For those of you who are movie buffs like me, you’ll know that one of the truly greatest films of all time is Cool Hand Luke, the titlecharacter having been played by Paul Newman in one of his finest roles. If you haven’t seen it, see it. What a great flick. The Paul Newman character is a prisoner on a … Read More
The Right Way to Adopt a New Options Strategy for Your Playbook
In our last blog post we discussed the reasons that options traders should take it slowly when adopting a new income strategy. Here are some simple steps you can take to assure that your adoption of a new options strategy is sound: Communicate with the developer of the strategy and see if he or she is still actively trading the … Read More
Options Trade Initiation: Why Patience Pays Off
When developing traders enter into income options strategies, there is a tendency to become impatient when executing the opening trade. The trader will typically put an order in at or around the mid-price but often finds that the market is not biting on that price immediately. This can create anxiety and a feeling of impatience in the trader, arising from the belief that, since almost … Read More
Irrational Pessimism
While being irrationally exuberant over a short winning streak of options trades leads many traders to recklessly ramp up their capital levels leading to devastating, or even fatal, losses, there is an opposite problem, which is not necessarily fatal, but certainly leads to futility. “Irrational pessimism” is when you lose confidence in your trading strategy when there is no good reason to … Read More
Avoiding Pitfalls: Safeguard Your Options Trading Journey
In a speech delivered to the American Enterprise Institute in late 1996—in the middle of the formation of the dotcom bubble of the 1990s—then Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan coined the term “irrational exuberance” to describe an illogical optimism about the economy that was pumping up stock prices well beyond any reasonable level. History shows that he was correct, … Read More
“Going to School” on Experienced Options Traders
This blog entry is the introduction to a series of posts about common mistakes made by options traders and how to avoid them.
SMB Welcomes a New Blogger- Seth Freudberg on Options
SMB is proud to announce the addition of a new trading educator to our blog. Seth Freudberg, a graduate of the Wharton School of Business, is the Director of the SMB Options Training Program (available in the Spring). He has mentored over 100 options traders and presented strategies to numerous traders throughout the world. Seth will be blogging about what … Read More
Options Trade of the Week
Trade: 8/10/2010 WHR $86.07 Buy 2 August 85/90 call spread limit price $ 1.65 target 3.00/ by August 17th stop 1.10/or a stock close below 83 Reasoning: WHR- looks like it found some support in the 85 level the past few weeks. A move above the 87.31 level should see the $90 level quickly (same day or with a … Read More