Back in the summer of 2008 Mervyn King gave the startling news that the average family’s standard of living would ‘stagnate’. This is hardly news as the same thing happened (pretty much) last year and the year before. The huge rise in personal debt is evidence that many people have been financing any increase in [...]
Welcome to the wonderful world of equity options. You may have heard that option trading is high risk, and indeed it is, for much the same reasons that spread betting is high risk. The instruments themselves are derivatives from the cash markets, and are highly geared, but options themselves were originally introduced to the US [...]
If you are a long premium options trader, volatility is a necessary element to be successful. If volatility is lacking, time decay (Theta) will make this financial instrument a challenging (or even more challenging) one. These days, volatility is not lacking. In fact, volatility is thriving. For a long premium options trader, there is nothing [...]
The issue of direct access is an important one and it becomes more important the more short term your trading is. The market can change from a state of seeming paralysis to one of shocking volatility and activity in a flash. The length of time it takes between you deciding to enter an order and [...]
For those who have not yet discovered the benefits of rolling out options, itâs high time you look closely at this very valuable feature. Roll outs not only offer additional profit generating advantages but more importantly it offers an extraordinary ability for limiting or eliminating potential losing positions. Before going on to describe the remarkable [...]
In stock trading, traders avoid spreads of any kind because limiting losses can also limit gains. It is a must to trade in a realistic way. If you trade a three-fold gain, which is the strategy that requires only little up-front capital, you strictly limit losses by neutralizing declining time value while opening the possibility [...]
Stock trading is nevertheless one of the most profitable markets today. This is no doubt because investors, even beginners, can make money out of it. But of course, knowledge of how the market works is the key to succeed in this market. Profitable traders employ powerful strategies like option strangle. Almost always, the simplest strategy [...]
Wouldn’t it be great if we could buy an option with five months left until expiration and sell an option with 2 months left until expiration for the same price? You couldn’t lose. Well we can’t. I love options spreads so much I realized something very important. We can buy a spread that has a [...]