Smooth Sailing With Options

SmoothSailing#23

Whew.  What a market lately.  Five weeks down in a row, first time that's happened since 2011.  So everyone is underwater, and now what?  Wait? Sell calls high or low?  Run in circles, scream and shout? Recently…
Smooth Sailing With Options

SmoothSailing#22

I like to experiment by trading one contract on something and logging the activity for months to see just what happens when I try some new thing. Today I took a look at my Disney, my most unsuccessful trade in the last few years. I have been…
Smooth Sailing With Options

SmoothSailing#21

As we all know, there are various ways to manage a position.  Up down or sideways, whatever the market does, most are pretty easy to manage.  Except the one when you sell calls underwater and risk assignment at less than your cost…
Smooth Sailing With Options

SmoothSailing#20

RBLX.  Crappy little stock with no earnings and not something I'd trade myself.  But one of my friends wanted to try it because of the insanely high weekly premium and wanted me to do the trading.  So back in March I sold puts on it in his…
Smooth Sailing With Options

SmoothSailing#19

TastyTrade likes to recommend selling options with 42 days to expiration, (DTE) then rolling them around 21 DTE.  Supposedly this captures some of the theta decay, which is just fancy talk for time value, and avoids most gamma volatility. …
Smooth Sailing With Options

SmoothSailing#18

When I wrote "Smooth Sailing with Options", I tried to talk a little bit about the fact that the ways we think about money is perhaps more important than trying to apply technical skills.  The big firms with their quants lose money too, as…
Smooth Sailing With Options

SmoothSailing#17

A cautionary tale.  I have this book in my collection, "The Complete Guide to Option Selling" by James Cordier.  I recommend it in my book, "Smooth Sailing".  Still do, in that it does teach the ins and outs of option selling.  However...James…
Smooth Sailing With Options

SmoothSailing#16

In an attempt to learn and improve my trading, I signed up for the Blue Collar Investor subscription service for a while and paper-traded his recommendations.  He, Alan Ellman, uses technical and fundamental analysis using screens set up to…
Smooth Sailing With Options

SmoothSailing#15

I'm still learning as new things develop.  I got hit with a trading violation for 90 days a while back for trading with "uncleared funds".  When you sell an option it takes one day, overnight, for the funds to clear so that you can use those…
Smooth Sailing With Options

SmoothSailing#14

When selling options there are only two types of option we can sell, puts and calls. There are only two ways the trade can go, above your strike or below your strike. So here's a flow chart that strips it down to the very basics. This doesn't…