In yesterday’s Options Tribe meeting, tribe member Craig Wassenberg made an excellent presentation of his expiration Friday “pinning” trades. (For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, a pinning trade is a trade that takes advantage of the tendency of certain stocks that become anchored to a particular options strike price on options expiration day.) It was an outstanding … Read More
Expiration Friday: Unveiling the Dramatic Conclusion of Pinning Trades in GOOG and AAPL
On Friday we followed Options Tribe member Craig Wasserman’s thought processes and analysis as expiration Friday proceeded. Craig had been watching AAPL and had become convinced that it was going to pin to 320. He reached this conclusion around 12:30 PM EDT. Craig entered an AAPL 320 iron butterfly trade shortly after making his call on the pinning strike of … Read More
Expiration Friday Pinning Trades in GOOG and AAPL
The great thing about options is that they can be played in so many different interesting and creative ways. A case in point: There is a cult of options traders who focus on the last two days of the monthly options expiration cycle. These traders focus, separately, on expiration Thursday trades and expiration Friday “pinning” trades. The premise for each … Read More
Option Tribe Discusses Expiration Week Trades–June 21st 5:00PM
Options Tribe – June 21, 2011 Jun 17th, 2011 | By admin | Category: General Comments Tuesday, June 21, 2011 5:00 pm Eastern Daylight time SMB’s Options Tribe is an online community of options traders dedicated to sharing successful options trading ideas with all of our members worldwide. Each week the community will meet online for the primary purpose of watching live … Read More
Smart Thinking About Capital Levels and Simulation
One of the great things about our growing Options Tribe community is the number of experienced spread traders that are actively participating and communicating their thinking to us. This free exchange of ideas is what the Tribe is all about: the more that people share their perspectives and approaches, the stronger we all become as traders. Recently, I received an email … Read More
Finding Yourself as a Trader
One of our options trainees recently asked me if I thought it was wise for him to model his trading style after my own personal trading approach. It was a legitimate and intelligent question and it deserved a thoughtful reply. I recently tweeted a great article by Charles Kirk, which is exactly on point to this question. In the article … Read More
Directional Indicators That are Not TOO Wrong
One of the great things about options trading is that you can make a directional bet, be wrong, and still make excellent money on a trade. As many of my closest relatives are fond to point out how wrong I am on so many life issues, it is a comfort to know that there is a way to trade options … Read More
Maximizing Profits: Legging Out of a Winning Options Spread
Nothing is more frustrating to an options spread trader than working a trade for 30-60 days, using all of your skills and knowledge to initiate, adjust and improvise to position the trade for a nice win and then, on the day you have decided to exit and pocket that profit, you run into execution problems. There is nothing quite like … Read More