An Options Tribe Member asks: Given that we’re about 55 days out from the July monthly options expiration, I was playing with a July 770-820-870 put butterfly on the RUT (when it was trading around 840). Usually the bid/ask spread for ATM and OTM puts on the RUT is narrow enough, but the spread on the 870 put ($51.80 by … Read More
A Great Note I Received From One of My Mentoring Students
Seth – When I was in the military, I was assigned as the unit trainer (started with 70 soldiers). To give a little more detail, I was a lieutenant in a patriot missile battery. When we would train, it would be three different platoons in one confined area, all training toward one objective (getting our site, missile launchers, and engagement control … Read More
Traders Ask: Is it better to neutralize a double butterfly or simply close it?
Martin asks: I have a question about one of your first webinars involving the February butterfly. At the end of the trade it appears that instead of closing the trade completely you just neutralized it. What was the reason that you handled it that way ? What is the advantage of neutralizing the trade instead of closing it?: Martin is … Read More
Decoding Market Volatility: Navigating the Heck Out of Options Trading with Dan Harvey
When I first started trading options a number of years ago, I became very friendly with a great options trader, and an even greater human being by the name of Dan Harvey. Dan, a retired medical doctor, is one of the finest options traders I have ever met. He is very analytical, very calm and a very flexible thinker. … Read More
“Milking” an Options Trade
Every properly designed income options strategy should have both a target profit and a maximum loss. Both are extremely important in order to maintain a realistic annual return target for a particular strategy. The skilled income trader is both disciplined at exiting when a trade has hit the maximum loss threshold and skilled at what we alluded to in my last … Read More
Sittin’ on the front porch sippin’ iced tea
It’s funny how non-directional options trading differs from many other kinds of trading. For example, most forms of trading require price change to be taken advantage of by the trader. Day traders salivate when they look at charts that are vertical, in either direction. Directional options traders are the same way. But, non-directional options traders normally do best when … Read More
The key to winning options strategies is how well you handle the losing months
All great options strategies will have losing months. There is no getting around this simple fact, and it is critical to your mindset as a successful options trader that you accept these months as part of the game. While non-directional options spread strategies are also known as “income options trades” (giving some traders the mistaken idea that the strategies will produce … Read More
The sun never sets on the SMB Options Training Program Beta Test Team
In the very near future we will be launching the SMB Options Training Program which we’ve been working on intensively for months. We have had a fair degree of interest in the upcoming program and it occurred to us that it might not be a bad idea to invite a few trainees into the process before our formal launch, … Read More