Humble

Let me make one general statement about returns. The 127% CAGR excludes commissions. This is mentioned twice on the performance page (good luck to find a similar disclaimer in most other services). The actual return depends on the broker you are using. Those with Tradier who pay $10/month as part of our deal with Tradier will see a very small impact of commissions. Those who are with IB will be probably impacted by 1-2% per month - again, clearly mentioned in many places. How much members can make? It depends. Everyone is different. I get messages all the time from members who beat our performance. But it will not happen after 4 months. 4 years is more likely. But yes, it's possible, and I disagree with a general statement like "It's impossible to make returns similar to your stated performance". This is simply not true. I will go one step further and say that if you stick around for 3-4 years, you will have a very good chance to make at least half of those returns or more (again, if you account for commissions). Why 3-4 years? Because as I mentioned many times, this is how long it takes to become proficient in any area in life. And if you find it insulting comparing University to learning to trade, maybe you need to adjust your expectations. Doesn't matter if you do it alone, with SO help or with another mentoring program. Our goal is to help you in your journey which is already hard enough. If you want our help, we are here. If you prefer to do it alone, that's fine too. Just don't expect any shortcuts. Also account size matters as well. Our performance is for 10k model portfolio, it is much more difficult to achieve a similar performance in a $100k account. Again, this is a well known fact and is mentioned in many places, it should not come as a surprise. But the main point is: you should not compare your results to the official performance, and you should not care how much other members make. If you are new to options, give yourself at least one year, to see the effect of learning, and also neutralize any periods of lower returns. If after one year you still don't find the value, move on. Everyone's path to success is different. If you read My story, you will see that it took me almost 10 years to become consistently profitable. To many traders it takes much less. To some it takes more. Some don't achieve that goal even after 20 years. Please believe veteran traders who say that this is extremely hard. Please don't believe all the marketeers out there who claim that it's easy to double your account every 6 months with no time and effort. I'm trying to be as honest and transparent as possible. I know not everyone can appreciate it, but I will always tell people the truth, not what they want to hear. Here are some articles that might help: Probability Vs. Certainty Trap Are You EMOTIONALLY Ready To Lose? Are You Ready For The Learning Curve? Why Retail Investors Lose Money In The Stock Market Can you double your account every six months? Top 10 Mistakes New Option Traders Make Price Of Options Trading Education How To Become A More Profitable Trader 5 Stages Traders Go Through Learning To Win By Learning To Lose How To Avoid Emotional Mistakes In Trading 10,000 Hours Of Trading How Much Do You Need To Trade Options? 40 Steps In The Trader’s Journey Buy High, Sell Low: Why Investors Fail Performance Reporting: The Myths And The Reality Is 5% A Good Return For Options Trades? Big Drawdowns Are Part Of The Game Should You Care About The Sharpe Ratio? Do You Still Believe In Fairy Tales? How To Calculate ROI In Options Trading It Is Time To Get Real @yalgaar One last comment: the answer to "what I am missing" question is you are not missing anything. You are going through the same path that millions of traders have experienced in the past. And your path might be a bit tougher in the short term because you joined during much more challenging times. The simple truth is that (at least) 80% of traders fail, and the reason is not they are not smart enough. The reason is they quit too quickly. They think about success in trading in terms of weeks or months instead of years. And you can be insulted by my comparison to University, but my point is that success in any area in life takes years. It's a process. The fact that you are still here and did not cancel after 3 losing trades says a lot about your character and commitment.

https://steadyoptions.com/forums/forum/topic/1191-welcome-to-steady-options/ Honestly, I'm not sure how many more disclaimers I can provide.

This is very clearly mentioned in the service description. If people don't read it, not much I can do about it.

Yes. And this I keep repeating continuously. But many members want to get back their subscription fee as quickly as possible.. Which I keep repeating continuously is a wrong approach.

