OK, TJ, this site ought to help you. A friend of mine joined and said it's worth every penny. This site compares all the option trading sites for you, and gives you the real lowdown on how well they perform. http://www.pro-option-profits.com/index.htm Don-
Before you start trading options, you need to get to know the markets and how they work.... I am not sure if you do, judging by your posts.
Lol, its funny you should mention that because I just joined that site like 20 minutes ago. I am currently looking at a service called Options Hotline and this Steve Sarnoff guy claims absolutely insane gains, or my money back. I think it is $750 for one year of his newsletter so I am hesitant to make a move on it. He says that if I'm not satisfied that I'll get a 100% refund but I doubt it. He also guarantees doubling my money 12 times in 1 year. If I started out with $2,500, that would be $10,240,000. Are you sure pro-option-profits is for real about the gains that these different services make?
NO ONE will make that kind of money for you...anything that looks too good to be true....IS However it seems to me you are bound and determined to find a way to park your money somewhere ( and eventually lose it). You do not want to take the time to learn and do it on your own. People need to take responsibility for their life and their money! At some point we may reach a time and place in our life where we have a LOT of money and just don't want to be bothered anymore...at that time it's appropriate to seek out ppl or managers who will do that for you but if you are not at that point....
Speaking from experience (quite some time ago). I know what it's like to trade strategies that allow you to double your money every week. We all know that it's possible with options. I even had a stretch of like 6 months that I had consistent tremendous gains. I was fairly new to options and I loved the tremendous leverage. I was wreckless because I had gathered together a couple thousand dollars and I was with a crappy broker that only allowed long calls/puts. I told myself that I was only 20 years old and if I lost all the money it wouldn't be a huge problem. Never at any other time during my "trading career" have I considered myself to be gambling, but at that time I was. One morning I watched as the underlying of one of my positions gapped up and turned my $6,000 account into a $20,000 account. And you know what happened a week later? My $20,000 account became a $10,000 account due to an IV collapse even though the underlying moved in the right direction. Anyway, doubling your money in a month is possible, but now let's talk about what's probable. Trading those strategies, it is highly probable that you will lose more than you gain, and eventually end up with nothing. They also won't teach you any of the valuable hedging strategies that you would learn if you weren't so bent on getting rich yesterday. You've had some of the more skilled/experienced options traders on ET already advise against joining one of those sites. We all know what kind of strategies they promote and that they are very risky. Some of us know first hand how ineffective they are. But you seem determined to give away several hundred dollars to someone you don't know, and probably a few thousand to the savvy traders that take the other side of your positions. Do yourself a favor and just start reading through some of the journals on this site regarding swing trading. Some of us post our trades when we enter them so you can feel free to follow along without paying a penny. It is more than you will get from any pay site. This way you will learn the mechanics of trading and how to repair a damaged trade. You will also figure out what kind of strategy fits your personality. You'll soon realize that it is much nicer to have the knowledge and skills to effectively trade your own money without depending on someone else for recommendations and instruction.
TJ, Stay away from Options Hotline! Did you read their fine print? Here is what it says: "Gains are based on all triggered trades, assuming exit point at peak option value. Percent gain represents the percentage change at the subsequent high value, from the trigger price. Subsequent high represents the highest option value reached by either actual trade, bid price, or intrinsic value following the triggering of the recommendation. Profits do not factor in commissions and taxes." Looks like their results are not even paper-traded - they just look back at the highest option value during their holding period and post it as their exit price.
So is there NO advisory that anyone can recommend? I asked RedOption.com for their track record and frankly it wasn't that good. Most strategies either had "long term" (not that long, they've only been around a couple of years) gains but lost YTD, or vice-versa. Or they only had a small percentage average gain. They charge $20/month for each strategy. I'm not interested in "getting rich yesterday", just a nice steady income without losing principle. It looks like a combination of selling puts/selling covered calls is the way to achieve this. It looks like the advice here is don't pay a service $50/month when you can learn on your own (i.e. lose $1000's while gaining experience).
Well, it is one thing paying $20 per month for an ala-carte RedOption advisory versus thousands elsewhere. I subscribed on and off to a number of the RO advisories, primarily for educational purposes and also to take a peek into one (very experienced) traderâs mind and movesânamely Scott Snyder. This also allowed me to have an inexpensive scheme to lose my own money practicing trades and gaining some experience. (I opted out of those papermoney trades). Still I was always curious to learn more about how successful people are with other type of advisories, for instance, those of Schaefferâs, say: Schaefferâs Players Series, at $1,995 per year, or Schaefferâs ETF Option Series, at $2,995 per year, and the likes. I know that Schaeffer provides solid services overall, but would like to know a bit more about their advisories? Anyone cares to share? Ben
I'm wary of BS's service. IIRC his promos only point to his big winners - "We made 5000% on XYZ" and "Made $50,000 in two days on ABC" that kind of stuff. No mention of an overall track record. Seems like a bunch of hype.
Hey: Check out Larry McMillan's published record at his website www.optionstrategist.com Larry is a good professional who plays a conservative game. I think you may have an unrealistic view of what can be accomplished. Look closely at what he has done and ask yourself what it would take in terms of risk exposure to do more than that. There are plenty of folks who make big money in the options business, BUT they pay for it, with increased exposure to risk. Eventually one or two things happen. One is they get greedy. At some point thereafter, they get burned. Think about what you want. Do you want to make a reasonable profit and sleep at night, or lie awake wondering if you are going to survive the next triple witch expiration? By the way, there is a secret of sorts to the options business. Naturally, you wont hear about it on any ET thread. If you check out McMillan's record it will be staring you in the face. Right out in the open. See if you can figure it out. Steve