Hi Seth,
I am a 51 year old man from Florence, Italy and I want to learn options trading for financial freedom.
During the last five years I have day traded futures…… I am having mixed results.
A couple of years ago I started to study the Market Profile ( Jim Dalton’s approach to auctions in the financial markets).
I am putting a lot of patience and energy into this.
But… I’ve got a family, a fulltime job and not much capital. Nor can I dedicate much of my time to live trading. You see, due to the difference in time zones I have a time window of about 2-4 hours before the close of the American markets. I definitely can not trade the European markets as I am at my job then, nor can I trade the American open. Also, due to a new level of responsibility in my job I have even less time to trade.
So, what I need to learn is a more relaxed way to trade, away from the screen. And maybe options are the best fit, I do not know.
I currently have a small account with Interactive Brokers which can be increased a little bit, but not much.
For my personality type, I need to be very low-risk and relaxed. Do you think you can help me?
Thank you and best regards.
Fredo from Italy
Hi Fredo,
Thank you for reaching out. Your situation is fairly common actually in my experience. Most people who trade our style of options trading—what is known as options income trading—have full time careers or businesses that they manage. For whatever reason, they are seeking to transition out of their current careers into full time trading.
That sounds like it should be a simple enough goal , but it’s actually pretty difficult to do in most forms of trading. Day trading or swing trading—whether through equities, currencies, futures or commodities—requires careful attention to the market. You must stay glued to your screen as a trade is setting up, and certainly once you’ve entered the trade. Most forms of trading can be intense, and the market will not wait for you to get out of a business meeting, or lunch, to take profits or exit a dangerous situation. I do not think that it would be very easy for you to get enough experience in most forms of trading, given your situation, to get you into a position to achieve your goal of financial freedom through trading.
Options income trading is a little different though. The trades move much more slowly than a typical day trade. The process of options income trade is more like a chess match that lasts for 30-60 days. You usually have time to plan your moves and in many cases it’s not that critical whether a move is made immediately, or whether there is a multi-hour delay before the move is made. In fact, we have one trader who trades for our fund, Joe, who lives in Indonesia and is asleep for more than half of each market day due to the time zone difference. Yet he is a very profitable and solid member of our trading desk.
We not only offer sophisticated programs to teach this kind of trading to people like yourself, but we also back traders with capital through our fund, which I think might be something to consider given your capital situation. All of the traders that we currently back are trading strategies that we teach in our training programs—so we do “put our money where our mouth is”, as we say over hear in the U.S. !
I do think that options income trading is right for you Fredo.
All the best,
Seth
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