Yes. We discussed actually Spitznagel's returns here."Spitznagel included a chart in his letter showing that a portfolio invested 96.7% in the S&P 500 and 3.3% in Universa’s fund would have been unscathed in March, a month in which the U.S. equity benchmark fell 12.4%. The same portfolio would have produced a compounded return of 11.5% a year since March of 2008 versus 7.9% for the index." This is not exactly apples to apples comparison. I assume the fund itself would be losing money all years, but the mix is what makes it so attractive. It's some kind of hedge, but the one that doesn't lose in up markets. (off topic. You can comment on Spitznagel fund in the original topic)

We had quite a few topics discussing similar issues. Here are couple topics I recommend reading: Best Practices/Tools Last 2 months Performance (your topic actually where you got some very advice). To address your points: 1) We recently started tracking trades where members could get a [BETTER PRICING] than the official trade, on entry, exit or both. Please take a look at this list - this is from the last few weeks alone and not a full list. 2) As I mentioned on several occasions, I believe that looking at SO subscription cost (or the cost of any tool or course) as percentage of your account is a mistake. You invest in your trading education. You invest in your future. You expect that what you learn will help you to improve your trading and your profitability going forward. In the same way as people who pay $5-10k for educational course or mentoring program don't expect an immediate return on their investment. 3) This is related to 2) I'm sure nobody expects to become proficient in any area in life in 4 months (engineering takes 4 years to study). It's a process that takes years not months. In no way I'm comparing SO to what is offered at University, I'm just comparing the time it takes to become proficient in any area. 4) Yes, it is difficult and it takes time. If it wasn't, millions of people would become very rich very quickly. But again, why would it be different from any other area in life? To answer your question more specifically: I don't think you doing anything wrong. Just give it more time, and don't forget that those are very challenging and uncertain times, and even much more experienced traders struggle (just to remind you that July was our first losing month since last June). Add some inevitable mistakes you will make trading new strategies (this is why we recommend starting with paper trading) - and here is your answer

https://www.tdameritrade.com/home.page I was their customer years ago (paid $29 commissions per trade..) but I believe it changed at some point after one of the acquisitions. More info: https://www.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceCanada/comments/d1ndwf/how_to_open_td_ameritrade_account_as_canadian/

Unfortunately, I don't think there is an alternative to IB in Canada at this point, and they know it very well.

PureVolatility strategy has been discontinued. The strategy was not managed in a manner consistent with our site trading style and philosophy. Here are the monthly returns of the strategy: The strategy was managed by Scott Batchelar.

That's fine. We don't censor comments. Competition is always good. We always encourage prospective members to do their due diligence and decide what works the best for them. Obviously I'm not going to comment about other programs, but here is a good guide How To Evaluate Options Trading Service. Check out the service track record, check out reviews (https://www.stockgumshoe.com/ and https://investimonials.com/ are good sources of reviews) etc. and make your own decision.

And the commissions are the same as for US clients? In Canada, TD Ameritrade used to have much higher commissions than in US. If the commissions are the same, then you are in a good shape.

There is a very long and detailed discussion in Brokers and commissions discussing different brokers and commissions structures. However, as we currently have members from over 60 counties accounting for almost third of our members, it is only appropriate to start a separate discussion for non US traders. With commissions going down steadily in the last few years, paying around 0.50/contract or even less with no fixed fee became pretty much the norm. US traders can select between a few excellent alternatives, like IB, tastyworks, Tradier, TOS, Fedelity etc. However, many non US traders have very limited options, and I see many of them still paying $2-3/contract. They probably consider all the discussions and doubts of US traders as first world problems.. The purpose of this discussion is to share alternatives available to non US traders. Members are welcome to share their experience

One option is to create a custom 4 leg position. Another (simpler) is to close the Jul31 strangle first and then open Aug07 strangle.

Any credit spread has maximum loss of the strikes width. Theoretically the short options can be assigned at any time, and if you don't have enough funds, you will get a margin call and will need to sell the shares. This is pretty standard.

