"There is no minimum to open an account, however, a $2,000 deposit is required to be considered for margin and options privileges, regardless of any promotional offer." https://www.tdameritrade.com/faq/newaccount.html ...there.....all of your problems have been solved.
thanks for solving all my problems.. haha but .. there are alot more ways i wanna manipulate data then any retail platform will display... 1. i wanna graph bid and ask spreads.. eventually get time and sales on the few stocks i really follow for options.. log all the data insert it into a database to manipulate real time however i please.. 2. if i use retail trading tools.. i have no more introspection then anyone else.. behind the curve basically 3.. i plan on blogging my trades.. and posting self updating charts to my blog from my datasource..
Options Volatility and Pricing, Mcmillan on Options and The Option Traders Hedge Fund: A Business Framework for Trading Equity and Index Options. The last one seems a bit lightweight and their 'Insurance company' view seems a bit gimmicky but I am hoping to get something practical out of it, as opposed to the more theoretical / academic material that seems fairly typical in options. Also awaiting the new edition of Options as a Strategic Investment out mid-August. Later on will probably get Dynamic Hedging and Options Market Making. James Bittman's book seems pretty practical oriented, is it good? If you trade stock options you might want to check out The Option Trader Handbook: Strategies and Trade Adjustments by Jabbour. I gave it a miss because it is heavily stock oriented and I am interested in trading Futures Options. I am on the lookout for any book that has decent coverage of Options Trade Management and Stops. Whatever I trade I always put in a huge amount of work into this area. While waiting for the books I simply started recording (for CL) daily call and put prices using 88.50 which was at the money on start day as the benchmark, taking each month from Sept to Feb 2013. I also record the $80 put and $95 call, ie roughly 10% OTM either way for Sept, Oct and Jan 2013. This just gives me a feel for how prices move in relation to the underlying, without using the greeks at all, just a pure price view. Straight off I am seeing that settlement prices (not even high/low) can move 40% to 50% in a day for the front month options, so typical day trading stops are out of the question. One has to take a longer term view and I think set stops based on n standard deviations move in the price of the underlying. That's just an early thought for further exploration, I know I will be putting hundreds of hours into stops and trade management as I move forward. I never use anything straight from a book, but I am a book junkie because I find reading stimulates my thought process and I come up with really useful stuff as a result. My simple rule of thumb is if I come up with just 1 useful idea from reading a book, it is worth the money. That's why I have never written an Amazon book review as most folks there expect the universe between 2 covers for the price of a book.
+1 for Baird's Option Market Making As always Hull is the bible, I would also recommend Sinclair's "Option Trading" and "Volatility Trading," in that order.
i'll read Hull... never saw that one... by far the simplist most straight forward options market making.. its a very small book... and it goes into dynamic hedging wrangles butterflys.. time spreading.. Time spreading i'm really interested in.. i need more on this..
API is an acronym for application Interface... this is basically what interactive brokers or any other brokerage firm or data provider gives you to hook into .. its basically a protocol for doing business data wise.. that being said.. i know what you mean.... and i don't by any means want to be the jerk off always correcting people.. but i couldn't even tell you how long and how many books and articles i've read on everything from the ridculous language i got started in.. Coldfusion.. to PHP.. Basically you have to know HTML which is simple.. CSS cascading style sheets.. which is a language for styling the HTML elements and such.. have a good grasp of how to at least use javascript.. now with that being said.. what i've really learned is.. most code is already written.. you just have to go looking for snippits and put a full application together yourself.. its probably honestly taking me a couple of years of leisurely reading.. but thats cause i'm ADD haah.. Visual Basic is a really really simple language.. Every language has its advantages and disadvantages.. of course any C language has the most control of resources so can be the most efficient in getting things done .. higher level of abrastration langauges.. php,coldfusion, ruby on rails lower level of abstration C++ C# Java python shell as you go down in abstraction you are more explicit about what you ask the computer to do and it becomes less readable to humans.. (generally speaking) There are so many Web apps out there for websites.. you don't really need to know web programming much at all.. . wordpress.. drupal.... Magento.. etc.. i have a "W" for withdraw on my Visual Basic class score.. i'm going to take it this fall and Ace the freakin thing.. Btw just using excel and the tools it has.. you can totally do things manually and not know much code at all.. although.. bottom line is .. unless its an idea that you really hate.. or get into it and hate.. its really not that bad.. its challenging I just hated when i was younger everyone telling me .. oh you can't do that you need to get a professional.. then you see the professional.. and your like "wtf this guy is stupid"
An update on my investigation into a data source for the Hoadley tool. On his website http://www.hoadley.net/options/develtoolsESignal.htm he talks up eSignal. Well I just had a chat with the eSignal rep who was honest enough to tell me that "our futures options data is very poor"and when I asked what he meant, he said "It's very sporadic and incomplete". Presumably they have had complaints about it, that is why they are up-front. But looking at Hoadley's site, you could not tell about this problem could you? So I am looking into the Barcharts offering, but I have to say this revelation has left me rather wary of buying the Hoadley package. Has anyone used Options Oracle? http://www.samoasky.com/. The forum is no longer active apparently.
I know what you mean. I once had a website that I paid a company to design, then I started 2 wordpress blogs on my own. The guy who worked on my site was OK, but not the sharpest tool in the toolshed for sure. Basically, what I need right now is a way to get the options chains from the data feed to the Hoadley tool or whatever I end up using.
It's probably good enough for this purpose. All you need is current day values - you do not need historical data. The tool will display current implied volatility over many strikes. You can easily see any discrepancies.