Humble

We don't really care what is the short price - all that matters is the spread price. We always compare spread prices to previous cycles for earnings calendars, this is how we know if the price is good.

I don't hate Sosnoff. I'm providing the facts only. And I don't see how Dan Sheridan connection to ONE is relevant. Dan Sheridan made an agreement with ONE to get better rates to his members. He does not benefit personally from this connection. Sosnoff does.

If you buy options separately (technique known as legging in), you expose yourself to directional risk. When we buy calendars (or straddles), we aim to be delta neutral. If you leg in, you start the trade with delta bias, and if the market moves against you, you start losing very quickly.

Turns out tastyworks $1 commission is not exactly $1. There is an extra 0.15 clearing fee and regulatory fee. So total to open and close position is $1.30. With IB it's around $1.50 on average, and many times you pay less for adding liquidity. Which means that overall cost with tastyworks will be similar or even higher than IB. And this is before even mentioning higher margin rates, higher commissions for stocks etc. So much for "no hidden fees"..

Another example of "quality" of tastytrade "studies".

Yes, this is the study I was referring to. He actually did similar studies more than once. Here is another one - Another garbage study from Tasty Trade. I have no idea what percentage of his studies is good. I would assume that more than 50% for a simple reason: selling premium in general has an edge compared to buying premium, and since all his studies are about selling premium, he must be right more often than not. But as you said, the fact that he claims one should NEVER buy premium is absolutely idiotic, and he has zero credibility by claiming such idiotic claim. I never said he is a fraud. I said he is a hypocrite and has conflict of interest. Doesn't make him a fraud. "how does he make money from trying to perpetuate that idea?" There are two different aspects here. First aspect is his conflict of interest because he recommends active trading strategies that are commissions consuming and at the same time, benefits financially from those strategies, no matter if they make money or not. This is on the business level. btw, he is not alone - Najarian brothers do the same with TradeMonster/OptionMonster, and TDAmeritrade are doing the same with redoption. But at least they don't claim that their goal is to "help the small guy". Second aspect is his claim that only options selling can make money. This is on the professional level. To me, this claim alone discredits the whole Tastytrade network because you can never know if their studies are correct or are skewed to support his concept. He did it with buying premium before earnings, I'm sure you can find many other instances. It doesn't matter what percentage of the studies is correct because novice traders will never know the difference. If he lied and skewed his study (intentionally) once, how can he ever be trusted again??

Tastytrade might be free (although they do have some paid products like bob the trader). A mouse will always find free cheese in a mousetrap; but I never saw one that was very happy about it. I'm still waiting for a proof that Tom Sosnoff or any of his traders or followers are actually profitable. Thousands of traders have been burned by his strategy of selling premium before earnings on stocks like AMZN and NFLX. Tom Sosnoff is a brilliant businessman. He created Tastytrade in order to "help the small guy", while his real goal is to generate commissions for TDAmeritrade. Don't take my word for it, there are many people who think the same - here is one of them Tastytrade: A Shill with Skills Again, his mantra has always been there "Trade Small, Trade Often". This is a huge conflict of interests for TastyTrade and now for TastyWorks. As many people have mentioned, when you present Tastytrade as a free network while being paid through teh back door, the conflict of interest and hypocrisy are obvious. Tom Sosnoff is also very charismatic, he created a huge followup and now he will get many of his followers to follow him to TastyWorks. Brilliant move for him, not sure about his followers. No matter who is their clearing firm, TastyWorks is still a new company. New platform, new management, unproven execution etc. I advised people to be very careful about Tastytrade, and my advice remains the same about TastyWorks. Those who believe that Tom Sosnoff provides good research, I suggest reading my articles Buying Premium Prior To Earnings - Does It Work? and Can We Profit From Volatility Expansion Into Earnings?

Yes, I took that into account: 1.08 in Tsatytrade vs. 1.48 in IB for round trip. BUT: 1. Trading indexes like SPX, RUT, VIX etc. is more expensive at Tastyworks. 2. 4 times higher margin rates. 3. Exercise and Assignment fees. 4. Much higher rates for stocks. 5. No volume discounts. When you account all factors, the total cost at Tastyworks will be probably similar or slightly lower than IB. My point is that when you are a new player in town and want to compete against someone like IB who has been #1 broker 4 years in a row by Barron's, you need to do much better. Look at other new players like Tradier, Lightspeed etc. Especially when your mantra is "We want to help the small guy"... Of course compared to TOS, those are amazing rates. For all Sosnoff/tastytrade funboys, it is probably attractive as well. But to steal clients from IB, they will have to do much better.

My Take: The commissions are $1 per contract. In addition, there is Options Regulatory of 0.04, which brings the total to $1.08. SPX, RUT, VIX, SPXPM and few more indexes cost more (between 0.18 and 0.65 extra). Exercise and Assignment is $5. Margin rates are around 7-8%. Stocks $5 flat. Compare to IB: Options commissions 0.70 plus Options Regulatory of 0.04, so total is around 1.48 (round trip). Commissions go down to 0.50/contract if you trade 10,000+ contracts. Only SPX and VIX are extra. No Exercise and Assignment fees. Stocks: $1 per 200 shares. Margin rates less than 2%. In my opinion, Tastyworks commissions might be attractive to TOS traders, but definitely not IB traders. And don't forget to check financial stability of Tastyworks which at this point is unknown. On a personal note, I wouldn't touch anything that has Tom Sosnoff name attached to it.

