Humble

I don't have TradeHawk, but I do have ONE. I'm not sure if they are comparable in terms of functionality. ONE is more comparable to OptionVue, but I believe that OptionVue is much more expensive. To me ONE is a must have tool for any serious trader, and I'm very happy with it (full disclosure: I'm paying the same discounted price as the rest of SO members and don't get any compensation from ONE for recommending them).

Here is @cwelsh shares his experience of trading big volume in a fund: Open interest and volume, almost completely, are completely irrelevant. This has been the single biggest surprise. I have traded hundreds of contracts where I was the ONLY volume with zero issues. The bigger deal is the spread. If there is a two cent spread, I typically can get my order easily filled. If there's a $4.00 spread (e.g. PCLN), I get creamed. The PCLN trade took HOURS to get filled, and was filled 1-2 contracts at a time, sometimes as many as 5. Getting out was a nightmare and I had to leg out individually at bad prices. By and large now I'm planning on avoiding the big spreads. That's unfortunate because those spreads allow smaller traders (5 contracts or less) to snipe away and get great fills; Option pricing systems are NOT efficient or fair. There is no "queue." In other words if I put an order in for 100 contracts of the $50 straddle on stock ABC at $1.00 and five minutes later you do the same thing at $1.00 you might get filled first. There is no FIFO or LIFO system. This means its also possible that I have an order for $1.00 and you do for $0.99 and the price moves and you get a fill but I don't -- even though I offered more. This happens on HIGH volume options because there essentially is just a screen the market makers look at, and if my order is buried, they can miss it. I have seen this happen when I had multiple orders in trying to push the price down. E.g. I wanted a $1.00 fill for 900 contracts, so I put in orders at $1.00 at $0.99 and $0.98 -- for 900 contracts each (with a cancel order in for as soon as I get 100 contracts filled). My theory was to drive the price down, or make it look like there was demand to push the price down so I could get the strike I wanted. Imagine my surprise when the $0.99 got filled, but not the $1.00. This also means it makes sense on higher volume stocks to "refresh" your order by resubmitting it. There have been dozens of times I've had an order sitting for an hour, I cancel and replace and its instantly filled at the same price. "Smart" routing is sometimes not that smart too. This is because when I submit my $1.00 order, it might be routed to the CBOE because CBOE has the best price at $1.03 currently. But over the next five minutes another exchange might become the best priced one -- my order won't necessarily be moved to the better exchange because it's already on one. Another reason to resubmit. Lastly, Smart routing, DESPITE what you've been told, does not cross exchange map. In other words, if you have an order for $1.00 on a straddle and there is one exchange that has the put for $0.50 and the call for $0.51 and a separate exchange that has the put for $0.51 and the call for $0.50, the software will NOT split your order between the two exchanges so as to pick off the better priced option off each. This is another reason you can have a straddle priced at the natural price, but not get a fill -- the natural price is not from one exchange, rather multiples.

Don't look at the trade as "saving" the current trade or "extracting a bit more" from it. If you've lost 10% on Trade A and you can make back half of that (maybe) by rolling, why would you do that if your average expected return of a new trade is 10%? It's HARD to let go of losers, particularly when there's a chance they could turn if you make an adjustment. But look at each trade you do as a new trade and make sure it fits the same parameters as initially. In other words, if you wouldn't do that trade as a stand alone trade, you probably shouldn't be rolling. If you would do it, then by all means, go forward. by @cwelsh

I advise everyone to completely research and become familiar with the exercise/assignment aspect of option trading. If you don't you can find your entire account blown out over a weekend. MORAL OF THE STORY: DON'T EVER LET YOURSELF BE ASSIGNED ON A SPREAD THATS NOT FAR IN THE MONEY ON BOTH LEGS. Read the full story: Assignment Risks To Avoid by @cwelsh

SO Monthly Fee - You can certainly replicate the research that SO does. But I am sure you can not do the research at anywhere near the cost of the SO subscriptions. I am aware that this takes an inordinate amount of hours to accomplish oneself. In my opinion, the real time research and resulting 'Discussion' topics are worth the price of admission alone. Add to that that we get to follow 'Professional Full Time Traders' into and out of trades has proven invaluable to me. Add to that the discourse of the discussion topic where an active exchange is taking place regarding a detailed trade. Add to that the Strategy thought process and historical trades (and discussions). This is some of the best money I spend every month!! I think it often gets overlooked that you do not have to match Kim's prices to do very well. As is often mentioned when the 'How much more do I pay to get filled' question comes up. However much your comfortable paying. The guidance is given repeatedly to think in term of percentage of risk. A nickel is not a nickel without knowing the risk. by @NJ_KenRob

The point with paper trading is to understand the strategies, see how a trade evolves day by day, see how the adjustments impact the trades etc... Some people also do very small tracking trades for the same purpose (although some trades can't be setup to use a small allocations). IMO, focusing on paper trade fills vs live fills is missing the point of it. by @Yowster

SteadyOptions has a wealth of information, spread over tens of thousands of posts. Some of the posts can be very useful and inspiring, but they are lost in the big sea. I would like to dedicate a separate topic to the most useful and inspiring quotes from our members. It could be related to overall trading philosophy, a specific strategy, or some "hot topic", like "why you should not fear assignment". I will be posting them "as is" without any changes or comments. A trigger to this idea was a recent post by @rasarthat I would like to use as an opening post: I have found this one piece of advice very relevant, and truly liberating. It was difficult, initially, to avoid comparing my performance against other members'. It was sometimes depressing to make "only" 5% on a trade, when others boasted of 15% and 20%. However, whenever I looked back on past trades, I couldn't remember anyone else's trades; I could only look at my own winners and losers. That same 5% suddenly looked really nice compared to another trade a day later, where I lost 30%. And finally, when computing my gains and losses for the year, it was the same thing. The only thing that mattered how much I made (or lost 😐), not any other member, nor even the SO official portfolio.

