Humble

You are welcome. I always like to use the analogy of other professions. It takes 4 years to become an engineer and 7 years to become a doctor. No medical student would expect to do live operations during his first years in medical school, and no civil engineering student would expect to build bridges after 1-2 years in school. Yet many people expect it to be different in trading. I get many messages from potential members, some of them tell me that they are new to trading but expect to make 10%/month. I tell them upfront that SO would not be a good fit for them. Over the years I probably have lost hundreds potential members because I like to set realistic expectations. I won't lie to people and tell them what they want to hear.

@Wushi I would like to refer you to the following reading: Why Retail Investors Lose Money In The Stock Market Are You Ready For The Learning Curve? Can you double your account every six months? Are You EMOTIONALLY Ready To Lose? 10,000 Hours Of Trading How Much Can I Earn With Options? As Mark Wolfinger writes: So to answer your question, it will depend on your skills, your learning curve, your commissions structure and your commitment and dedication. Can you make 80%/year as a new trader? The answer is: most probably no. The conventional wisdom is that your goal as a new trader has to be not to lose money during your first year in trading. I know this is not what people want to hear, but that's the truth. Can you make those returns after you learned the basics, learned the strategies and practiced them for few years? The answer is yes. We have many members who replicate and even exceed our performance numbers. But it took them years, not weeks or months to get there. Again, not what other services will tell you - but it's the truth.

No you need to cancel it.

We don't reveal numbers. And it's not relevant. All it takes is one member ignoring our guidelines and trying to trade a million dollar account.

Not at this point. We are at full capacity, over capacity in fact. We release spots as they become available. But as @SBatchmentioned, you get all 4 services with the bundle, including SO.

No. We have zero correlation with S&P. We aim to make money in all markets, and have done it very successfully in the last 7 years, in up and down markets.

We don't measure our portfolio performance against the S&P. Some of the positions are definitely hurt by decreasing IV and negative theta. But interestingly enough, when S&P lost almost 10% in December, and our portfolio made 17.3%, nobody mentioned it..

We currently have 80% exposure, which is usually as high as we go.

And TLT expires today.

I'm using IB, but as a Canadian, I also don't have much choice, there are no real alternatives in Canada. IB overall gets good feedback from members if you can learn to ignore their terrible customer service and sometimes buggy algo. Take a look at How To Select The Best Options Broker if you haven't already.

I will follow up, but meanwhile as I mentioned you can change emails. We don't really have control over why some service providers reject our emails, but all major emails (gmail, yahoo, hotmail, outlook etc.) work with no issues.

btw, as mentioned in How To Use The Forum there are also two more Notification settings: instant notifications and HTML5 browser notifications. Members can now get pop-up notifications even when not active in that window at the time. So in addition to regular email and Twitter (which takes 30 seconds to set up), you can also get pop-up notifications, select their frequency, select what and how to follow etc. But you are right, very old school. And if being old school is our only sin and the 1 reason you are cancelling, then I can sleep very well at night.

That's fine. As I said, cannot satisfy everyone. And cannot force people to make money. I'm pretty sure most people would prefer a service that might not have all the bells and whistles but is making them money, than vice versa.

What we are using IS the latest technology. The forum software (IPS) is one of the best (if not THE best) forum software available today. But obviously we cannot satisfy everyone. If people don't know how to use it and don't want to learn, it's not our fault. But yes, most of the community understands very clearly what SO is and what it isn't, as described by @sakura P.S. Twitter IS used currently. And forwarding emails to text is VERY easy, as mentioned many times.

All new members, I strongly recommend reading what @sakurawrote. Those are wise words from someone who tried dozens trading services and finally found his home here. Members who follow his way are the most successful. Concentrate on your learning, not on how to react to trade alerts in the fastest possible way.

Also, if you check recent trades, virtually ALL of them could be entered even after few hours or the next day at prices similar or better than the official price. And if the underlying price changes, you just use different strikes.

Email have an option to be pushed as they arrive, not just every 30 minutes. In addition, you can follow steadyoption on twitter, which also send messages within minutes.

Most people today have smartphones and emails are pushed to smartphone, so I don't see how text would be different. Also most service providers allow forwarding emails as text. Search the forum, it has been discussed several times. In any case, the forum software doesn't allow sending texts, only emails.

From my experience with Elliott Wave, this is how most of those experts operate. They make it vey vague on purpose, so after the fact, they can say they were right, no matter the outcome. I have yet to see a single Elliott Wave service or expert who gives a concrete and specific trade signals based on Elliott Wave, and publishes a clear track record. Robert Prechter who is considered on of THE experts, has in fact one of the worst track records in history. He made himself a pretty good name by correctly forecasting the 2008 market crash. What most people don't remember is the fact that Prechter's newsletter had been almost uninterruptedly bearish for the nearly two decades prior to 2008 -- and, as a result, according to the Hulbert Financial Digest, was near the bottom of the rankings for market timing performance over those two decades. A bearish stopped clock even gets to be right occasionally. cxoadvisory's research confirms this - Robert Prechter was ranked the last out of 68 gurus, with only 20.8% accuracy. Now, I'm not saying that Elliott Wave doesn't work or cannot work. But I have yet to see a clear track record based on this theory.

I think 90% of bullish strategies would return good results during this period of time. How to trade it? You could sell SPX put credit spread structured around ATM, which means around 1:1 risk/reward. So for $5 spread, you would get around $2.50 credit, and just play the odds. But that means being ready to 100% losses if you let it expire ITM.

We also have some proprietary tools developed by our members: volatilityhq.com Official Thread More tools to analyze the earnings trades: www.art-of.trading

We will continue trading what's working and be flexible. The important thing is to make money, isn't it?

Thank you @Yowsterfor an excellent summary as usual. SO community is very fortunate to have you as a mentor and a contributor. The most important lesson from this year is: be flexible and adapt to market conditions. When some strategies become riskier due to higher volatility, start looking for alternate strategies that fit better the ever changing markets. If anyone still had any doubts, we proved in 2018 that we can make money in all markets. Our learning never stops, and we becoming better and better every year. Happy New Year everyone! Here are links to previous years summaries: 2017 Year End Performance by Trade Type 2016 Year End Performance by Trade Type 2015 Year End Performance by Trade Type 2014 Year End Performance by Trade Type 2013 Year End Performance by Trade Type

Correct. In fact, if you premium was higher than $10, you can actually make a gain.

I believe starting with new trades is the best way, but you need to understand if a new trade is a good trade by itself (most are) or it's more a hedge to existing trades.