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Less sarcasm and more reality. Fidelity will allow most anyone to write covered calls. That is the lowest 'level' of approval. They even allow it is IRA's. But if you look at the chart writing cash covered naked puts is on the highest tier and not allowed in IRA's. Anyone who knows anything at...

Actually the covered call generates 3 commissions in most cases. Buy the stock, sell the call, the sell the stock again for less than I paid for it.

Going that far OTM is pure speculation. It is hard to match up a pure speculation trade with any attempt at fundamental analysis.

Yes. But only about 17% probablity of making any money at expiration.

They are the education arm for thinkorswim. They are free, provide good info and the best part is they are not a front for selling books, courses, mentoring, etc. I know several of the folks that teach these. They are sharp ex floor traders. Caveat: I have NOT been to these since Investools...

I assume you mean the Theo value on the thinkorswim screen. This is the theoretical value. It should be between the bid and the ask. I use it all the time for orders. Take the theo value, give the market maker 0.03 - 0.05 and you will most likely get filled. The theo value is about as clos eto...

Depending on your skill level, Optionetics has some decent information. But to get to the advanced stuff you are looking at a series of courses in the $35,000 USD range. There are a lot of better routes to get better information much cheaper.

The original post was about IRA restrictions. The IRA trades like a naked put have to be cash covered. What risk is there to the broker if the naked put is cash covered? I am assuming the broker made you sign an acknowledgement of risk.

As someone else pointed out thinkorswim allows me to do anything I want in the IRA except for short stock and naked calls. The main issue is that they cannot collect for a margin call. That is against IRS rules if you have already maxed out your contribution limits for the year. I also agree...

It depends on what API's they expose and how they expose them. If they are true API's then you shuold be able to use most anything to call the API's. Without more specific it would be hard to guess. Another solution might be a shim. I created a shim for some software that used Tradestation...

Maybe it was that whole Investools deal.

The Alexa ratings are all but useless. If the user does ont have the Alexa toolbar they have no traffic information. About the Alexa Traffic Rankings A listing of all sites on the Web, sorted by traffic... Alexa computes traffic rankings by analyzing the Web usage of millions of Alexa...

I have a friend who is a 15 year veteran market maker and floor trader. He says you can make some money but not much. They are trying to clean up their positions and you bring in new open positions. They realize it is only the scalpers doing this and you will not get very good prices. Somone is...

Define "self sabotage" for the purposes of this discussion. And is this any different from the fear/greed scenarios.

You need to find a good mentor that is an ex market maker / floor trader. No book is going to teach you how to properly trade delta neutral. Avoid any author that is not an ex-MM on the floor. There are many delta neutral strategies but delta neutral becomes delta non-neutral as soon as the...

[Hijacking thread] Anyone attending Traders Expo in Vegas in Nov? If so we should hook.

My experience has been that even on American options they still look at the whole position. If you are assigned then margin comes into play. If you don't have enough in your account the account becomes "Subject to Liquidation". They will step in if they need to but not immediately. In fact they...

TOS has unpublished rates schedules as well. I know because I am on one of them. Once they know you are a trader you can get better rates. I am not opposed to IB but I ran into all sorts of margining issues with IB when it came to options. Maybe they have changed over the last 18 months. As...

Noone does options better than thinkorswim. OptionsXpress is a close second. I would possibly consider Trade King but I have no experience with them. Before considering any broker like IB that looks cheaper, make sure you consider whether they have PDA, web or program access? Do they have...

I know some guys at Liquid Motion and Shadow Trader. They seems to have been sucked through this deal and they are none too happy about it. I know of 2 forms working on deals with TOS for some special programs. Those were cancelled today. It may end up being all good. But the stand back reaction...