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Are you trying to acquire the shares or just trying to sell the put and let it expire worthless (or buy it back cheaper)? In my experience, cash secured puts are used on a stock that you want to own at a better than current price. Rather than just throwing a limit order out there, you sell...

Yes, you could write covered calls, but the problem is that for low priced stocks like this, your strike prices are so far apart that you have to go quite a ways out to make it worth your while: the deep in the money calls have almost no time value and the out of the money calls provide almost...

Is this assuming that you actually want to own those shares? If not, unless GSS rose about 40% in the next 2 weeks, if you sold a PUT at $5, you would. Unless, of course, you didn't sell that back at a profit, but it looks like there could be a pretty hefty bid/ask spread with an open interest...

1% a week? I'd say that's a pretty optimistic goal (to be kind). Covered calls work well in slow uptrends (or even in slower downtrends) and range-bound markets, but they hamstring you on big moves up and don't do a whole lot to protect you against downside moves. Options premiums are high...

Well, I would consider any money you've made up until now to be a gift from the market and put a damper on your trading until you come up with a trading plan. It's been basically an elevator ride up for the last 10 months or so. In a nutshell, futures (like options) are just contracts between...

As far as executing simple orders (MKT, LIMIT, etc), IB is pretty much point and click (they have a rudimentary implementation of the standard DOM screen). There are also 3rd party order management systems out that allow you to do more complicated order entry (submit a stop and target order...

You could always switch to futures and avoid the pattern day trader rule completely. If you primarily trade the index ETFs (QQQQ, DIA, SPY), then you basically have the direct crossovers in the e-minis (NQ, YM, ES) and there's plenty of other action to go around as well (gold, oil, etc, etc)...

The option Greeks can significantly reduce your exposure if you are willing to give up some of the initial upside. The ThinkOrSwim platform has a nice little "theoretical price" feature so you can see how the Black-Scholes option model would respond for different moves. This is one of the main...

As with any highly non-linear system, the further you move away from the operating point, the worse your model becomes. I'm skeptical that linear regression can consistently give you an edge (although I'm sure there are those who make it work for them...my hat's off to you, as I never found it...

Perhaps I'm just lazy, bit IMO, you'd be better off just paper trading your ideas in real-time to see how they work. This teaches: 1) patience (need to wait for a setup), 2) how to adapt to changing market conditions as they actually happen (just like you'd do in "Real" trading), and 3) good...

The market reminds me of professional sports (football, hockey, etc). Tens of millions of people follow it. Millions of people know enough to be dangerous. Hundreds of thousands dabble ("weekend warriors") Tens of thousands consider it a serious hobby (played in college, etc). Thousands...

WATCHLIST: 11-03-2009 SP500 getting close to giving a buy signal, so it's a little bit more risky on the short side.

UPDATE: EOD 11-2-2009 Stopped out of LVS (-72R), and I'm glad, since that'll teach me to chase on a gap. Added to MCO Short.

Not exactly sure what you mean by reducing exposure. If you mean hedging your equity position, then things like Long Puts come in to play (example: Long stock, long Put or short stock, long call) or perhaps something like a collar. The leveraging power of a long term option can also reduce...

SETUPS: 11-02-2009

UPDATE: EOD-10/30/2009 Market reversed hard today. NOK hit reversal point and I am now SHORT NOK. MCO hit short. LVS hit long, but this was a terrible entry, basically a "gap and crap"

As a fairly new trader, I actually consider this market to be the perfect learning environment for myself, because it quickly shows you the folly of being lax and un-disciplined. If you don't have a stop: Boom, you're toast. If you over-leverage: Boom, you're toast. If you're throwing out trades...

SETUPS: 10/30/2009

SYSTEM: PYRAMIDING #2 As was demonstrated in the losing trade (WMB), one must pay particular attention to how a position is increased. In this case, I was trying out a new method to make things a bit easier by only using the original entry contract every time I added to a position. This makes...

TRADE ANALYSIS: LOSER(WMB, -1.22R) Short position overrun by the bulls on highly misleading and overly optimistic GDP data. WMB had been performing well and had been added to several times. The stock had declined enough to the point that the 2ATR stop had moved down to basically breakeven...