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Please take this as friendly advice: You need to read *much* more before you consider selling straddles. You should be intuitively familiar with delta, gamma, and theta, and have a plan for trade adjustments before you get in. If you want to start with some short premium, take a look at Iron...

You're only making 10% per month? Come on... If it were "easy", everyone would be an options trader. If you've gotten 10%/mo with no work, then you're either a genius or using too small of a statistical sample. Both categories of people exist. Soros is one of the former. Most people are...

I've downloaded BOX's equity list and use it as a starting point. Today alone, BOX has saved me tons of money (In two cases, I put a limit buy at the ask and got filled at the bid). Still, that doesn't really answer your question. Tight bid/ask spreads are all too hard to find. :-(

Yeah, and that defense has always worked really well. :-)

Of course. I don't believe it will go up 30%+ however. I have my own statistical model, technical analysis, and fundamentals reinforcing my decision. Still, I could be wrong, which is to your point. I believe I have a 99.999% chance of my .20 sold call expiring worthless. That means...

It depends on how you define "edge", I suppose. I could sell a RMBS 65 call today for .20. I believe I have a 99.999% chance of it expiring worthless in two days. I'd call a >99% chance an edge. The purchaser disagrees, obviously. Options are all about transfer of risk, price action is...

The ultimate is, of course, a La-Z-Boy recliner and a projector hooked up to your computer. If I could figure out a mouse pad solution, I'd set this up in a second!

Pin risk is essentially the "unknown" of whether you will be exercised at expiration. For example, if you have sold a 400 Call on GOOG, and GOOG ends trading on expiration day at 400, will your short call be exercised or not? On Monday, will you end up with short stock? If you do, and GOOG gaps...

I'm not sure I understand the shift in your strategy--you had bad luck with losses on selling premium, so you're going to sell even more premium? Either way, you have to accept unlimited risk in exchange for the odds being in your favor. Strangles require the same management any other...

Many traders get stuck on the "tried and true" (vehicles and strategies that work for us). Getting two traders to agree on what is "tried and true" is all but impossible. So, I'm interested in hearing about other strategies and vehicles that people are using succesfully, including where and...

...And? Good experience? bad? Good liquidity? Good prices? Good interaction with customer service? Good statements?

You're right. I was simplifying a bit, but had not spent much time examining lognormal graphs until you mentioned this. A morsel of useful information in this thread. Wow! I'm sure this won't do any good, but whitster, "Risk Management 101" must take into account the probability of things...

Wow, you're right. It took me the 10th time you said "it's all arithmetic" to really understand how naive I was being. It IS more likely for a stock to double then it is to go to 0! It IS more likely for my sold call to blow out my portfolio then my sold put! As a result of your input, I'm...

It sure is astounding. You're making the claim that a move to infinity "torching your portfolio" is more likely then a move to 0 "torching your portfolio". And that somehow outliers only occur (or are far more likely to occur) in the up direction. This just makes no sense. A 50% up move is...

It's possible, but it's also possible this is purely a supply and demand issue. People buy FAR more index puts then calls (primarily as portfolio hedges), hence put prices go up.

Out of curiosity, in what index and when was there a 10-30% gap down overnight? The biggest move I could find in the last 7 years (on ES, at least) was a 5% gap down on the open after 9/11/01. Since 1/1/00, there were 7 gaps up greater then 1% and there were 6 gaps down greater then 1%...

If distribution were irrelevant, then you have found a secret that no options trading market maker has discovered in the last 30 years of trading options. Since they're willing to sell both puts and calls at roughly the Black-Scholes theoretical price (which assumes even distribution), you...

A naked put or naked call is no different from actually buying or shorting a stock, risk-wise. There is a difference benefit-wise, but that's why the probabilities are strongly skewed in your favor. So, your question is no different from, "is it more risky to be long stock or short stock?"...

You're not a lawyer, are you? :-)

This is all interesting, but I've got to wonder, didn't your lawyer tell you to stop posting? Your continued posts show your hand, risk libel claims, and put you in a public relations fight with a company that has tens of millions to spend on it. Whether or not you're right has really nothing...