Humble

SteadyOptions is our most active service and terms of number of trades and the discussions. SteadyVol is focused on one specific strategy and provides deep analysis of volatility trading. The collars service requires much larger account, so this might be not a good fit.

Member of the month award for November goes to @tooriginal for his continuous contribution of trading ideas and analysis.

It is based on all trades closed in the specific month. For example for October: If you summarize all 5 trades results, this is what you will get. +79 +100 +124 +239 -308 Total: 234 or 2.34%

You can see how a single comment can be helpful. All you need to do is ask. There are so many experienced traders here who are willing to help and point you in the right direction.

I'm not competing against cheaper services. We are very competitive in the market place and provide a substantial value over other services unless your sole purpose is to purchase the lowest price product possible. We recognize that is the goal of some traders, however, many traders appreciate the value we provide in terms of performance, community, education etc. And no, my intention was not going through years of forum threads. There is a limited number of topics that describe our approach and the strategies we use. Most of them are under "Must read topics", not sure if you had a chance to read them. Anyway, I will be waiting for your feedback and thank you for offering it. And this is exactly the key. If the stock moved, use different strikes. If we started slightly directional, you can always use a slightly different deltas to adapt to your market view. There are also tons of unofficial trades. They are mentioned in the welcome email, but I know that many members don't even know that they exist. Again, not much I can do about it. It's a two way street.

Dear @Brie I'm always open to a constructive feedback. People churn from different reasons, one of them is lack of time and lack of willingness to invest time. Some people don't even bother to read their welcome email.. We always say and repeat that the service requires time and effort. and yes, we don't spoon feed our members, but it has to be a two way street. Following forum topics and discussions, asking questions is the best way to utilize the service (I see that you are not following ANY of the topics and none of the contributors, which is the most basic thing you should do to get timely updates). So if you have concrete suggestions, I'm more than willing to listen. As a side note, how much I'm making from the service is not really your concern (same as it's not my concern how much you are making from your business).

Of course there are plenty of managed funds, but your question was about SO, not just general funds. The link shows a list of trades where you could get a better pricing after the trade was entered, sometimes hours or the next day, which makes the timezone less critical. And the simple truth is that even if you executed only 30% of our trades, you would still do better than 99% of all traders and fund managers.. We teach people how to trade and become more independent on a continuous basis. But you need to be willing to learn. If you quit after few days/weeks, obviously you cannot learn. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink

We have members from 45 countries, including Australia, Singapore, Japan, New Zeeland and more. They manage to trade and make good gains even from different time zones. But they treat SO as an educational resource and trading ideas generator, not an alert service. In most cases it is possible to get similar or better prices with some patience hours after the trade was posted or even the next day. Here is a list of topics where better pricing was available for entry, exit or both. What you are asking for is auto trading. We mentioned many times the risks of auto trading and why we won't do it, I recommend reading All You Need To Know About Auto-Trading But some people like to learn the hard way.. Maybe sticking around for more than just a few days would help to understand what SO is and what it isn't..

All members: After you subscribe with PayPal, you will get access and welcome email within 24 hours, usually much faster. If you don't get the welcome email after 24 hours, please contact me via PM or contact form. The structure of the service is similar to all our other services. There is a Trades forum and a Discussions forum. Very simple and straightforward.

Personally I would prefer just buying puts. Lets compare the 2 options. 1) buy 355/335 debit put spread 2) Buy 335 put If SPY goes down to 335 (20% drop) TODAY, the spread will make around $800 while the put will make around $1,600. This assuming IV unchanged - which of course will not happen if the market goes down 20%. If we increase IV by 15 points, the profit of the put jumps to $1,800, but the spread P/L is almost the same because the spread is much less impacted by IV change. Of course the spread will perform better if we have a slow and gradual decline, or if the decline happens closer to expiration. So there are pros and cons for both approaches. But with VIX currently below 20, the options are still relatively cheap. And we know that markets tend to go down fast.

Maybe spending around 1-2% of the portfolio on a cheap hedge (like far OTM SPY puts or VIX calls) is not a bad idea.

Member of the month award for September goes to @Romuald for his continuous contribution to the forum discussions and especially RIC trading ideas.

