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If your broker doesn't let you sell naked calls in a non-IRA account get another broker. Selling naked calls is just as legitimate as selling naked puts. If you see a stock at 27 that you believe is overpriced and think to yourself, "I'll happily short it at 30" then it makes perfect sense to...

Yup, the government pensions are killing us tax payers.

Consider putting some of the money into a carefully chosen business development company (BDC). They are required to pay out most of their income in dividends. PSEC pays 12% right now. Make sure you buy below net asset value. Also consider buying some preferred shares, which act like bonds...

Let's try an experiment. Cut all government salaries by 30%. Cut benefits tied to salaries, such as pensions, by the same amount. See how many government employees depart for the private sector. I'll bet damn few do. Proving that the government is vastly overpaying and doing it with our tax...

To the degree that the market prices in future expectations on a stock that stock shouldn't trend. Yes, I know that stocks often do trend. But that shows that the market is imperfect in seeing the future. After all, if everyone believes that some $20 stock is going to trend upward to $30 in 6...

The problem is not that houses are too cheap now. The problem is that houses were too expensive 3 or 4 years ago and fools bought them anyway.

I could be wrong but my impression is that whatever noise HFT adds to stock prices is on the order of pennies or fractions of pennies. So it doesn't really affect option volatility all that much. Anyhow, it isn't necessarily more profitable to sell high volatility options than low volatility...

Well, I thought that advice was worth about what I paid for it.

I didn't claim that sellindexvol66 is using lots of leverage, that was sonoma's suggestion. For sellindexvol66 to have the long term success he's had it's very clear he must be keeping a careful eye on his worst case loss, so I doubt he's going overboard on leverage. What sort of...

The video is certainly soporific, but it's actual content is sensible. If you're making a directional option trade that has to play out over a month or more it makes good sense to minimize the consequences of time decay and use ITM options. Of course the dreary recitation makes one wonder...

Anyone who want's more margin on short option trades than his broker will give him is begging to get blown up. Be prepared to have to sell your house when the bill comes in.

The expected value, not the probability, is what matters. Sure you can find far OTM options you can sell that will expire worthless 99% of the time, but that 1% of the time they expire ITM might cost you 200 times the premium you received. In that case it still wasn't a good trade. Black...

I'm confused. You were initially short a 650/660 bear call spread (short the 650 call, long the 660 call). To convert that to a butterfly you would need to buy a 640/650 bull call spread (long the 640 call, short the 650 call). that would cost you a net debit. If instead you sold the 640/650...

If options are priced efficiently (and I believe that they usually are) there is no particular advantage to buying or selling them. Sellers have the advantage of time decay, but they take on the gamma risk. Buyers of options may steadily lose money, but to find an option trader who blew up...

The financial industry will move offshore. Manhattan will be a dead zone.

You seem to forget that those who are at their margin limit are already using all the leverage their broker will allow.

Put butterflies and call butterflies at the same strike prices are synthetically equivalent. But as you have seen when you look at the actual prices there can be significant differences that make one preferable to the other. Also, with American options traders usually prefer to be short the...

Is it possible to have a thread in ET without the Jew baiting?

I don't expect you to give away your edge. And is obvious that succeeding in option trading requires hard work. For that matter, it is also very difficult to make money consistently trading futures or stocks. And millions of people with IRAs and 401Ks have learned how hard it is to make money...

I had responded: "I would like to point out that almost all of the "premium" you're selling in this example is intrinsic value, which you capture only if the market makes a large move in the right direction. When people talk about selling premium they usually mean selling time value." I...