At your age, go for it. I'm at an age where based on family history I could live for another 20 years or die tomorrow, so I always ask myself if I have 1 year left is this how I want to spend my time? Learning programming? No. Learning about options, yes. I have 3 books on options on the way from Amazon and I can't wait to get started. I don't enjoy day trading, just looking at a screen and trying to figure out who is doing what. I am a swing trader at heart, I enjoy collecting and analyzing data and making trading decisions based on that. Options will allow me to bear the overnight risk that I cannot accept with futures. It even opens the door to longer term global macro trades and I can put my passion for economics and the business environment to good use.
When he says retrieve an option chain from an online data source is that the same as saving from streaming? With R Trader there is no historical data access so if you are not logged in you miss huge chunks. In any case Hoadley says his programme uses option chain SNAPSHOTS which does not sound like streaming real time to me.
The tool sells for $140 roughly. How many people trade options and the like that would buy it? Nobody is going to be the next Bill Gates flogging this. There has to be some love for it to even bother.
Your right about snap shot not being streaming... and its a great tool for the money and its a good start to building your own tools and analytics.. it gives you a lot of functions that are typically used by options traders..
i feel the same way about my life to be honest.. I drowned in the economic turn around of 2007-08 because my business was related to the construction industry and just the economy in general .. and Florida is boom town usa.. right after that my brother died of cancer and made me realize alot about things.. Everyday for me is pure profit.. i'm sober 16 years which is an anomaly itself.. i never thought i wasn't an addict.. slowly over the years all my friends that i grew up using with died off (respiratory failure, heart failure, and the like.. that relate to overdoses) cause thats what they tell people.. "he had a heart problem" really the guy was smoking rocks for ten years straight.. I'm happy as hell to have had a old brother! And there aren't very many people out there that have stayed sober as long as i have that would even be proud to say they are.. haha thats disclosing alot about myself.. but either way.. your stuck here with me as much as i am with you.. so why not make the very best of it.. i don't wanna be glued to a screen day trading at all! i hate the idea. the reason i started trading in the first place was for financial freedom.. intraday tradin is mostly crazy patterns in randomness alot of times anyway.. the smaller the time frame the less predictable.. if you can predict anything at all anyway.. life is full of speculation.. without to many words to where i lose you... i'm just a curious person i guess.. same reason i got myself into trouble so young but.. at some point i started picking up programming books because i wanted to have an online ecommerce business.. i fell for it.. i just kept reading and reading and reading... maybe the idea of it being so confusing and looking like spaghetti attracted me to it.. i just couldn't go on thinking.. "oh thats to difficult for me" after hearing so many lies in my life and being sold so many things.. I believe i can do anything if i set my heart to it.. and if learning an additional programming language will give me an edge by enabling me to model my risk and get a little better picture of reality.. i'm Down.. besides i have nothing really to lose like i said.. everything in life from here on out is pure profit
you know i figure the guy built it.. spent alot of time doing it.. and wanted to recoup some money out of it... he probably was just another curious sole that was looking for something valuable in this mess of data out there to look at.. as far as i'm concerned what comes in that financial add in is a steal for the money i paid.. and i can disclose i have no personal interest in that company.. i just know it would take me hours to script all that stuff even if i knew how to do it.. honestly probably more like days to weeks.. and from a cost perspective.. I can't afford to spend days and weeks for something that someone has already built for 132 bucks.. to be honest the thing i liked the best about it is the fact that you can model a trade with more then 5 or 6 legs.. and with a little tweeking you can change the volatility assumptions on every leg.. say for a earnings implosion or for a pre earnings vol expansion.. to be honest i'm still learning the thing.. i can't wait to figure more of it out..
what three books are you getting... i've read alot of options books.. and i'm looking for more to read.. i'm reading all of Augens books now .. i've read all of Talebs books.. Espen haug.. Mcmillian.. Allen Jan Baird.. James Bittman
holy moley... Data is worth alot.. especially tick by tick trade by trade with bid and offer included.. check it https://store.tickdata.com/prices?productMarketId=PRODUCT_MARKET.US_OPTIONS i've figured out with a database drive you can easily hook into a mysql db with excel.. which is great because if i'm going to serve some self updating charts to a web app or something like that one day.. mysql is the way to do it.. plus its free or really close to it .. considering i already have hosting plans i'm paying for.. i figure what the hay.. insert tick my tick and bid and offer on some of my favorite symbols for a couple weeks to get some experience and to learn how to do it.. it will be worth it..
why don't you just use the thinkorswim platform Why are you trying to reinvent the wheel? TOS has almost everything you need to perform retail options analysis.
commissions at think or swim are very high compared to IB ... and i dont wanna just open an account there for just that.. plus learning to actually use and make the tools makes alot more sense in the long run