I have been interviewed recently by Best Choice Software. You can read the interview: https://blog.bestchoicesoftware.com/2016/12/08/expert-interview-series-kim-klaiman-of-steadyoptions-com-on-mastering-options-trading/

Thanks again for sharing your experience @eudaimonia Couple small comments/suggestions: 1. Always remember that this is an ongoing process. After being in the stock market business for almost 15 years, I'm still far from perfect and improving all the time, and I'm doing this full time. The key is to realize that it's like any other profession and requires continues learning. 2. Regarding fills - this is a very good advice. And since our setups repeat cycle after cycle, you will get better and better each cycle. 3. Adjusting straddles is not critical. We do it to stay delta neutral, but some members select to let the winners run. Remember that if the stock moves and you adjust, and it continues to move in the same direction, you would be better without adjusting. Of course if it reverses, adjusting would produce better results. Over the long term, the results should not be dramatically different.

Thanks for sharing @eudaimoniaYour returns are basically in line with our official model portfolio when you account for commissions. In fact, even slightly better because you started in February and missed the 10% in January. And it was our worst year since inception.. What exactly happened in September? I big spike up and then down.

@Yowster Thanks for posting this. It's pretty much in line with my records. And I agree with your analysis. RICs were responsible for big chunk of our losses in 2016, without them we would have a much better year. Once we stopped them, the results were in line with previous years - our model portfolio is up 101% since April. I'm very pleased with performance of earnings calendars and straddles. We are now much more selective based on cumulative experience of the previous years. We could obviously do a better job by avoiding 3 big SPX losers, but those were very unusual market conditions. To put things in perspective, the model portfolio is up 40% in 2016 even after the worst drawdown since inception.

We already have 2 trades that would benefit from volatility spike. Otherwise I would probably enter.

Yes, I do it manually. Not sure how you can automate it with ONE of other package.

Take a look: Trading VIX "Rather than just selling naked puts on VIX, when VIX is low, a calendar spread can be effective." So you basically sell near term put and buy longer term put with same strike. Advantages: 1. Much less margin (at least with IB). 2. If VIX continues lower, your losses are reduced by gains of the long put.

I believe that Tom Sosnoff making trade recommendations at tastytrade and having a stake at Ameritrade was already a huge conflict of interest. Now when he owns tastyworks and continues doing his shows at tastytrade, it's even worse. I think it's only matter of time when he becomes part of next SEC investigation.

When considering a broker, execution and commissions are probably the most important things, but you also need to consider the broker financial stability and size. IB is very stable, with years of proven reputation and financial stability. What do we know about financial stability of Tastyworks? At this point - nothing.

Well, I guess we know now the true purpose of tastytrade.

@blackiceYou are welcome, this is the purpose of the forum. 1. Market makers and brokers are different things. Brokers (like IB TOS etc.) are responsible to execute orders. They make money mostly from commissions they charge you and me. Market makers are responsible to set prices. Here is a good description. They make money mostly from the bid/ask spreads - this is the reason why you rarely can be filled at the mid. You need to pay above the mid to buy and below the mid to sell. 2. What you refer to is called weekend effect. The short answer is no, you cannot get 3 days decay in one day, otherwise it would be free money (which as we know does not exist). Here is a good explanation of weekend theta. MMs start to "adjust" the prices around Thursday to reflect for the weekend, so the price difference between Friday close and Monday open will be 1 day of time decay, not 3 days. 3. We have no way to know how exactly they do it. I believe they use some kind of "secret formula" and it's all based on algorithms. 4. Well, you need to know what is the "real mid". For example, if MMs think that options fair price is $10.00, they might set the bid/ask at 9.70/10.30, so the mid is 10.00. Now comes your order at 10.00. The bid/ask moved to 10.00/10.30 for few seconds (or even less), but the real mid might remains at 10.00 - this is where the fair value of the option is. And this is why you might get filled at 10.00 even if you see 10.00/10.30 for few seconds.

1. Calendar days 2. Market makers usually adjust the prices intraday especially when the options are close to expiration. For example, if you look at prices of options on Thursday for the next day expiration, the price will be definitely different at the open and at the close (assuming all other factors equal). 3.As for all options (not just SPX), the bid/ask will widen during fast moving markets, before important events (like Fed meeting etc), and in general, when market makers feel that the risk and uncertainty are higher than usual. 4. Mid price not always gets filled as well, sometimes you need to give up few cents. Again, it depends on market conditions.

Hello everyone, Today we transferred our website to a new server. The transfer was very smooth thanks to our webmaster @Nevo - thank you Daniel! We tested emails and they seem to work fine. Some email providers have more aggressive spam filters than others. They will have to be taught that our IP/domain is safe. The only way for this to happen is for us to send mail to these providers and have those users mark the email as not spam or add our email to contacts. I have attached a document that has the instructions based on your provider to add your email as a contact so that it does not go to spam. The email that our website is using would be noreply@steadyoptions.com. br1031.doc

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There are few posts that explain the differences: http://www.sheridanmentoring.com/iron-condor-iron-butterfly-better/ http://sjoptions.com/iron-condor-v-butterfly-spread/ http://thismatter.com/money/options/butterfly-condor-option-spreads.htm Both trades are vega negative theta positive gamma negative. The main difference is that IC is high probability trade with terrible risk/reward (at least if you use 10-15 deltas like most traders do) while fly is a low probability trade with excellent risk/reward. For example: if you use IC with short deltas of 10, you usually get around $2 credit on $10 spread, so you risk $8 to make $2. But your probability to make the $2 is around 80%. With fly, the risk/reward is usually much more favorable, but you need to stay close to the sold strike to realize the reward. For example, the setup we do with our SPX fly, we risk around $7-8 to make $42-43. But in order to make the reward, the underlying needs to stay near the strike till expiration, which is a very low probability. This is why we usually book profits around 25-30%. The bottom line is that no trade is better than the other, they both have pros and cons.