Discussion Forum

To close? Nah it’s flat- a curious week and Trump antics continue apace- I see a bit of a Trump dump next week so I have no positions currently. Expiry was just ..7320, untypical as there is nearly always a rise for the auction at 10

Well-early days but the trade has done very little and again vol has been sucked out of the market- no easy trading here,we need to be patient.

Pretty much this what I did for this month..worked wonders!!

LOL!!! Cannot believe the amazing outcomes we keep having with these trades-and of course it is easy to verify these.
Our site is free and dedicated to the would be options trader who can see past the rubbish offered by so many vendors of products that maybe had a winning trade once or twice,allegedly

so now the put trade is worth about 20, the calls- cannot get prices but likely a break even,and a wake up- do not trade when ill!

comment on Trade 41 has been added though it mysteriosuly disappeared from earlier. I may be going nuts!

Thought I’d commented already on these- the put BWB has come back to small profit,now about 16,buy price was 10.5
The calls- a modest loss of about 40- could be mitigatedwith a strangle with only 8 days to expiry and biiig theta.

Combo combo combo combo…. thank you very much
today the call was trading at 6, and the put at 19. A very respectable 13.
Of course the dumb money kept piling in until it didn’t.
I’m still looking for a smart way out of trade 41- the ill chosen call broken wing butterfly.

I have been unwell again and so Trade 41 was against any kind of judgement! I was unable to monitor positions this week but the Broken Wing Butterfly is a trade with little merit for me. It’s an object lesson in why we don’t trade when ill.
Even looking back at what might have worked with calls is a thankless task- the 7400/7500/7700 would have cost 12 and as of Friday’s close…. credit of 32.
Easy to be right in retrospect. I would always favour the butterfly which cannot cause losses beyond the premium paid. With 100 point wide strikes with the BWB you can of course lose another 100

A Winner! Yay, vol kicked up a little but the market drop was the key, on Friday. Yes, we’d close out for a nice 25%

I tend to read some ‘parallel’ topics as trading material is tedious and I have read pretty much all there has been on options. Just finished ‘Scarcity’ By Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir. A worthy read which makes plain some of our shortcomings in understanding the actions and inactions of others.

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Not a great trade as there is little basis to take it other than to contiune to demonstrate the power and flexibility of options. Should the market smash up we will lose, not a huge amount but it would be annoying

there was an opportunity to close this out for 4 this week but that is not what we are looking for -this is a fun trade -we want to win big or just let it fade into oblivion

It is hoped that our followers will understand that trade selection is the key. People who trade direction only have to choose up or down. The gift of options is the wide range of possibilities -no need to be directional,often no need to be right either.

Could now be closed out for 5- 4.5% profit in under a week. The little guys can win little and often

Everything is very open with a precise description of the issues.
It was truly informative. Your site is very helpful. Thank you for sharing!

thats an awesome library!

`thats an awesome library!

hope this has helped -when I first learned about options I was just utterly amazed.
I still am.

It’s been reversal of the trend. Pound getting stronger and ftse100 correction

For so many trades now I have been hoping to show one that goes horribly wrong.
I want to show how to repair a trade, but the market stubbornly refuses to do anything to help us fail.
The flipside of this is that with a little knowledge (often deemed dangerous) one can make serious coin with options strategies

the naked call is now 5.5 (sold at 8.5) it has been lower.
the 7600/7650 spread is now worth 6
the ratio spread is now 3 -clearly the winner here.
I have to confess that while we are making money(and missing good trades too) this market is a complete basket case, in my opinion.

this trade now a credit of 9 as the call spread is now 6, and the put spread is 15. Another winner it seems.

Very true..any credit spread is 1:1 chances of winning

I have been otherwise engaged this week but this trade has seen profits in the 5- 10 range but you need to place a limit order to catch them. I still get a bit uncomfortable about limit orders,and on Wednesday this week placed a limit order, took a ‘comfort break’ and the market had move another 20 points in my favour. So my limit of 23 could have been 28.That’s the difference between a rubbish trader like me who is too impatient,and failed 3 times to optimise this week’s trading,where another trader might have waited to open the trades on tuesday, not monday as I did. This was a pure volatility play and still made 100% however

today that trade? the June puts are 5 (x2=10) the July put=55-giving a value of 45
We paid 14 for this profit of 31. That equates to £310 per lot or around £2,000 margin thus a 15% return in a week.

the put spread- possible close out for 30 today(50% profit) , the straddle-sitting there like a strong and stable thing!

much to be pondered but this straddle would be 127 to buy on IG -with their huge spreads it might not be a great trade,but at least it could be done for £127 instead of £1,270. Tempted to look at this on Monday

Ouch…that’s straddle is still expensive. I wonder how they are pricing vftse to be so low! We would find out soon but I agree it does not harm to have a bit of uspide risk, so may be buy the put spread and sell a call instead?

