Marty is the best. He may sound unsophisticated or dated to some of you, but he has made a tremendous amount of money. Anyone with any experience listening to this interview knows it is the voice of wisdom speaking. He is a pure trade, not a computer jock or math professor. I don't believe for a second he couldn't be killing it in the futures. Anytime he chooses. The guy is just that good. I suspect the problem is his account is so large now that he can't trade them the way he used to back in the day. So he sells premium instead. Perhaps he doesn't want to have to track the market minute by minute. Selling premium is one of those things that looks easy but isn't. I have to believe Marty has an edge that he isn't discussing on an internet video. An edge that goes beyond being one of the greatest traders in the history of markets. Perhaps he sees all the institutional money paying for downside protection and fades it.
I listened to the entire interview. I've learned that if you can get at least one nugget of wisdom from listening to an interview or presentation, then it's worthwhile. But I didn't hear anything, not even a morsel of insight, that added to the large body of existing trading information in the public domain. Please let me know if you caught something in this Q&A discussion that was noteworthy.
Some notes on the interview ==Min 8 55 year old asks about day-trading S&P index. IT is EXTRAORDINARILY DIFFICULT now Face the fact that you are up against the smartest people in the world ==> A person ask about selling premium on $25,000 capital Just sell one. Be realistic - to make 30% per year consistently you are doing better than Buffet. 30% is only $7,50. If you want to make a $1millioin in a year from $25,000 I got some money in my pocket that says you'll lose it all. Marty had his biggest month ever in Feb 2015. He is selling premium against a very large capital base as 90 to 95 of options expire worthless.
One point he made about selling premium was that if something happened, he'd "put up firewalls" - hedge it out. An example was sell 17.50 and buy the 18.50. Then went the storm subsided close out the 18.50.
Marty's cashing in on his fame. People here believe Marty's bullshit just like a credulous middle aged woman swallows Oprah's nonsense. I haven't watched the video but I don't need to. Firewall= credit spread. Time to start sellin' seminars Marty.
Dynamic hedging with options? What happens when the underlying gaps down? Nothing new. Probably a valid strategy but nothing new.
There's nothing "inherently" risky about selling options. Now selling options with no risk management, position sizing, or disaster scenario preparations is obviously very risky and stupid at any time in history, not just at the tail end of a bull market. But just because you or some other people didn't realize that option trading provides potential for unparalleled risk management doesn't make it risky. Sorry to say, it just means you were unprepared or didn't know what you were doing. Of course people should be selling options, that's the only side to be on roughly 90% of the time. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be conservative and safe about it though. You can still profit while being safe selling premium, these things are not mutually exclusive.
Very true. There are decent number of options selling funds that exist for more than a decade and managing 100s of millions.