Humble

This needs to be backtested. Still has negative gamma risk.

Assuming the stock stays near the strike, the first option will produce the best results. If the long options expire after earnings, they will increase before earnings and fall after earnings. The closer the expiration is to earnings, the more it will be impacted. March options will still be impacted by Jan earnings, but less than Feb. options.

I'm using TWS, not web trader. It offers more options. The platform does have some learning curve, but once you get used to it, it's actually pretty good. The IB tutotials are not bad, it's a good place to start.

Options trading has many flavors and styles. Using options for leverage is one of them - this is not our style. We aim for steady and consistent gains. Our average return is about 5-6% per trade, and as you can see from our track record, we doing very well over time. You don't have to aim for a double in each trade to do well. I see sales pages all the time that show you 200%+ returns on some cheap options they bought. But what they don’t tell you is that those trades happen once in a while and are not consistent. Maybe they did make 200%+ on a trade, but that doesn’t happen all the time and to set your expectations that high would be very ignorant. They also don't tell you how many 100% losers they have before they hit this homerun. And whoever is telling you that you can get rich with options quickly - just ask him to show you his track record. Again, it's all about probability of success and risk management. And yes, those strategies are scalable. Some hedge funds trade hundreds of millions of dollars. Here is some reading in your free time: http://seekingalpha.com/article/396701-myths-and-misconceptions-of-options-trading http://seekingalpha.com/article/407971-how-to-become-your-own-options-risk-master

I don't think this is black and white. Take a look - http://steadyoptions.com/articles/post/general/risk-reward-or-probability-of-success-r91 You can have good risk/reward or good probability of success. You cannot have both. When you have high probability of success and bad risk/reward, you just need to make sure that you control risk, so one big loss doesn't wipe out months of gains.

An option provides the owner the right to buy or sell an asset at a pre-determined price before or on a certain date. Options are basically of two types- Calls and Puts. A call provides the right to the owner to buy an asset while a put provides the right to the owner to sell an asset. Trading options can be very profitable for the owners. However, it is important to gain a proper knowledge and understanding of the terms used in the options market. This infographic has been designed to make it easier for you to understand option trade. Click here to view the article

Well, this is a good trade IF you believe AMZN will not go above 302.5 by the next week. It is not a good trade IF you made it to get your money back. So I assume your title was more humoristic than serious. We all know that the market doesn't know and doesn't really care that we lost money and we "need" to get that money back.

Well, it looks like October 15 WAS indeed the bottom, at least for now. SPX rallied 120 points since then in less than a week! As one of traders said, just one week ago the World was coming to and end and now everyone has their rally caps back on. Investors really are sheep – except I think sheep have better memories…

Great question actually. Take a look - http://steadyoptions.com/articles/post/general/how-index-options-settlement-works-r57 The RLS is described as the RUT Flex Opening Exercise Settlement. The RLS is calculated by taking the opening price of each of the Russell 2000 stocks. Each day when the market opens all stocks don't start trading at the same time. So RLS might be very different from the opening value of RUT on Friday. In fact, it is possible that RLSs value will to be higher or lower than the RUT daily bar high/low. How is it possible that the value of the highest value of the RUT is less than the RLS opening price? It is due to the fact the RLS is based on the stocks opening price whilst the RUT is based on the Index value at that time. So if all the stocks in the RLS open at their days high and then trade down then the RLS will have a value much higher than the RUT.

So.. was it a capitulation? Last hour of a crazy day. We are seeing heavy volume and extreme volatility. Dow was down 450 points and S&P 52 points, they are now down "only" 170 and 14 points. Russel 2000 is actually up 14 points. The bottom of the day also seemed to coincide with these comments from the Fed: *YELLEN SAID TO VOICE CONFIDENCE IN EXPANSION AMID FOREIGN RISKS"

Assignment is not necessarily a bad thing - if it doesn't cause margin call. Lets say you are assigned the short calls. So now you are short the stock and long the calls. Unless the short calls are not deep ITM, they will still have decent time value, so it would be actually great to be assigned. if this happens, just sell the long calls and cover the short shares.

Absolutely. http://steadyoptions.com/forum/topic/2096-optionnet-discounted-offer/

2.45? The current mid is 2.90. This was a very good fill. Historically, 1.25% for the double calendar was a good price. So around 4.00 or 2.00 for a single calendar. But this is for 3 week calendar, and the current one is 4 weeks. So 2.50 or below would definitely be a good entry point.

How many times did you hear from traders "I make 50% on most trades, so I can live with few 100% losers"? I guess too many. What those traders don't tell you is what impact those 100% losers have on your overall portfolio. Lets take a closer look at position sizing and why it is critical for your financial health. Click here to view the article

You can probably do it in a similar way we trade earnings - buy a straddle and sell it just before the IPO. The problem is that you would not know if the straddle is cheap enough. Unlike our earnings straddles where we compare the price to previous cycles, in this case you have no reference.

The newsletters industry is full of crooks. I see too many "gurus" promise to make you money with no effort, charging thousands of dollars in the process. They present some of the highest risk strategies (like trading weekly options) as "low or no risk". They make a bad name to the whole industry. The Kirk Report is one of the few exceptions. This is a highly respected publication managed by highly dedicated editor, Charles E. Kirk. It is my pleasure to share some insights from Charles. I took the liberty to add some of my own thoughts. Click here to view the article

No, the forum software does not have that option. I don't think any forum software does. The idea is that members are in control which notifications they want to get, how often etc. Subscribing to all forums/topics would flood you with emails. Some days there are 80-100 posts posted, would you want to get 100 emails from SO in one day?

To ensure the best service to our existing members, SteadyOptions will be closed to new subscribers on September 15. The current demand indicates that by September 15 we will reach our maximum number of members. If we reach our limit prior to September 15, the service will close before that date. We cannot guarantee you will still be able to sign up at any time in the next few weeks, so if you want to sign up we recommend that you do so sooner rather than later. Click here to view the article

Thank you very much for your kind words. I encourage members to post a honest review on Investimonials to show your appreciation.

How many times did you hear the following claims: "Our system has 90% success ratio". "Our trades have 1 to 4 risk reward". Lets examine those statements and see how you should put them in context and consider other parameters as well. We will use vertical spread strategy as an example. Click here to view the article

Well, for ATM options, you can expect the difference between calls and puts to be about half of the dividend, this is normal.

Previous dividends were in mid May and mid Feb, so I'm pretty sure there is a dividend before Aug expiration and the markets are pricing it.

Interesting reading, thanks for sharing. As for your question - I was asking myself the same question, and then I realized - who cares? Call it whatever you want - as long as it works. What I usually do is simply adapting to market conditions. Meaning that when volatility increases, I will be overweight gamma positive trades, and when the markets are calm, I will have more theta positive trades. But I still want to maintain gamma exposure for exactly the same reason mentioned in the articles - the black swan events are unpredictable (this is why they are called black swan) and I want to be prepared. Too many traders ignore the risks of black swan, or even a simple correction. They can sell premium for months or even years and look like geniuses, All it takes is one bad month to wipe you out. What is even more amazing is how people completely ignore the gamma risk and sell options expiring in 1-2 week. To me, this is almost criminal.

Shares of SodaStream International rose by 25% in intraday trading yesterday on a Bloomberg News report that it is in talks with an investment firm to be taken private in a transaction that would value the Israeli home soda system manufacturer at $40 per share. What would you do if you knew the news are coming ahead of time? Click here to view the article

I would highly recommend most of Jeff's books. Of course a lot has changed since some of them have been published. I had some discussions with Jeff, and he was the first to admit to me that some of his ideas are now outdated. But overall, this is an excellent reading.