I have rarely used the ’25’ strikes,always gravitating to the round hundreds or fifties. I don’t know if that makes any difference and it may be that we backtest using quirky strikes. That is very much in the pipeline.

I love the many articlkes written by PhDs on markets- about seeking alpha etc. For me I can never be a part of that world,but it intrigues me and there is always some value in reading and getting insights from the smart guys. I just don’t see buying a share portfolio as a way of optimising money for the individual

Today you could have closed out for a credit of 14 ( call at 28.5 and 42.5 for the put) You may have got that price or a bit less as the market has been crazy this week
I was also going to show a helpful adjustment but that can wait for a while-in fact I’m reluctant to share it as it has taken me years to figure it out. Smarter traders may know a few twists here……

Today that 7550 call is 48.5. I had no time yesterday tpo show an adjustment wbut I will aim to update everyone throughout the week’s moves. After 10 consecutive up days,a new all time high in the face of inflation,and terrible numbers from VOD you have to suspect something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
again I hope to reveal some of that too

The smart mopney is in options trading-the dumb money is in the market-that’s all they can do-buy stocks-risking a lot to get a measly dividend and perhaps more QE to boost the share price to an already stupid high valuation that will never make sense.
Hence VIX is a very smart indicator and derivatives of it are traded big time.

It looks risky as you could be faced with a short put spread costing 100. Yes you could-this trade has to be managed,but think of the flip side. Would you be doing the ratio spread? Would you be selling for a credit of 3? Not on your life- volatility is just way below the norm again. The only issue is the amount of time-we have <3 weeks for this to be a winner. However if FTSE stays above 7150 we lose 3, and live to fight another day. I looked at June prices but you'd be paying (63.5x2) minus 93= 34. While profit to the downside is theoretically massive I'd be looking for low cost trades that you can afford to lose. Some people might sweat on the June trade and watch that premium cost dribble away. Enjoy, and watch this one daily

Another winner-the put is now trading for 1-why not close out and accept an annualised 18%- that’s twenty times what your bank would pay

I spend more time looking at options prices than anything else. Prices tell us a lot, so when calls are cheap but vol is up it looks like the market is not pricing in a meaningful rise.

return on capital is best with a short spread and risk is limited. £500- £115= £385, worst way.
You could do say 20 spreads with a trading account of £10k- just sayin’

thecall spread is now about 8, puts still about 11

Really?? 16 doubles is less than two years! Exciting information. We can certainly backtest and i am sure if we are just aiming for 10 points, it would be something like less than 10 delta.. Awesome trade with more than 90% win probability.

I was told it takes 16 doubles to get to that million from £100-doesn’t SOUND like a tall order….

it’s been a while since we did this but the variation is that we are ignoring the Greeks and using premium as our guide, resulting in the strikes that select themselves- assuming that makes sense to anyone!
After a while you get used to the way options are priced and while you may briefly see mis-priced options which you miss becasue the algo’s have seen them too, you will get a ‘feel’ for price and no trader should ever underestimate ‘gut feel’. We all want to sell options that expire worthless but that game has only one outcome-nobody wants to buy eventually.

ok currently this trade is worth about 10- but it’s there to run to expiry- it’s cheap enough not to worry about

now trading at about 6- again- easy isn’t it? Still sweating on futures or forex? Forget it- nothing comes close to options

now 21 for the put and 6 for the call spread- easy isn’t it?

interesting move today- looks like the 7300 put may have some value in it at expiry, the trade is now 18-20

this trade is now worth 36- still 30 for the put, but only 6 for the call spread

After all these years of trading-some terrible trades some well executed,I can honestly say I am still not able to define myself as a trader. I can be fickle and just suddenly ‘see trades’ or I can be methodical and super cautious as I have been for almost a year.
There is nothing in our options world thet remotely equates to the sickening gut-wrenching horrors of day trading and trying to,in essence, guess a direction. Go with the trend? Yeah sure except the one day I choose to go in big. Use indicators-yes I like them but feel they are of limited use.Gann, Fibonacci,pivots,Andrews pitchfork,S&R? Love them all but…
Take a well reasoned position in options? Every time. Do not be fooled into thinking options are like those other ETPs (exhcnage traded products) or even spread betting.
We can trade intra-day intra-week intra-month/year.
Most people are too bone idle to bother with options- but I’m so lazy I can’t be bothered with anything else, after an exhasutive journey into trading. Yes I’d love a bit of intra-day rough and tumble,but I don’t think it’s remotely realistic to make serious coin. If it was all you need to do to make a million is double up on each trade 16 times,starting with £100.

Haha – I enjoyed the last image. FTSE100 has definitely been moving at snails pace – at least compared to the US indices!