Recent content by dejatrader

My comment is based on VIX. With the overall low IV across the market it seems to me that there are far fewer stocks with IV well above their HV. For example, back in February with the VIX around 20 I was more diversified than I am now.

Why do brokers allow reduced margin on high IV high beta stocks? That's one thing I really don't understand. I'm the first to admit that I'm no supertrader and I'll probably blow out my account sooner or later. Right now my main concern is that market IV is so low that even among the highest...

Yeah, I thought about trying OptionsXpress until I talked to them and found out their margin requirements are consistently 5-7 times more than IB! For all their flaws IB is the best for margin that I've found and for my trading that's one of the most important considerations.

That's why you have to sell as far OTM as possible to give it room to move. Even then it's sometimes not enough, and you end up with a -32% month like I had in April.

Here's a good one: INSM last trade at $20.01 Sell Jul18 16 Put for $0.35 Margin $283 12.36% ROI in 16 calendar days (if you had sold it yesterday when the market was open). The premium will probably drop quite a bit on this one Monday morning, but it might still be worth selling.

I already showed you how to adjust that GOOGL trade that you posted as an example, to exceed the returns I'm making, if you're willing to take the risk. And you would have a LOT of room for error. But if you want another example here you go. These are actual completed trades in my account last...

True.

Making money at anything is often simple, but rarely easy. Consistently being right more than 50% of the time and having bigger winners than losers is not easy. Like I said before, my win% is over 90%, but my losers are much bigger than my winners.

[sarcasm begins]You are aware that there are other stocks out there besides Google, yes?[sarcasm ends] Your example illustrates why I don't sell naked on big name stocks, ETFs, indices or futures, namely, very little bang for your buck. A high priced low IV stock like GOOGL requires way too...

I view trading like any job or business, you can have your livelihood cut out from under you at any moment with no warning, any security or stability you think you have is purely an illusion. What matters is that right now I don't have to work very hard to make a living.

Typically I use less than 50% of my available capital at the start of the month. Like right now for July I'm at 62% cash. But when I have profitable positions that I can easily close out to free up margin, I'll go much higher. I'm with IB and have noticed that their margin requirements...

xandman, I sell mostly single equities and some ETFs. I did 1 iron condor on SPX last month to try it out (never done an IC before) which made 5.4% but I didn't like how close to the money I had to be to get that. Feb was just an exceptional month for premium/margin ratio and I was able to...

I've been making a living selling options since last September and using a selling strategy for more than a year before that, and have made a little over 3%/month on average. But TskTsk is right, you're not going to get that on a steady monthly basis. Which means, if you want to average 3% you...

I think it's silly that Pivotas is is being so hard on you for losing. Let's face it, if there weren't people like you losing their money, there wouldn't be anyone making any either. The markets are a zero sum game (well, almost, some goes to the brokers) so for 50% to make money the other 50%...

Sorry, just the 1 minute by itself. Aussie is joining the party now too, and the Kiwi is thinking about it but it's a bit indecisive at the moment, doesn't know if it wants to rally or continue the downtrend. I'm watching for a break of 0.7969 for a reversal on NZDUSD.