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That one, I believe.

Just because you're halving your delta, that doesn't mean you've halved your position. Selling the vertical creates a new position that happens to reduce delta, but more importantly changes the price range in which you will realize a profit or loss. Supposing you owned two Dec 90 calls...

First of all, the "change" column in option quotes is completely misleading and should be ignored. Options don't trade nearly often enough, and the "previous close" (i.e. the last trade before today) may have occurred weeks ago. Even if the last trade was yesterday, it may not have been at the...

If you're already w**king two jobs, don't even invest in something that requires you to check every day. You don't have time, or likely patience, for that. Buy some common shares of companies you think are undervalued, pay for those shares in full, and forget you own them for a couple years...

Yeah, and we all get free puppies on the third Friday of every month. I'm starting to run out of names for mine. Heh. If only there were such a place.

I don't think you can generalize to that extent. I'm also not a fan of selling half a position. You either believe in the position or you don't. If you believe, hold. If not, close. With options, adjusting the position creates a whole new risk profile. You're not just long or short, you...

That's every call buyer's dream "problem". You think there's more upside available now, but do you think the stock will stay up for five more months? If you do, a fun little adjustment would be to write whatever call is trading at $13 right now. You'll get all your money back, and you'll have...

Allow me to reiterate my advice that you should focus on picking stocks first, and tailor your option strategy to the stock second. There is no single option strategy that guarantees you any level of return. Every single one of them depends on the underlying stock behaving itself in some way...

That's easy. The same as covered calls. See above. Learn about covered calls. I don't mean to offend you, honestly, but 10k isn't nearly enough to have a diversified portfolio of anything. I certainly don't recommend trading options heavily. If you're lucky you'll manage to own 100 shares...

The best way to learn about options is to track down some beginner's reading material on the intertubes, and read it. Understand what you can from it. Then, paper trade. See how options behave when the stock moves, and as time progresses toward expiration. When something happens that you...

I think I see why covered calls look so attractive to you. Someone, somewhere told you that you could eat your cake and still have it. This is fine, but it's very w**k-intensive, and every time your stock goes down you will have to decide whether you think it's coming back up or not. A...

That's a problem for me too. The key is finding a solid underlying issue and choosing your strike price wisely. Still, I write naked puts and I had some pretty serious drawdowns in August. Got the margin violation warnings to prove it. When reward is limited and risk is large, the only way...

See, this is the problem I was talking about. People always focus on the strategy, and not the stock. Almost every equity mutual fund out there is a "buy stocks" fund. Some of them do well. But they don't do well because "buy stocks" is a good investment strategy. They do well because they...

That's the trick. Sustaining a covered call (or naked put) portfolio more or less depends on the stock trading in a relatively narrow range. If it goes up too high, you still get your profit but you lose your shares and need to either chase the stock higher (for added risk) or research another...

There's no reason to be a cistard about it. Knowing the multiplier of a particular series of options has nothing to do with one's ability to trade them. Lower multipliers just mean you can trade more contracts. For example, I know plenty about trading equity options, and I have years of...

If by "hedging" you mean buying puts corresponding to the stocks you own, I agree it's expensive and not worth it. If you own shares and puts on the same underlying, that's equivalent to owning the call with the same strike and expiry. If you think of it that way, it's a portfolio you would...

Brokers don't charge you interest for margined positions. They charge you interest for borrowing cash. If you don't have a negative cash balance in your account, you won't pay interest. I'm with IB too. I have a bunch of margined positions every month, and they pay me interest on my positive...

With all due respect, coach... Most ordinary investors can safely ignore the minus sign in front of put deltas. If you're computing the net delta of a many-legged position, it's important to get the signs right. If you're trading long/naked puts or simple combos, don't bother. Focus on the...

Thanks, Spin. That other board was like watching one monkey on a thousand typewriters. Moderated boards make me happy. More wheat, less chaff.

What's hard to believe is that there is an imbalance of prices. Why? Because in the time it took you to ask us how many contracts to trade, someone else would have pounced on it (because hey, free money), and the resulting volume would have driven the price back where it belongs. Nobody is...