We are pleased to offer a new service to our members called Steady Collars. It will be our version of the traditional Collar strategy. The strategy description has been provided by Chris Welsh. Welcome to Steady Collars Steady Collars is designed to be an easy to manage, low maintenance trade with the potential of making returns over 50% annually, with targets approaching 80%. The model portfolio will begin an account of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars ($150,000), which is the minimum amount necessary to open a portfolio margin account at Interactive Brokers (where the trades that we make will occur). You do not have to use Interactive Brokers and can use whatever trading service you like. However, this trade was structured around the use of leverage and is highly sensitive to interest rate changes. A trade that works with a 6.5% margin interest rate likely will not if the margin interest rates are 10%. Because of this, every user needs to understand how gains and losses are calculated over time with interest rates included. You do not have to use portfolio margin either, you can simply make less trades, but failing to utilize portfolio margin likely will dramatically lower your profits. When creating the strategy, we wanted to devise a strategy that either eliminated market movement risk or greatly limited it, while still being able to make outsized returns. For the majority of these trades, this is done through dividend capture strategies. The basic trade setup is pretty simple Buy a stock Sell a long dated call in the money Buy a long dated put one strike further down than the call Hold to expiration (most of the time). A deeper dive into the trade’s basic strategy and setup can be found here: Basic Trade Strategy and Setup - Steady Collars Discussions - SteadyOptions. Gains are realized from two primary sources: A. Collection of dividends; and B. Purchasing the position at a price under the short call value and having the position called away at expiration. For instance, we may enter the following trade: Buy 500 shares of ABC at $100 Sell 5 Calls of the January 2024 70 strike at $32 Buy 5 Puts of the January 69 strike at $1 Total cost: $69.00 2 dividends left between now and expiration of $1.00 each This trade only has dividend and interest rate risk – there is no market risk. Even if the stock goes to zero and pays out no dividends, we still receive back $69, which is our initial cost (losses would come from interest charges). Gains on the trade come from the receipt of $2.00 in dividends and if the trade closes over $70, thus gaining $1 of capital appreciation. This would be a 4.3% return in about three months, so 12.9% annualized. And while such a return is amazing, the true “magic” occurs when you trade on portfolio margin. The total cost of the above trade when entering (not including trading costs), is $34,500 (69*5*100), for a $1,500 return. BUT it may only cost us $6,000 of portfolio margin – thus increasing our levered return to 25%, or 100% annualized. When the portfolio is fully invested, then we stand to gain 100% on leverage. Now we have to pay portfolio margin interest (6%), which lowers that from 100% to 94% -- which we will be quite happy with. The beauty of the strategy is that you can decide the amount of leverage. You can still make around 12-15% with zero leverage, which is an amazing return for such low risk strategy. or you can use a regular margin account, apply 1.5-2x leverage and make 15-25%. Now it is rare to find a trade as good as the example (though they do exist). It’s more common to see where the price might be $69.80 with $1.00 of dividends. Risk then comes in if the dividend is cut. We also will do trades without dividends. For instance, we entered a trade on LTHM where we bought the stock, sold the 19 call, and bought the 18 put for $17.95. This is a riskless trade except for interest rate risk. No matter what, we make at least $0.05. If the price finishes above $19, we make $19.05. These trades typically require very little management, which is one of their big selling points. At times we may exit early if the majority of profit has been realized but most often they will be held to expiration. We may also get assigned early, but that typically is a good thing as profits are then locked in. Daily price fluctuations typically do not concern us. Entry price is extremely important. Given the insane amounts of leverage we use, a few pennies down on entry can make 20% difference. This is quite simple to handle – use discipline. If you want to get a fill price of $0.95 or less, don’t change that. There are enough candidates that come up that missing a trade or two is a non-issue – but over paying is. Service highlights: Model portfolio: $150,000 Underlying: Stocks that trade options Average Hold Period: 6 months to a year Tailored for long term traders 12-24 trades per year

Member of the month award for August goes to our long time mentor @rasar for his continuous contribution to the forum discussions.

Please welcome our new mentor @Peeyotch He will be responsible for mentoring on the SteadyVol forum.

To me, ONE and volatilityhq or Chartaffair are the most valuable.

First post updated with the link to the new offer and the webinar recording.

Yes! SteadyOptions subscription.

Well, this is not related to options trading or investing, but I know there are many members here who like the game of chess. And if not, just look at it as an art collection. https://www.kim-chess-collection.com/

Member of the month award for July goes to @Romuald for his continuous contribution to the forum discussions.

Correct, you will get notified on any new content that you follow. But you still need to follow it, as mentioned in your welcome email and the links, and also by @Yowster It's a simple concept that all forums have: you need to follow the content that you want to get notified about (could be new forums, new topics, specific members etc)

IB trading platform is free, but you might need to pay few dollars to get live quotes. As for SO, as I always mention, the best way to use SteadyOptions is to learn the strategies and make them your own. If you do that, you will be able to take full advantage of our service. You will be able to make your own decisions, based on our discussions. I highly recommend following the discussion topics to see how other members utilize the service. Yes, you need to monitor the trades after entering, otherwise you might end up holding though earnings with potentially big losses. It doesn't mean that you need to be glued to your screen all the time, but we recommend to set closing orders at levels that you comfortable with, and be aware when the trades need to be closed. I recommend reading My Seven Stages of being an SO Member to get a better understanding of how veteran members are using the service.

I believe people confuse margin and cash. PM allows you to buy much more stock compared to regular margin. But if you buy more stock than the cash you have in your account, your cash will become negative. Which means that the broker gives you a loan. I never heard about interest free loans (well, unless Biden's loan forgiveness plan gets approved).

Member of the month award for June goes to @Ringandpinion for his continuous contribution of trading ideas and analysis.