Michael- Is Optionsmart allowing you to share this stuff? I was told not to share upon penalty of death!!! LOL Don-
no but I wait until the fill...should I stop...I do not distrubute before the fact... This is troubling as i have been with them for two years. i do not intend to break any rules. Michael B.
Well, you do what you want, and we all appreciate you sharing, but there are enough nuts on this board that I personally would not do it. And now that you've posted what your wife's username is, it would be pretty easy for someone to turn you in..... Don-
didn't I white that out...shit maybe I should just post the allocations excel sheet from now on... Thanks Don... Michael B.
For you crazies out there... My intentions are well....I simply must follow the rules and do the right thing...so I cannot post these alerts before or after the fact anymore...unless I get permission from the advisories. I will stop immediatley. But as far as my excel spreadsheet... this is my work, and I will share with you the allocations and progress of the account. I appreciate everbodies time and I apologize for any confusion caused. Michael B. P.S. Do I dare ask permission?
ES, I checked optionsmart out. It seems like they initiate the trade on Stocastic signal and use that to give them an edge. If the trade is a lost, they will roll out to get credit to offset a lost. It seems to work fine with QQQQ but not with regular stocks . One lost can wipe out many small wins they gain especially if the lost come at the early stage of your trades. Also when they rolled out, they don't consider that trade is a new one and waited for signal. They rolled out in the expiration week and "hope for the best". If QQQQ was not trending up, I think you could loose money. Let's look at vertical spread they made on 11/30/04. Bought Jul 32 P, Sold Jul 38 P for $0.29, and after many rolls over, bought them back for $0.10 on 7/13/2005, 3.4% gain for 225 days (Rolled over on 01/21/05, 03/17/05, 05/13/05). Between 11/30/04 till 07/13/05, the other trade which made money was on 05/26/2005 Bough Jul 34 P, Sold Jul 38 P for $0.575. Bought back the spread for $0.10 on 07/13/2005, 13.9% gain for 48 days. Suppose you invested about $1000/position from $10K capital. Between 11/30/04 till 07/13/05, you could make $34 + $139 = $175 in 225 days based on $10K capital. I agreed with you on the important of position sizing. I llearned a lot from Van Tharp's book. -Nick
skanan, Very valuable analysis. They put on straight option trades too, concurrently...I wonder if they act as some sort of counter balance? I think Money Management is half the work, and some critisize me for not making my own option trades, but I feel I am doing half of the work!...Everytime I get a fill, I am in that spreadsheet re-allocating... Michael B.
Skanan brings up a good point. Often times when a vertical is chosen, the strategy is to roll once the underlying breaches a certain point. In many cases there isn't another analysis accompanying the roll. In these cases a person could be rolling into a position that is more likely to fail than the first one.
I have two spreads open from OptionSmart now...so there is just 100 bucks in their allocation as they do not open more than two spreads at one time. Updated allocations:
Electric, it looks as though your IRA comments false. After looking at the Crowder performance page it looks as though trades do not occur often enough for it to create a problem in an IRA. If there were three to four trades during a week, then yes, it would be a problem to trade in your IRA. But only trading a few times a month is not an issue. By the way, I took a look at Peak Investing and I too find their options volatility portfolio interesting. A good way to diversify strategies. I think the three services you mention www.optionsmart.com, www.crowderinvestments.com, and www.peakinvesting.com certainly seem like good services. I would probably add another service that I familiar with and that is www.wiseoption.com. A portoflio of diversified services much like a portfolio of diversified stocks could be the investing wave of the future. In a way, it is like managing your own personal hedge fund by employing advisory services to trade their strategies. AS long as they adhere to their strategies then this could be a fine way to diversify a small portion of your overall portoflio. However, I would never condone allocating a large portion of your portfolio to this portfolio strategy. Maybe 15% tops, depending on your age and risk tolerance. Diversify, diversify, diversify!