No if you manage other people's money, you owe a duty of care to your clients to manage their money most prudently as possible and earn a decent return for their money. You have a first and foremost fiduciary duty to your clients. The disclaimers is just there to advise clients of some of the possible outcomes that may happen to their accounts; it is not an excuse or a green light for the money manager to be derelict in his/her duty. It's not like "oh well the clients have been told now that their money can go to the dogs so I can just do whatever to their money". No amount of disclaimers could ever absolve the people that you pay money to from their negligence, even though on every single entry ticket to the movie theatre, it's printed "Enter at your own risk". But if you slip and fall on some icy water that some brats spilled on the floor and get head injury that resulted in major brain damage because their staff failed to clean up properly or didn't clean the floors at all, you can still sue the theatre and most likely you will win. This is what I learned in my Corporate Law class.
There is a place and time for everything. And that rings true for selling options as well including selling calls. It's not the selling of calls and puts itself that are bad per se; it's HOW this guy sold calls and puts that was the problem. In the investment world, anything you do including option selling can be a lucrative way to earn decent stream of income but ONLY when it's done properly and with very strict risk and money management controls which he failed to put in place. Without proper risk and money-management controls, even bonds can be risky.
Not to be a victim on purpose but just to illustrate to you that those disclaimers do not absolve them from doing what they are supposed to do to provide a basic standard of care.
Can you explain what proper risk and money management control entail so we can make a decent stream of income selling DOTM options? Thanks.
-No over-leveraging -Stop-loss when necessary -Hedge These are advised to you on every single article, website about option selling, obviously not on James Cordier's "Complete Guide to Option Selling" I guess. LOL. I listed the most common one below. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/optioninvestor/09/selling-options.asp
JSOP, A DITM option with a 90% probability of expires worthless typically has a low single digit return if expires worthless, so leverage is necessary. What if I only do 2 and 3? Have you folks done any analysis on whether stop-loss and hedge are sufficient to ensure no disasters + a decent return, like ~10%? If so, what is the risk-reward curve looks like from leverage? Maybe I should post this same question to Buy1Sell2?