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Margin trading is a way to magnify your buying power by borrowing money from your broker. The amount that can be borrowed varies over time, but the current number is 50% when trading stock. Translation: When a trader buys shares of stock that qualify for margin, she may borrow a maximum of one-half of the cost from her broker.

Steve Burns has been investing in the stock market successfully for over 20 years and has been an active trader for over 14 years. He is the author of six books all published by BN Publishing. I have been following Steve for years, and would like to bring some of his gems to SteadyOptions readers.

As Rookies, one of the most basic concepts we learn is that: An option gives its owner the right, but not the obligation to exercise the option at any time before the option expires. Eventually we learn that this applies only to American style options and that European options may only be exercised only when expiration arrives.

Every premium seller faces a situation in which it is clear that getting out of a risky situation is the best move. Sometimes we make a clean exit. At other times the position has become too large because imminent risk has increased. At those times we can return to a comfortable situation by exiting a portion of the trade.

One of the more difficult aspects of options trading is knowing when to take a profit. No one likes to ‘leave money on the table.’ However, I also hope that no one likes to lose thousand of dollars trying to earn another $50 to $100. There is a compromise somewhere.

Our LC Momentum model holds stocks as its core position. Long term empirical evidence across global equity markets shows equities significantly outperform all other major asset classes since 1900[1]. Morgan Housel recently published an article about the last seventy years of US stock market returns, and how they have to regularly climb the wall of worry.

In case you do not follow world economic events, you might want to be aware of the fact that Italy’s banking sector is teetering on the edge of collapse.  Bad debts held by Italian banks make up seventeen percent (17%) of all outstanding loans in the country.  This equates to about 360 billion euros or 20% of the entire GDP of Italy.

Living through a track record is very different than viewing it on paper. Even the most efficient track records in history have periods where they would have been very uncomfortable to stick with. Warren Buffett has had multiple 30-50% drawdowns in his career. In the world of indexing, there is nothing magical about the S&P 500.

Peak to valley, from June 1998 – March 2000 Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway lost over 50%. In the same period, the S&P 500 returned over 45% and the Nasdaq 100 returned over 315%. A new client said to me the other day “I’m in this for the long term, but if after a couple years I don’t see any gains then I’m going to tell you this isn’t working.”

I was asked a great question the other day by a member.  He had done some math and noted that the reported dividends received by dividend ETFs (such as SDY, VIG, and others), was LOWER than it should be, than if you just took a weighted average of the EFF's holdings.

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference.” So wrote Robert Frost in his 1920 poem, The Road Not Taken. How does it relate to trading you might ask?

This article covers some basic stuff related to options owners. What are your choices when you own an option? You have three choices: sell it, exercise it or allow it to expire worthless. And that’s true whether you own a call or a put. Each choice has its pros and cons. Each choice might lead to different profit outcome.