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Why rush it? You're just switching from paper to live now. Take your first month slow, so try 1 or 2 IWM and see how things go. If it's working for you, increase slightly each month if you're profitable either as a risk percentage of your account (small like 1-5%) or set a benchmark for the...

Well, I have a friend who was using him and he just told me that the sandp guy just canceled his "premium" room (where the live calls had to generate $5k+ a month or you didn't pay your $500/month fee). His premium room went one month (didn't make the $5k) and he dropped it in favor of keeping...

Might I inquire as to which broker that blotter is from? ThinkorSwim and IB are mighty distinctive, but I don't recognize that one.

If you mean that European options might allow you to sit through a move against you since they can't be exercised, I don't see what advantage that is...you're still in a losing trade on a naked short. If you mean can someone exercise an OTM before expiration when it's still OTM, I see that as a...

That seems a bit over-leveraged, doesn't it? Wouldn't 10 contracts on the RUT/SPY roughly equate to 100 contracts IWM/SPX? Why not start with 10 IWMs and then scale accordingly as you go?

Hopefully this is not intruding on this thread, but since it deals with CL futures, I thought I'd ask if somebody could give me a brief explanation of what "contango" is and why it is good/bad/a big deal. Does it affect you on an intraday basis or just longer stuff? I hear this term thrown about...

And here's the fill: BOT IWM 100 JAN 10 60 PUT @2.57 NYSE, IWM MARK 59.655 (I edit out my position sizes...fill message/format is from emails I get from ThinkOrSwim when an order executes)

So here we go...I'm long some IWM puts with the goal of a short term breakdown. QQQQ, SPY, and IWM are all overbought, but QQQQ and SPY are in a very well defined uptrend and the IWM seems to have lost a bit more steam when compared to the other two. Looking for a bit of a break to the...

Took a nice bunch of time off for the holiday and also revised my trading methods a bit. I've decided to downgrade my "Gooniverse" to a mere solar system and restrict my stocks of focus to a few dozen rather than try to pick from everything. Occasionally a big runner that goes against the...

Gold is only valuable while there is still an infrastructure in place where it can be used as a proxy for other items. In an "Apocalyptic" Depression, lead is far more precious than gold (in 9mm form).

I use covered calls in a 401k account (can't do spreads, buy straight calls/puts, etc). A couple of things I do to make the most of the covered call: 1) Scale in to the underlying position. I like a 50/50 or 60/40 split. 2) Sell some calls upfront and use a fairly close trailing stop to sell...

Given that you actually have live results, it might be worthwhile to backtest your system on batches of data from similar market conditions and compare the two. If they track fairly closely, this should give you more confidence in the robustness of your backtesting method. This would prove...

Two that I like are ERF and O. These pay a monthly dividend and have a semi-decent premium. They are, however, more speculative that your standard blue-chips (being a Canadian Royalty Trust and a real-estate management company, respectively). Caveats are that you pay tax on the Canadian...

Interesting...I've always assumed they're mostly made up, sometimes by those trying to sell you something ("90% of options expire worthless! That's why we sell naked options and make 6000% a week! Only $99.95)

You know the type: -95% fail. -90% of options expire worthless -Markets trend 30% of the time. Etc, Etc, etc. Other than the options expirations (which I would guess could possibly be compiled from CBOE data), does anyone know of some actual case studies (with a decent sample space) or...

I would want to see how the system performs in as many market conditions as possible and the more trades you can make, the better. If you're generating 15 trades a day, that's going to give you a pretty good sample space in a month or two. Since you are trading intra-day, compare how it handles...

You are basically trying to use a form of "collar" with a DITM LEAP as a substitute for the underlying. Perhaps do a search for strategies on trading option collars. Since you are both buying and selling option premium, volatility works against you both ways...no way around that. Your...

He has multiple books on investing/real estate. I read one of his books (Rich Dad, Poor Dad) while traveling for business and it was rather painful. It seemed his entire theme was to get to the level where you could invest with mysterious "hedge funds" Not to mention his complete disregard for...

I get that occasionally when I am running on either the demo server or my paper account. It seems to happen more in the Fri/Sat/Sun time frame, so I'm wondering if they are monkeying around with the system at that time (markets closed). Haven't seen it during open markets on my live account, though.

Currently I'm using the IB datafeed, but I would like to build in provision to switch at a later date, just to keep things flexible. For a "proper" data feed, is the amount of data for your standard futures contracts going to kill you, or is it just the active stocks (QQQQ, etc)? I'm not...