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I am interested in learning safe scalable strategies. My goal is to be able to manage a large retirement portfolio and would be happy with 2 percent per month. I am aware that most courses out there are junk but these two seem to be taught by experienced traders and they are teaching what I want to learn – strategies that can be applied to a large portfolio as opposed to speculative plays with large drawdowns.
Does anyone have experience, insights, or recommendations about either of the above?
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
1. If you are a beginner and you have no idea about options or any option software, it doe's not matter if you take a course with Dan or with SJ. The official strategies are teached the same all over. More important for bigger portfolios is the Money Management. You may ask them some questions about that before choosing.
2. If you already have some knowledge and you want to spend all that money, you also could go for complete private lessons at home with a tutor which offers it. Joe Ross was one of the guys in the past which offered that.
3. If you like options on futures you have choices like John Summa or Paul Forchone. I know both of them and they are top in what they do.
Good questions and good answers from @Delta_Panther.
The main question is your knowledge of options trading, today.
My advice would be: educate yourself, at least to know the basics, reading books like this one and this one from G.Fontanills. I will also recommend this book, from G.Jabbour and P.Budwick, which is dealing about the most important thing in trading options: how to adjust your positions.
I will also recommend this one (but did not read it), when you are comfortable with the basics.
I really think that a good understanding options is mandatory before starting any courses. Most courses will let you think that trading options is easy, safe and very good for your wallet. It's very easy to show examples with very nice trades, but the reality is quite different. It's not easy, it's not safe (unless you know what you are doing and know how to manage your positions), and it can be very bad for your wallet.
just chiming in. I feel more comfortable doing option spreads than trading futures at this moment. To me, most option trading is a losing gambit. So I like doing credit spreads, like iron condors. You need market volatility to jack the premiums, but lately the wide fast swings in the market, make trading iron condors rough. So, I've switched gears and just lately started doing a collared spread on weekly options and I trade equal shares against the call strike to keep my risk (P&L) intact. I have been playing with this the last few months and last week a source for an e book on the subject popped into my inbox.
May I ask you how you did your Iron Condor trading as you sound a bit frustrated? It's a bit an off topic here, but as the thread is about option education, I think Jodistrict also could be interested in it.
As you talk about swings and high vola, did you trade your Condors on a predefined range on a predefined time or how did you come to the conclusion to implement this strategy at a certain time?
As we can implement any option strategy in different ways, did you enter your Condors with for example a put credit spread and then finished it with a call credit spread or did you just implement it at once or..... ?
As you mention the option greeks and you mention credit spreads, where do the option greeks have the biggest impact on any credit spread ?
My experience: I have done dozens of Iron Condors (IC). Some with a half. Lost on a couple, but not much, because you manage the trade and should only lose on one half of the Condor plus you can book the loss and rewrite the losing side at higher strikes. Most of the ICs for me were stock indexes like RUT or SPX. Others were on GLD or stocks.
I can't find an example of an SPX IC. The bid/ask spreads suck. But I found an 16Feb12 Apple Iron Condor.
First, I always excuted an IC about 6 weeks (can be more) from the expiration date. For 1 IC, I always want better than $100, because my risk will be $1000. So for me anything between $115 and $135+.
Now our Greek. I will only establish each side at a Delta of about 10. That's .10 or a 10% chance of being exercised. So for the puts, I picked the 340 to sell and the 330 to buy. With Deltas of 7.5 and 5 for $58. A Delta of .10 means a .10 change in the option with a 1.00 change of the underlying.
For the calls, I picked the 475 to sell and the 485 to buy. With Deltas of 9.3 and 6.7 for $54.
The trade:
and the quote: To buy equals -1.13 ($113). my arrow is on the sell side (wrong side)
For a credit spread on an IC, you always buy a negative amount or receive the cash. Okay, when to close out a loser: when the delta of one side of the sold option hits 25 or that's .25, bail from that side of the IC. If you can get a good premium, re establish at higher strikes to lessen the loss. If you are in a strong market or you are a chart reader, then do one side and later do the other side. You have to push your short options out far enough not to be tagged with a delta of 25. Delta is the only Greek I concerned myself with on this credit spread.
Most loose on the whole Condors as many do not recognize the two sides: Put spread and credit spread and to handle them as separate. Did not meet many people which are aware of that.
Did you ever try the following:
First defining the range on the price chart. Then defining the time which market uses for this range. Then defining the live time of the trade and the live of the option.
Now implementing the strategy with just one long leg and placing the second short leg with a limit order by the broker. If filled, then implementing the third long leg and if range is closed selling the fourth leg.
In a nut shell: First long call, then short call and long put and finally short put or vice versa if the strategy is done first with puts.
You say you use Ninja. I did not know, that Ninja can be used for Options or are this screen shots you show here from an other platform?
The main instructor and head of sjoptions was once a student and staff of Sheridan options. There are also discussions about Sheridan and sjoptions on elitetrader. It's probably a good idea to not be an absolute beginner and to know at least what a call and put option and a spread is like a covered call or IC. One can just watch all the free option education videos on cboe.com to get up to speed. But on sjoptions there is a 15 step intro set of videos that help a new member get used to trading their way. Just ask for a free demo tour of their website. One of their associates will guide via skype into how their training site is set up.
However, they have a very strict non-disclosure agreement of their methods and training which is reminded daily. Members who are caught leaking or sharing their material will have their lifetime access memberships revoked.
That's interesting. So now we know, why there is so much talk about options on the net and why all this members of such paid places try to hide what ever they can.
I am wondering, how this company's could stop people talking with each others over forums what is shown in there courses and what not ?
