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You are comparing apples to oranges. Holding a stock for the long term is investing. Options are for trading/hedging, not investing.

I'm an option trader myself, but I have to disagree with you on your last point, as sometimes the best option is a stock position.

Noone can tell you to forget it. There's no single way or rule of doing things. Options do add more dimensions to trading (namely, volatility and time decay), but they can be dealt with if you understand how options work.

I have used DITM calls with at least 6-9 months to expiration for longer term trend following. The downside, as noted by others, is the wide bid-ask spread, but if you catch a good trend then it's not a big issue.

You do. If you have a short stock position then exercising a call would cover that short.

How do you know what the other person has!? Maybe he/she already has a stock position and is using the option exercise to get out.

Although if you plan on looking at Zeta, you should probably watch out for this guy. :D

Yeah, I would definitely watch out for Zeta!

Basically you are looking for market swings to either sell a call or a put vertical first and then complete the iron condor on the opposite move. You can also leg in using a short and a long strangle, or even build it from 4 separate trades. The key is obviously timing the market correctly...

I would say that if you need to ask this question you are not ready to leg in to iron condors. Please don't get me wrong, legging in requires good market timing skills (at which point you have to ask yourself why then even bother with ICs) and good discipline. I'd say that for a beginner it...

Outrageous! How do they expect people to make money with only 100 to 1 margin!? :D

1. It depends on the intial premium. I generally look to get out if I can lock in 80-90% of the max profit. I also try to get out a few days prior to expiration as you lose (opportunity loss) more in decay in the next month than what you gain in the expiring month. 2. No best time. Generally...

You don't need any special software to know which options have high vega, theta or any other greek for that matter. All Greeks are more or less a function of moneyness and time to expiry. ATM options have high theta and gamma. ITM have high delta, OTM have low delta. Options with more time to...

The settlement value is calculated on the opening print on Friday. The options expire also on Friday.

It doesn't make a difference. The dividends are priced into calls and puts, so the two positions are abolutely identical.

I don't see how a dividend plays a role in this.

That's the nature of premium selling - one bad trade can wipe out months of profits. Obviously the key is to avoid these bad trades by using proper position sizing and risk management.

VIX is based on SPX options so it may be better to compare these two rather than VIX and NDX.

Sometimes in TOS when the strike is not visible in the chains (i.e. you have the number of strikes set to 4, but one of the strikes is further out and it is not visible), it will say "not traded" when you create an order with that strike, even though that strike is traded. So all you have to do...

(1) Yes, if the probability of expiring between the strikes is 23% then the probability of expiring outside is 77%. These probabilities are calculated from the probability distribution (usually assumed to be normal or rather log-normal) based on volatility. (2) There's no set rule on where or...