Tastytrade has been out for a while, so it's a good time to see what ETers think. My initial impression: overall I think it's good, with a few drawbacks. The good: their headline program with Tom and Tony is well done. Both of them are natural and the banter back and forth makes for a lively program. There are a few people they have on the show who I wouldn't have, but that's me. The rest of the programs are ok; SLM and Liz/Jenny are good all around shows, but not quite at Tom/Tony's level. They seem to focus mostly on premium selling strategies, which they highlighted with "Karen the Supertrader." The bad: they initially tried to make this a comedy central type network. Satire/humor is tough to pull off. A lot of their "commercials" and comedy segments are unfunny or seem forced. They have some weird gameshow that should be ditched. The future: they have $20 mil in venture funding and seem to not have a great deal of costs. Tom's probably not taking a salary since he has skin in the game. And they shoot out of a Chitown rowhouse. The rest of the staff probably doesn't cost a whole lot, so Tastytrade can probably make it for a few years before profitability. So what do you think? Like/dislike? Do you think their strategies/programming are helpful? Do you think they'll survive?
It says something about the unorthodox and strangely compelling elements, to rate tastytrade for its entertainment value. I do find it entertaining. In part. At least the segments during the regular session when Sosnoff and @tony_Battista work through specific trades, starting from scratch, making adjustments, taking profits. Some of the show (the obnoxious theme music introductions, the repetitive "advertisement" ... I'd delete all that crap and caution others to use the segment replay to avoid having to suffer through the "college kids playing with multimedia" content. It's so rare to see any mention of tastytrade, I was surprised when my Google search reported this new thread, so I've compiled a few thoughts and hopefully others will come out of the woodwork and add their two cents' ... or more ... after all, there's literally 20 or 30 thousand people subscribed and watching tastytrade on any given day ... they must be traders and they must be somewhere, not just clicking paper trade accounts on thinkorswim and wishing they'd really bought low and sold high ... : ) The option trading strategies, the proofs of statistical and probability are clear and thorough â all in all, the content is unequalled. Start by watching "Good Trade, Bad Trade" (GTBT) and "Last Call" (LC) which demonstrate live trading and option strategy. As time permits, watch all the archives of "Market Measures" (strategy and statistical) and pursue the various segments of best practices, IRA trading, etc. You'll also see the segments that appeal to the curious uninitiated (Trading with "LIZ and JNY,") the technical trader and those amused by cycles and indicators ("Ask SLM") and those looking for chart patterns (the "Last Call" segment starts with 15 minutes of Tim Knight ... another of the thinkorswim alumni.) The core value of the show is in GTBT and LC. The "educational" and instructional elements of tastytrade show up throughout the day and wind down with a call-in segment. tastytrade also does a compelling job of exposing the existing "education" industry, toppling sacred cows and debunking one "belief system" of trading after another. If you're inclined to believe things from the likes of Fibo, Gann or Elliott, or any of their ilk, if you see patterns in candles or believe in any number of "rules" of trading, you're going to need to choose an especially receptive moment in your disposition. : ) tastytrade has a stockpile of 15-20 minute segments that encapsulate various aspects of strategy, statistics, probability and their tenets of "good" trading. Everything in their work is centered on option price. The most interesting and practically unique part of the whole show is that Tom, Tony, Liz, Jenny and Slim (no kidding) all trade live, every session, in front of a camera. They also show others from different walks of life how to trade. On the other hand: One could argue that Sonsoff (the "public face" of the team that built thinkorswim and sold it to TD Ameritrade) has started up a gig to continue the process of shepherding retail traders into the thinkorswim corrals, to be slowly milked dry in commissions. Their catch phrase, "trade small, trade often" hints at their modus operandi -- convince the viewing audience to make frequent trades, racking up the commissions, making small trades, so as not to blow up their account in big mistakes, but instead to ply numerous trades, take on margin (they strongly advocate portfolio margin) to push interest into AMTD coffers, and generally keep the livestock producing commish in a set of swing trade option strategies that produce a lot of churn (wins and losses) that tend to revolve around break-even with tantalizing wins and bearable losses. The gist of it: Most of their work revolves around back-tested spreads which can be applied to any liquid, efficient underlying with equally accommodating option price action. They play everything around theta and volatility. They aim for trades that have quick profit opportunity, but have stability and the potential to remain in the market ("duration" in their vernacular) to ride out prices with the assumption that in any given expiration cycle, underlying prices will tend to move through a range ... enter at the high or low side of the range and assume prices will tend to travel across the bell curve. In the rare (less than 15% of occasions) that prices move through 2 standard deviations out of the preceding range (I don't know, but let's call it the trailing 6 expirations,) the trade must adjust quickly and decisively according to well-defined rules. Bottom line from me, well, with more time, I could elaborate, but I'm sure I've already exceeded most limits on post length and content. In short, I've been in the markets since the 90's and an active option trader since 2000. I've tried many services and methods and systems. They're mostly utterly useless and harmful and expensive. Tastytrade, while not without its shortcomings, is the only source of real, useful, applicable knowledge for trading that I've found in the last 15 years or so of searching and studying the markets. The retail trader education industry and all these forum sites, newsletters, mentors, indicators, systems sellers ... all add up to at best nothing, just some parasitic loss, but usually, they do damage and distract retail traders from developing skills and experience in proficient trading. I am no alone in the opinion there's no alternative to trading with discipline, focus and consistency. But one first needs real and profitable methods upon which to focus all that ruthless efficiency. Tastytrade provides the necessary raw materials for almost anyone to pick up what they offer and begin trading confident in the knowledge that what they're learning and practicing actually works and produces consistent profits.
