cover options trading? I see some references to B. Schaeffer and he has a nice web site. Are his techniques (per CDs and DVDs) good? Appreciate some info. genebort@cox.net
The more you have to pay for the lessons, the less worthwhile they are. Consider CBOE education center (http://www.cboe.com/LearnCenter/default.aspx) and Options Industry Council (http://www.optionseducation.org/). If reading is your thing, you will get great use of of my recent book: The Rookie's Guide to Options. Mark http://blog.mdwoptions.com/
There is so much free stuff on the web that I wouldn't spend a cent on option education, well except getting some books. On a side note, the best teachers are the ones that don't teach!
I suggest you use the Web to do the research. As someone mentioned, there is enough free stuff. You must obtain a THOROUGH understanding of the options basics (calls, puts, combinations/spreads, and the greeks (delta, gamma, theta, and vega) before worrying about strategy. Then you need to decide your goals (investing, trading for a living, etc.). Once you have done all this time, then you can research strategies. The key thing is to match up the appropriate trades with the environment--in other words, you can't use just one type of trade for every situation. You can do this by educating yourself as instructed above. By researching the Web, I educated myself. Then I completed trades with real money. I suggest you paper-trade first (you can use IB's paper-trading account, for it works in real-time). Every failing trade is an education upon itself. Also, by reading postings here, you will gain knowledge.
Here are two well-done, active and Free blogs/sites http://coveredwriter.blogspot.com/ http://coveredcallsadvisor.blogspot.com/ There is also an associated Yahoo Group at :http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/justcoveredcalls/ Again-- all are free. Enjoy. ~BBen
Yeah, do not buy options eduction, it's way overpriced. You can just buy a few books for under 100 bucks and learn. Do not take those thousand dollar options courses. They prey on ignorance. Options are not that difficult. Typically the more difficult the strategy, the less profitability it has. Some of those strategies that take 2 or 3 different options on one stock are a waste of resources. Commissions will kill you, plus the waste of committing all that capital. You just need to learn about volatility cycles, understand the language of options: delta, gamma, theta, vega, and how they influence the price of options. Once you get a good foundation, find a service that provides historical volatility data. Volatility is one of the major issues that you will face when trading options. Vol, can make or break your trade, even if you're correct on the direction.
lot's of good info and videos on the CBOE site as was mentioned earlier. Dan Sheridan is one instructor that comes to mind
Larry McMillan had some pretty good videos out years ago that you can maybe find very cheap now. CBOE has the calculator for IV, probabilty of success based on IV etc... or you can use my favorite method now that the spread is a penny on the Q's: buy a bunch if the price is going up, sell quickly if your entry point was wrong. Much better for gambling now than when I used to have to take a minimum .5 or .10 loss to get out quickly at the bid.
IMHO: CBOE is #1 Other's that have helped: Discoveroptions.com, Steve Lentz's(free videos) theaceprogram.com, Paul Forchione($39/webcast) tv.ino.com(yearly subscription) I've made my living trading options since 2003, and have tried every strategy. But, have found that K.I.S.S. is the best. I sell puts on dividend stocks only at strikes outside of 1 SD. Buy, on stocks w/o div, usually at strikes with at least 25 delta. And when I'm really sure of the direction, use synthetic longs/shorts. I speak Greek, but have found that on short time trades not to worry about them. Enough times you hit a big one... Last Thurs. bought BTU, May 30C @.25...Fri sold @1.00 and then watched it go to 2.50 But, as they say: You can never go broke making a profit. Has anyone investigated the relationship of delta to the ask?
The âaskâ prices you see on the screens are generated via computer these days. The market making firms all stream in their live quotes to the market place via which ever exchange theyâre on and they set them to move with the price of the underlying according to their delta. There is no mystery as to why the ask price moves. What is the significance you place on a dividend since youâre not collecting them in your options strategy?