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Neither is an indication of what fill you would have gotten in an actual trade. You would never trade options with a market-on-open order (unless you were some sort of philanthropist or crazy person), you would trade at some time during the day. If you want a realistic approximation of...

The "box" I took out was simply a 32.5-35 bull vertical spread (short 35P, long 32P) and a 32.5-35 bear vertical spread (short 32.5C, long 35C). It should be pretty intuitive that those two positions cancel out, because they are the exact same play in opposite directions. It's more...

I know you separated it out so it looks like a fly and two ratios, but let's massage it a little. Your ratios include a box, so they're equivalent to: Iron out that flutterby. Add them back together. That's your position in three legs. Probably easier to visualize it now, too...

Probably, since the more stupidity you have the faster your capital goes.

How does that limit your risk? Bear in mind that we're also toying with using Martingale, which is essentially "keep failing more and more spectacularly till the failing stops".

Yes, but you're exposed in both directions, which means that the market is twice as likely to go somewhere that will lose you money.

More to the point, the credit card company is not in the business of providing free dispute resolution services. If they charged an amount they should not have charged (e.g. you never bought the thing, they charged the wrong amount, they mixed up account numbers), they will gladly fix it for...

The problem is, statistically a stock will not move twice as far in two months as it does in one month, because a lot of the random fluctuations cancel each other out. What you find in practice is that you get less premium per unit time as you go farther out. So, not even $2 for the second...

When you're picking up pennies in front of a steamroller, the steamroller only has to win once.

Yes. A diagonal is both horizontal (time) and vertical (price).

When you buy a car, is the cost of a parking space part of your contract with the dealer? Owning anything other than cash costs you money, because you have to put it somewhere, and in the meantime you don't have the cash collecting interest. Exercising an option means giving away the time...

Your maximum loss occurs when your short leg is assigned and your long leg is exercised. That means the worst you can possibly do is exercise your call once you get assigned. You can do better, if your long call is OTM, by selling the call to close and buying shares to cover the short from...

Only short positions can get assigned. Long positions are yours to exercise as you see fit. Theoretically, any short option can be assigned at any time, but in practice you will only be assigned when it is more profitable for the option holder to exercise than to sell.

Serious money gets made by making your company look bad so people buy it? You can't be serious.

Sell them?

Yeah, but casinos know in advance what proportion of big losses they will sustain, and for how much money. Games like blackjack and roulette have such high sample sizes and small maximum losses that they quickly converge to known statistical means. Games like slots with big payouts also...

You have to control risk no matter how you trade options. The tricky part about buying calls isn't the risk, it's the reward. Specifically, you have to be a good enough stock picker that there is some.

Long calls are probably the hardest way to make money trading options. You have to be an excellent stock picker, which is far from simple - even most people who pick stocks for a living can't do it consistently. The only way they're "simple" is that they're a one-leg position, but you can get...

Yes, you basically have to be a reasonably good stock picker, and trade options in such a way that they profit if your prediction is correct. While you may have a high probability of success writing options (selling black swan insurance?), you still have to watch out for very expensive...

If the company is bought for $6 cash, your options will be worth a bit less than $1, with no time premium. If the company is bought for stock, your options will be to buy howevermuch stock was given for 100 ETFC for $500, and will be priced accordingly. That's all theoretical. No company...