Hi guys! Are options good for day trading? I cannot trade stocks because of $25,000 requirement, and futures are too volatile and have a rather high price per point. I would like to trade something like $1-2 per point and not moving fast. Will be options okay for me? I do not target high, but about $20 - $30 daily profit for practice.
commissions and bid offer will eat you alive. a round trip for an option is about 3-5 cents on the most liquid names. and you have all sorts of other risks you should be aware of.
No it is not possible or atleast it's tricky and it isnt easy , anyway the 25000 daytrading rule applies to options as well .
If you dont have enough equity put in some screen time to see some good setups and like the move in commodities this week-use options on those-there's always 3-4 setups a year but even if you start with 5k you can get your required 25k for daytrading in a year. GLD 151 puts were about 1.20 on monday after bin laden's death and yesterday they were over $6. The slippage on big moves wont matter but more important is your money management if you have a small account.
no disrespect but if you have to ask you probably shouldn't be doing it... I'd suggest learning about options until you know what your edge is and how you are going to run your business. Gambling won't do you any good
It is possible if the time to expiry ist only few days. Only in the last days it is possible to take the advantage of the nonlinearity of an option. Important is a good simulationtool(vandermart-solutions).
I used to make a really good living out of it untill they introduced cancellation costs, nowadays spreads are much tighter, which would be a disadvantage for my trading style which was selling overvalued vol and buying undervalued vol on series of the same stock (in fact it used to be DIA, the Dow Jones Tracker). If you trade directionally have a look at QQQQ, plenty of liquidity there and ultratight spreads. I guess it could be done theoretically, but you might as well be trading the NQ-futures. And like some people have allready said: for daytrading options you need 25K.