@TrustyJules a fascinating story indeed, thanks for sharing. To be honest, I didn't follow the story too closely. I don't really care how much money other people make. But in my opinion, the big picture is still the same, no matter how they did it. It was a pure short squeeze, but Gill continued to claim that the stock is undervalued all the way up and encouraged his followers to buy while selling his holdings to them. And if it was a protest, I'm really not sure what exactly they are protesting against. It became very popular to hate "wealthy" people. But some people "forget" how many jobs those wealthy people like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos create and how some of them change the world. The bottom line is that the only one who was guaranteed to make money in this story was Gill. For him it was a no risk trade. For everyone else it was a pure gamble. I feel sorry for people who bought the stock at $400+, but at least it should be a good lesson for them.

Let me get this straight. This guy encouraged all his followers to buy all the way to $483, then sold part of his holdings to those same followers. Last time I checked, it's called pump and dump. One of their goals is to bankrupt the billionaires. But no, it's not about money. What exactly they are protesting against? And if it's not about money, how about Gill gives some of his gains to those poor "investors" who followed his advice and bought GME at $483? And now he advises them not to sell because it's deeply undervalued at $90? Here is a story of one of those "investors": https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/lazcak/what_gme_has_taught_me_in_36_hours_of_day_trading/ And yea, a "great community", where people respect each other, are civilized and help each other.

Reddit user who helped inspire GameStop mania says he lost $13 million on Tuesday, but is still holding. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/02/reddit-user-who-helped-inspire-gamestop-mania-says-he-lost-13-million-on-tuesday-but-is-still-holding-on.html Is it Karma? I would think so..

Take a look: https://www.optionseducation.org/referencelibrary/faq/options-exercise#:~:text=As the holder of an,for receiving an exercise notice. Options exchanges have a cut-off time of 4:30 p.m. CT, for receiving an exercise notice. Be aware that most brokerage firms have an earlier cut-off time for submitting exercise instructions in order to meet exchange deadlines. So options holders cannot exercise their options after hours. In any case, to avoid all the confusion and the "horror stories", we always close our short options before expiration. Trying to save the extra cents simply is not worth the risk.

The award for January 2021 goes to our long time mentor @rasar @rasar is with us for over 3 years and his contributions are highly appreciated by members! Thank you!

There is a webinar done by Andy from ONE - OptionNET Explorer Software Webinar

We have decided to provide an extra free month to all current members, so Simple Spreads will become a paid service on March 1st. As a side note, it will be also included in the Lorintine Bundle at no extra charge. The bundle is currently offered at $895/year which is already an incredible value (it includes Anchor Trades and Steady PutWrite, total of 6 different model portfolios). The price will go up to $1,095 on March 1st. As usual, current members are always grandfathered at the rates they signed up as long as they keep an active subscription.

iVolatility is just another general set of tools that is provided free of charge to our members (typical cost $500-600 per year). Another benefit of the subscription. It's not specific to our strategies. I don't think they have futures.

First trade and trade discussion posted on the forums.

Yes, you are correct. As @Yowster mentioned, you need to make sure that the initial debit is less than the distance between the strikes and the P/L chart looks good. Your initial P/L chart probably looked something like this: Instead you could do something like this: So your longs would be deeper ITM and the short calls further OTM. I'm not sure if this setup gets enough credit, so maybe in case of MU it would be better just to skip the trade. In case of IBM for example the setup looks better: But you also have to enter 2 weeks before shorts expiration to get a decent credit. We can watch it and see how does it look a week from now.

This doesn't make sense, especially considering that the long options expire after earnings. The gains might be reduced if the stock rallies too much, but I don't think loss is possible.

Yes, 40% average loss is not too bad, but it still requires smaller position. Theoretically the loss can be much higher than the credit from the short options - if the stock goes down a lot. Seems like a good strategy - as long as you keep your position sizing under control.

@Fractalfriend thanks for sharing, this sounds really good. What are typical losers percentage wise? Do you have any exit strategy (profit target, stop loss etc.) or just hold till the short expire and close for whatever the P/L is?

You are right, the downside is very small (depending on the strike you buy), but the upside is limited as well - you need the stock to increase in value by the price of the put just to break even. So the stock can go up 20-30% and you are still up only 5-10%. As usual, there is a tradeoff to any strategy. It is true that synthetic stock requires less margin, but I would be very careful to base the position sizing on margin and not the stock value. For example, to buy AAPL stock, you will need $13,300. So lets say you have 13,300 portfolio and buy 100 shares, no leverage. Now lets say you buy a synthetic position that requires only $3,300 margin. If the stock declines to $100 (25%), your loss is $3,300 or 100% on margin. If you purchased 4 contracts in your $13,300 portfolio (which you could do based on margin), your account would be toast.

Yes.

The award for December 2020 goes to @zxcv64 mostly for his My Seven Stages of being an SO Member post, which became one of our most popular posts ever, and a must read for all new members. Thank you @zxcv64 for sharing your invaluable experience!

Thank you @Yowster Great analysis as usual. And now we have a full bear market in our track record, and we proved once again that "making money in any market" is not just a mantra, but a reality for us. 9 straight years of outsized gains, with very few drawdowns. I'm not sure there is another service that can show results that come even close. Please remember that 2020 was a very unusual year. With volatility declining pretty constantly since April but still pretty high, it was a tough environment for our strategies. Hopefully the markets will return to more normal environment in 2021. I would like to take this opportunity and thank everyone for your support, and wish you and your families Happy and HEALTHY 2021!

As I mentioned before, we already selected a name - Simple Spreads. Again, thank you everyone who took the time to post.