I guess it happened to most of us at some point in our career.. Happened to me over 10 years ago but I still remember that sound... tiktok tiktok tiktok tiktok You know what that sound is? That is the sound of IB liquidating your positions.. one by one. You hear that Mr. Anderson?... That is the sound of inevitability...

Not sure if you had a chance to read my article about James Cordier and his fund - here it is: James Cordier: Another Options Selling Firm Goes Bust Cordier mentioned many times that selling options is almost free money. Anyone who was reading his books and articles could see this coming. The writing was on the wall.

1. Commissions and execution are still important, but Anchor trades are very low commissions strategy, so it's less critical than SO strategy. 2. The following table is copied from Leveraged Anchor Implementation which was in the list I linked to. In live trading, it actually outperformed expectations, but of course there is no guarantee it will continue, so this is just an approximate estimate. 3. The model portfolio is 100k. You can do it with 50-60k, but it will be less gradual in terms of exact leverage. 140k is more appropriate if you want to implement more indexes like QQQ, IWM and EFA. 4. It's obviously better to start when VIX is in the mid teens because options you buy are less expensive. The risk to start now is that you pay more for the hedge, but then IV goes down quickly and you don't get enough premium from the sold puts to pay for the hedge. In this case the strategy will probably underperform if there is a strong rally. But you are still protected. Personally this is a risk I would be willing to take, but everyone is different.

In January 2019, we switched from Anchor to Leveraged Anchor, to boast returns in a bull market while still providing good protection in a bear market. Here are the results of the Anchor strategy: You can see the return of the current version (the leveraged Anchor) on the performance page.

Because Anchor provides you protection. In 2020 when SPX was down 30%+ Anchor was flat, actually slightly up at some point. Before we switched to Leveraged Anchor, it was lagging the SPX by 2-3% per year on average due to some structural issues. Most members were still very happy to accept a small lag during strong bull markets, knowing that they are protected during the bear markets. Since we switched to Leveraged Anchor in 2019, the strategy actually outperformed the SPX in one of its best years, and still provided excellent protection during the 2020 bear market. More details and reading: https://steadyoptions.com/search/?tags=anchor trades&sortby=newest&page=1 To avoid further confusion, I'm going to move the historical Anchor performance to Discontinued Strategies.

The minimum of $1 applies only if you trade only 1 contract - which I don't. Average fee is around 0.70, sometimes less. I haven't traded SPX for a while, but yes, index options like SPX or VIX are higher. The question is how often you trade them?

No it's not. Probably something that you did. Did you open and close some trades on the same day? But 1000 is way too low to trade our strategies anyway.

There are two ways to fix this. Ask them to reset the day trading limitation. I believe you are allowed to do it every 180 days or so. Deposit $25k but don't trade all of it. Start with $10k (our model portfolio size) and keep the rest in cash till you feel more confident. As a side note, you are correct regarding fills on paper trading, but this is not the goal. The goal is to get comfortable with broker platform, structuring and executing the trades etc.

Here is what you can trade with IB in RRSP and TFSA accounts: Stocks listed on designated US and Canadian exchanges (excluding Venture-NEX segment and CSE single listed stocks) Long equity call options Long equity put options Short equity call options with a fully covered position (covered call) Long equity put options with a fully covered position (protective put). Long put/call options on indices. Warrants/Rights if the underlying asset acquired under the right to purchase is a qualified investment. U.S. Bonds. FX conversions limited to USD/CAD https://www.interactivebrokers.ca/en/index.php?f=13406&p=rsp So unfortunately SO strategies will not be allowed. I suspect other Canadian brokers will be no different, not sure about US brokers.

I don't know why people continue comparing Sweden to New York or Italy. Completely different density population and many other parameters. Apples to apples comparison would be to Denmark (92 deaths per 1M), Finland (51), Norway (42), while Sweden has 343.

Even if mortality numbers are not much higher than the flu (and this might be very true), the total number of cases and total number of deaths from any case is significantly higher than previous years. So I think we are already beyond the point when people can claim "it's just the flu". I was in the same camp at some point, but you cannot argue with numbers.