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I'm no professional and I share with you, and many who come here to learn, the same frustration. I appreciate the generosity of the smart guys who try to help us understand, but I wish they would show off in a more constructive way by couching their explanations in standard language.

From Oxford dictionaries: Stock Market 1The normal situation in which the spot or cash price of a commodity is lower than the forward price. Often contrasted with backwardation 1.1historical A percentage paid by a buyer of stock to postpone transfer to a future settling day. Origin Mid...

If someone who understands what strike skew is, then asks about the meaning of "contango/backwardation", I think it's visually simple and intuitive for them to see it as an "IV time skew". "Skew" is visual - "structure" is abstract: If I started using "Strike structure" in place of "strike IV...

OK, but for the purpose of explaining "IV contango/backwardation", putting it in terms of skew seem to me to be less abstract and more intuitive; and then it can all be put under the heading of "term structure" without having to give a seperate explanation of "term structure" by comparing it to...

With options there are two kinds of skew: horizontal (time) and vertical (strike) and they are measured in terms of IV. Contango/backwardation refer to horizontal skew: if IV rises with longer dated options, they're said to be in contango. If the short dated have higher IV, that's...

By "consistent" I mean a trader who demonstrates greater/lesser amounts won vs. lost over time - not that they always win or always lose. The hardest part is finding them: once found, following them is no harder than employing sound money management rules. Good traders won't broadcast their...

Haha! You're the one that said it made sense, but that it's still possible to blow up your account! I was using YOUR premise, explaining that with money management that particular risk does not exist. Even if following the consistent winners and fading the consistent losers is a failing...

It's not hard at all, assuming the brokers are competent professionals who use prudent money management.

IV can be thought of as the expensiveness of an option due to the expected volatility of the underlying stock. The underlying stock always has the same resultant volatility, regardless of the exercise price of an option, but for reasons unrelated to volatility, options of different strike prices...

It depends on the timeframe of your trade whether to go with a call or a call fly; the fly doesn't have as much delta; it loses value past 80; and the call sells for more for the simple fact that it's worth more - if it wasn't a fair difference in price, it would be easy money to sell the...

They don't tax paper profits. If options are given to you by a company you work for, that's a different story.

At TradingView there are hundreds of free signal generating systems that always win because they reprint. The only problem is that you need a time machine to use them. I'll bet your signal generator reprints too; that you haven't used it yet or have a lucky few trades under your belt; that...

What about using a mental stop loss to prevent big drawdowns: would the strategy still work alright, or must must it be held to expiration?

Only one is a back spread; the other is a ratio spread.

I took this to be sarcastic humor and was shocked that everyone else believes you're serious - are they correct?

I feel I was paying too much when my broker, Choicetrade, was charging me $5 plus .15/contract plus reg. & exchange fees of about 8 or 9 cents/contract. Now they've offered an alternative of $10/trade for unlimited contracts plus fees. Unfortunately, their platform doesn't handle double...

If a summary says "buy", to follow it means to buy a call - not a put. Indicators work best in trending markets. If you're good at guessing whether the market will be trending or choppy, you can make money by following indicators during trending times and trading against the indicator during...

Those intra-period tops/bottoms would not signal even a non-permanent crossover at those peaks even if there was a rare crossover at the period end, so you will NEVER get out at the top/bottom.

"(OK, maybe not "never" but rarely as far as tops and bottoms go.)" Logically, for MA crossovers, you should always say never.

Didn't you mean "a long call(s) added to a bearish spread"?