see people like you. From a beginner perspective. Oh, god, that is me. But the downside of that is that eventually the risks hit you hard. My successful trades were all low iv at the time, and were roughly three to four months out. It sounds to me, though, that you do have a skill that can make you money but your emotions get the best of you once you reach a certain capacity.

Man i live for those moments, instead of wasting my money at the craps tables ive discovered options lol. If not, how were you diversified? Wall Street supplied technical analysis and complex options trades. Options trading is not what makes it gambling. It sounds like you were risking all or most of your capital on each bet. The biggest problem with options is that you have to be able to find someone who you believe is dumb enough to buy something that is going to stay flat or lose value, while at the same time beating the clock. Learnt my lesson about gambling though.

Im just starting out if you have any pointers, hoping to just increase buying power for small companies with few contracts. Does any retirement scenario allow it? Certain price patterns like wedges, flags, triangles, etc will help me narrow down to favorites though. Rate hikes are helping the market. Do you stick with it and bet on recovery or sell and buy something else? You define risk up front. Folks said the same thing about the yen carry trade, which blew up in their face, and stocks kept going. Although I have not seen you engage or blog about these topics; however, your commentary on market sentiment appears in the same feed as link to Alex Jones screaming about gay frogs. Not a hard call. Everyone was positioned under the logic you mention, yet it blew up in their face.

You really believe that? Are you familiar with clinical development? The best thing I did back then was position myself both long and short. Throw me a ticker, ask about a setup. Do you think under armor will one day go back up? Inflation is coming and the bond market money is coming to stocks. Why not prevent that?

You should be involved, but with limited resources it might not be a great return at first on the time you invest. Also what are your thoughts on GILD, PFE, and other pharma? SSRIs are typically better traders because SSRIs are notorious for getting rid of a lot of the individuals emotions and anxieties. To piggyback of this comment, what data points are the most influential in your final decision to invest in a stock long term? EST to answer your questions. Stock prices should rise and all is well right? When the overall market is trading sideways or down like it is now do you gravitate to puts or stick to calls on stocks you feel will go higher? If Bendon purchases NAKD the goal is to go public in the US. My reference is the potential NAKD merger with Bendon.

OA brand guilty by association. As an amateur how do I identify that the market is going higher or lower etc. This is why stock trading gets such a bad rep is because people lose money for no good reason. The market in March looks kind of trembling. Should I sell Under armor stocks or continuing buying as they go down? When I started, I went to work at a Brokerage.

Makes no sense to me. Do you have absolutely ironclad trading rules that you will stick to, no matter what? PHDs with statistics, computer science programmers, and MBAs all doing their best to beat each other. Facebook went out and bought Instagram instead. Yes, because novices tend to start using totally irrelevant things, thinking they offer value. All indicators worked then. Not so much to sell, considering my investments are long term.

Also, within that tool, what are the indicators that you pay the most attention to? It is important that you get to that point before you trade full time. Learn from those around you. Both the good traders and the shitty ones. It took me three years to reach that before I left my job and went to trade on my own. Zooming out on the weekly frame really helps too. It is a stochastic. When the bond market gets bloody, stocks are the beneficiary.

Technicals tell you when to buy, not so much what to buy. If you think they have some big changes coming down the road, then go ahead. However I have no professional experience in this field, how would you advise I start to try and get a foot in the door? What are your thoughts on AUPH? Thanks to everyone for your questions, this was unique and fun. With options, that could change a bit. If you could give 3 simple single line tips to an aspiring trader what would they be? Find a good trading room. Were you referring to that at all or just as like a joke? Been waiting to add in a lot more.

Would it be wise to pullout money and see how market reacts all this tax and rate hike, or just keep investing in this very moment of the market? Hey, thanks for the AMA! Not aware of any disruptive private tech companies going public. Do some historical analysis. This drug is a very big deal that could become part of all LN treatments which is a widespread disease. Thursday after market close. My former partner and I knew this in 2007. This company is a buyout target. It depends on so much?

Snap was made an offer by Facebook but turned it down.