Posts Tagged ‘How To Trade Options’

Online Options Trading – Portfolio Measures and Trade Performance Metrics

The Reward of Profit and the Risk of Losses for retail option trading needs to be managed at 2 related levels of performance: Portfolio and Trade Specific.At the Portfolio level for online options trading, there are 3 types of Targets that must be set, even before you trade.Maximum Return Target: complete achievement of the “ideal” [...]

How to Trade Options – Book Review – Lawrence G. McMillan, McMillan on Options

Larry McMillan is an iconic Hercules of the options world.  Few option titans have the depth and range of grounded insights to devote 630+ pages to a publication.  Do not be overwhelmed by what initially appears as a titanic chronicle.McMillan commits extensive effort to clarify the proper use of misused trading terms.  He rectifies inaccurate [...]

Options Trading Strategies – Intermarket Analysis in Brief for Retail Asset Allocation

If you are trading a mix of Verticals, Calendars and Iron Condors across highly liquid indexes like the DJX, DIA, MNX, QQQQ, RUT, SMH, SPY and XSP, is your trading risk adequately diversified? No.In choosing the MNX, QQQQ, SMH, SPY and XSP, there is a duplication of stock components in these Indexes: for example, AMAT [...]

Options Trading Strategies – Book Review – Sheldon Natenberg, Option Volatility and Pricing

As with most books on the topic of how to trade options, the amount of material to get through can be daunting. For example, with Sheldon Natenberg’s Option Volatility & Pricing, it is about 418 pages to digest.  There are adequate reader reviews on Amazon and Google Book Search, to help you decide if you [...]

Options Trading Strategies – Book Review – Guy Cohen, The Bible of Options Strategies

Most trading literature on option strategies tend to lean towards mathematical formulas to define the construction of a spread.  Guy Cohen has chosen to use pictorial logic, even with the Greeks unique to a particular strategy, to piece together the legs of a spread with diagrams.Diagrams that connect with each other are a much more [...]

Options Trading Strategies – Treat Implied Volatility of Calls Separate From the IV of Puts

The Implied Volatility (IV) of Calls needs separate treatment from the IV of Puts. Also, for specific options trading strategies treat the IV of both Puts and Calls as a combined bundle.Each option at each strike implies its own individual percentage value of the underlying product’s future volatility. This makes it unique from any other [...]