Ok but nothing brilliant They dont post their trades summaries. The win a little, and in 1 trade lose a lot. TOM made all his money selling Thinkswim, Sure they can trade. But replicate it, good luck Many folks ring in and say they havnt made any money as wins are small, and losses are large.
After spending about 6 months using it every day, I am extremely negative on Tastyworks. Now, I am not experienced enough with options to know if the money I lost was my own fault, or just the fact that their model is to sell premium and we have been facing nothing but a up market with very low IV for years now. Bottom line, I wish I had never started on options - they are too complicated to manage. Yes, I learned all of the strategies, and took notes. But it would take an MBA to really get every rule they have down to the point where you could use them all correctly. They give you so much information and innuendo that after awhile you feel your only choice is to just jump in and do it. But there are also major elements of knowledge missing that you will never find on their site. One is "how do you set up and strategy that is guaranteed to make money selling premium?" They will tell you that Standard Deviation means you should be able to make money 66% of the trades - but that is based on ideal conditions. What they don't tell you is how to set up a premium selling trade won't get blown up as soon as the underlying price changes. So - aside from not fully educating you on how to manage a loss (and you will have many of them when you have a 4-leg iron condor on one equity), they also have a horrible interface that makes it impossible to track exactly how much money you have made on a given trade without digging into the history and doing all the math yourself. Oh yes, they have presented far more education on options than anyone, and it seems to be accurate. But it is all based on theory, not real world trading. All of their models take tons of data and push it through their preconceived notions on how to successfully sell premium, but once you are in it (money on the table) the software does NOT do anything to guide you along the correct path to making a profit. In fact, it is impossible to even tell if you are up or down in a given trade based on everything I have seen. Trastytrade - great, Tastyworks (the actual brokerage) - not at all in the business of helping you make good trades. I feel much of the problem is that the interface is all about options (not stocks) but you need to know this before you get in - even the most basic option does not act the way you expect so there are no reliable options trades. From IV to Gamma, you can buy a put on a stock that will drop 5 points in 3 days, and you might still see that option has not changed at all.
I don't use their brokerage, but I have watched some of their research/analysis/statistics content and I found value in it. I also find value in some of the free newsletters they offer -- The one that I find especially valuable is the one that shows a calendar of earnings dates and ex-div dates for a ton of tickers, and sometimes it has a listing of a bunch of tickers and their implied vol. I've consistently made money with options... Not going for home runs.. but I hit more singles than I strike out. But I have a decent size account and make small trades (as TT espouses). Sometimes it's a win, sometimes a loss. When it goes against me, I roll out in time usually. I usually keep my underlyings to be ETFs, so I don't have too much hesitation to add to a position too while I roll out in time to manage a loser. Wouldn't want to do that with a single company stock obviously though. I don't think TT advocates this, but it has been working fine for me. It helps to start with a small initial position. For example, I got caught pretty bad with some short OIH puts that I have been rolling, and adding contracts to, for what seems like forever now. Looking back, I was short 27 strike puts on it over a year ago! I've collected so much premium rolling, tweaking strikes and expiration, (and added a little to the position -- it's about 4x now as what I started with), that I've actually made money on it, even though it has felt like a loser the whole time. I'm not pushing my capital use to the max. I keep a very large core position of just long equities. I trade with the resulting portfolio margin buying power it affords me. That's just what works for me.
Have a positive view of Tastytrade for reasons discussed in previous posts. They have expanded their research team and this should yield valuable back testing information on various strategies. Most of the traders on Tastytrade favor a mechanical approach to their decision making. This seems like it would be plus EV overall, but their “situational awareness” can be low. This has led them to make cringeworthy trades like stepping in front of a freight train in search of a higher IV rank. One way to mitigate variance in those situations would be to indeed trade small and trade often. For example, instead of implementing a trade idea with a full position all at once, one could divide the trade into, say 8 or even more parts over a period of 8 weeks. Any one trade will not have a big effect on account performance. The obvious downside is volatility may drop on the instrument causing a partially missed opportunity and higher commissions. In addition, one’s appropriate trade size given their account size may not accommodate the division of their trade into multiple parts.