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someone asked about options margin...... Whenever a person sells ( writes ) an option they are on margin and there are margin requirements to be met. Also long options do not count towards your buying power.

that's interesting about the 4:1 margin. I don't use stock margin much, preferring to use options when I want leverage, but I had always thought that the minimum initial margin was 50% and maintenance was 30%. Has that gone away if you are over $25,000 ?

doubling down has very negative emotions attached to it for me. It has never worked for me and I've decided not to do it anymore.

it is possible that there will be a "capitulation" ( don't you love buzzwords ) in the next week or so. If you have money that you can truly afford to lose you could wait for that to happen and buy some calls. But it definitely hasn't happened yet.

wow, somebody had the guts to lay that question right out there. My hat is off to you. I think the basic problem is that there are many people who want things to be a certain way, but the statistics are against it. My opinion, as I have stated in other forums, is that pure daytrading as an...

your right steved , the dow would probably be under 100.

cashonly is right on. you have to quite at least for a while since you promised yourself that you would. Discipline.

if you are into options or swing trading at all I would read Trader Vic.

actually I too set a $5 loss limit when I first started and yes, I hit it . I didn't trade at all for a month. Basically, I put myself in time out like a little kid. When a person is learning to trade in a major firm like Goldman that is exactly what they do. When they lose down to a certain...

there are a lot of overnight traders out there. Nothing wrong with it. I bought calls on the XAU yesterday afternoon and sold them this morning, made enough to cover the commissions on my other trades.

as far as whether you should study the winners or the losers, i guess that depends upon your personality. as far as trying to daytrade stocks with 5k, yeah, I don't think you are sufficiently capitalized to daytrade. It is strange but true that the shorter term you try to be, the more...

actually, if a firm was operating as a "bucket shop", how would they get caught? When they screw up and go bankrupt cause their customers are doing too well ?

true qaz, yet another reason why I like options.

if you don't have the discipline to quit then you don't have the discipline to trade either. I would quit for at least a few months and go back and examine every LOSING TRADE, not the winners. The winners teach you nothing, you learn from getting your fingers burned. Also, don't quit your...

most daytraders have a very high percentage of winning trades vs. losing trades, and a high percentage of winning days vs. losing days, and yet most daytraders don't make much money. A good trader with bad money management ( hypothetical ) trade 1: + 500.00 trade 2: + 500.00 trade 3...

someone previous said "For me, it works like this: + 1500, +780, + 2000, + 1250, + 3000, - 15,000. There goes my week." that is the whole problem right there. Some people call it eating like a chicken and sh*tting like an elephant.

bear call spread ( sell the more expensive call ) if i'm looking for a dip and bull put spread ( sell the more expensive put ) if im looking for a rally. Front month options to take advantage of time decay.

I like swing trading and credit spreads.

its all just economies of scale to me. All of the really big firms self clear because it is much cheaper for them. If a firm doesn't self clear it is just because they aren't large enough.

you know the funny thing is, in 1999 somebody might have given him the money :)