There are, but you can't do it with retail commissions, retail slippage, and retail execution. You'll find the occasional good arb as a retail trader, but you're better off trading with either a directional or volatility bias, IMO.
Daniel, You give good advice. However, I do have a good solid background on options. I know enough about them to at least slow the bleeding if I turn out to be a poor options player. I didn't expect the market to completely cave in, so I wrapped those long puts with further OTM short puts. This is a sound strategy. If, as I thought I saw in the charts, IBM goes down in the next three weeks, I will have a decent return on a smaller risk. I own McMillan's books. He's a great author for options trading. However, the only way to get proficient (in my opinion) is to actually trade these things with real money. I am tired of paper trading. I don't learn anything about emotional control from paper-trading. At least this way, if I do lose money, I'm feeling pain. I think everyone has a tolerance for pain and once that is reached, you are forced to make corrective changes.
I'll tell you what keeps me in line: My wife and 13-month-old daughter. I want them to live well and have all that they need. Kinda gives me the impetus not to be reckless with the old trading account. Back when I was young and single I didn't give as much of a shit as I do now, so maybe it's just part of getting older.
There are also some people who never learn, despite the pain. One historical figure comes to mind.... F-R-E-E-D-O-M........
LOL!! ROFL!! ROFLMAO!!!! now isnt this the proverbial pot calling the kettle black.. let me think.. who was it that made over 900 posts on ET BEFORE making a single "real" trade? -qwik
Right, and was I being cruel to anyone by throwing in a bunch of "your relationship with your mom must have been bad" bullshit? No! Granted, I talked a lot -- so its out of my system now. I'm trading. Cut me some slack.
Just read pieces of this thread and am getting a good chuckle.. alphie: You really don't know options. A couple of trades and a few books aren't going to do it. I see you making the same mistake with your talk on e-mini trading. I don't get it. You had a plan. You had a system. You back tested, paper traded, talked a good game - but - you never played it. Why not go back to your system and try it? I guarantee you that you'll blow through your cash trading options much faster than via trading your original plan. I also promise that the easy arbs that you think you're seeing don't exist (at least not at your stage of the game).
Def, I really must say that this is just BS. I don't care if you are George Soros or the options expert of the world, every one of us starts somewhere in this game. To say that somebody doesn't stand a chance because of lack of experience is sort of a catch 22, isn't it? In order to get to the point where you truly understand things, it requires a period of mistakes where you build up that experience. I've read enough books on math, statistics and just about every other formula and none of them really applied to the real-world "precisely." So, I decided to write my own very basic program to download quotes from YAHOO and calculate standard deviations for whatever stock I want to trade. I then pipe that through a real-time filter and use IB's quote to send me a signal of when an option may be overpriced on underpriced based on volatility levels. I will guarantee you this much. I may blow through this account and several more before I finally figure out a distinct edge. My old system doesn't work with my capital level. I made a fatal error in paper-trading 50k and scaling positions only to find out that it won't apply to a 5k account. What am I going to do, by 1/10'th of an ES or NQ contract? People starting out with a little capital are at a distinct disadvantage because of many SEC rules. This is a hard game and if you want to learn, you have to fall on your face to succeed. I will watch and observe options long enough to find an edge. However, to just say, "hey there are better people out there than you at this" is really pointless because I can guarantee each of them went through a period of brutal first-learned experiences.