This poll is only interested in a investors who reserve a small portion of their portfolio for generally considered speculative (options, futures, etc.) activity, and leave the rest of it for longer term more conservative picks... ie typical diversification: bonds, long mutual funds, long stocks, and yield/value long focused investing. The question: How much impact, positive or negative, have the things you've learned and picked up on doing speculative trading impacted the conservative side of your portfolio ? ie.. did selling puts eventually get you the better price on the stock you wanted to go long on, that did well for you as planned? or looking back, do you feel you would've done better if you would've just bought a mutual fund, realizing the short term did not translate well to the long term? Or were you able to better catch trends? etc. etc.