Back to trading - willing to work for near-free

@cold_option Think twice about trading US markets from your time zone. While it is doable, it’s generally not sustainable long term.

I totally agree that having a mentor is very useful, but realistically no one is going to waste his time mentoring a stranger on regular basis. Although I’m sure that there are exceptions to everything.

If you want to go back to options, then Dan Sheridan’s mentoring is genuine. I joined his group (life-time access) more than a decade ago, and I can vouch for his Delta neutral strategies. He’s mainly using greeks to manage his trades, he does’n care about market direction. These days he’s more into shorter time frame strategies, and but it’s hard to hard to control the Gamma if you’re in Australia.

Alternatively, you can buy Charles Cottle’s material, he is also very good, he’s more into directional trades, focuses on dissecting butterflys to assess where the risk and value is. His insights are exceptional, but you’ll need to have a directional bias. With his style you can put on fairly stable structures which you could manage on EOD basis

Forex can be a pain in the butt to trade, personally think it’s one of the hardest markets to trade consistently. FX can really test your psychological weaknesses. In my opinion, there are not that many good FX traders, but there are many FX “mentors” who will happily take your money. What works very well on FX are strategies based on supply and demand and understanding order flow . . . something that you could explore to see if it talks to you.

Be careful with people offering you jobs and mentorships. Hiring a new wannabe trader is usually not worth the headaches. However, having a good mentor can be a huge advantage. (the keyword is good)
 
@coldplay_option I agree with @PPC but wanted to add a couple of more legit sites. I'm strictly trading options, I day trade short SPY options a lot. I do a lot of short puts or hedged puts (put credit spreads) depending on the account I'm in. Earnings straddle/strangles, calendars and various other trades. I'm presently looking at some weird OTM put broken wing butterflies that started with something called the Road Trip Trade and have been added to over time, not sure they are that great but I'm working on them to see if I can add another trade to my style.

I've been on Steady Options for over 3 years, the forum/education is phenomenal and I'm still learning from the site and the forum, their official trades have a good record and for me have more than paid for the membership, which is very reasonably priced compared to others. I know there are several members at SO that are in Australia. No snake oil there.

Also, I mentored with Stan Freifeld at McMillan Options, I chose McMillan because I have used his big book for 20 years (I've only traded full time for 5) so I went to there for mentoring, it was expensive. I took the big course, it was $10k and I went back for the small one for $5k, both of which had trades to do that paid for the course. Stan retired, so I don't know who took his place, but I think McMillan is a legit site. I didn't find the newsletters to be worth the price after I finished the mentoring, you get a bunch of them free with the course, but they are expensive otherwise. Note: I have read that others felt they got a bum deal from Stan because his approach was heavy on theory and they wanted strategy, but I wanted the theory.

@PPC Thanks for dropping names (Sheridan and Cottle), I had forgotten they existed and am always looking for more learning. The challenge and keeping my mind active is very important to me, but of course being profitable trumps those, I have the time, I'm retired.
 
It's true that no one today is going to mentor without a reason, at least not successfully, but if that reason is to train them to run a pool for a fund or a pool for arbitrage it changes the dynamics, unfortunately the old school have all retired or left the game, look at Gartman which was always a fun read.

Now if it also coincides with the fact that hedge funds, crypto funds, arb funds the past years cut corners making everything non-transparent and the agencies come along expecting those funds to have transparency, then they need something a little more concrete rapidly to provide investor visibility via trained talent.

But that means all the work was done months and years before to plan for those events, that's a lot of "if's" to coincide all at once, the days of mentoring for private traders are essentially gone, return on investment is too low, you can expect any that are still running to progressively fade away.
 
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@PPC after looking more and more into FX, i feel i will be more at ease with Options with EOD type trading. I did previously recollect going to Dan Sheridan's as someone else referred me to.... should have taken the full course then. Will revisit closer this time.
@Ringandpinion thanks for the heads up re Steady Options. I did get burnt a few times with straddles around earnings after I over-consumed vids from TastyTrades. I guess i need to re-focus and engage in new strategies than just learning off videos.

Thanks heaps for all leads. .
 
Messing around with multi-legged option spreads during your sleeping hours is not fun, especially in a fast-moving market, and fast markets will come.

If you’re in Australia, then you should have access to CFDs, right? Why don’t you trade CFDs on large liquid US major caps where there is a large liquidity so you can use contingent market orders?

The advantage with CFDs is that the leverage can be used to diversify risk (gaps against you) by trading smaller positions in but in more vehicles. Avoid using CFDs to take on more risk!

On a side note, futures markets are not correlated with equities, and there should be CFDs on futures markets. For example, agriculture, silver and gold should do well over the next few years, and maybe trading these and other futures markets through CFDs could be a possibility.

Just a thought, there are no short cuts to success. There is no easy money in the market.

Just be aware that most traders are just transferring their issues from one market to another (been there done that myself).
 
This is how it works in reality, the reference benchmark is 7-10%pa (for professionals it's 15-20%pa), with CFDs at that level you cannot offset the costs, with access to fintech, algos, knowledge, experience you can increase the returns profile up to 10x, once you have your own experience of 1,000hrs you can increase that number again by another factor.

With Stocks the 'end number' is the Yearly return, with Futures it becomes the Quarterly return due to leverage, with Forex it becomes the Monthly return due to even more leverage, everyone is selling the last number without the fintech, without the knowledge base, without the experience, and without the leverage complexities.

The only way it works is if you have $100,000s capital which you expose to the markets at 7-10%pa, or you are being trained to be a fund manager, an analyst, an arbitrage specialist.
 
@alistera I think you’ve been hanging around too much with academics. Please don’t brainwash others by posting things about which you don’t have any understanding, and I do mean this in a very respectful, and not in a condescending way.

Also, just because you and/or the people you know cannot make decent returns, it doesn’t mean that others cannot either, i.e. correlation of your results and "knowledge of reality" does not equal causation.
 
There is nothing respectful about it, apart from the detail that every fact you quote is fundamentally wrong says it all for anyone with experience, unfortunately those less experienced or lacking success will believe your hyperbole, it is the way of the world today :D
 
@alistera I've seen your other posts in different threads having a go at me and at other forum members. On behalf of myself and others that you've attempted to ridicule in the past, you should take on board the following:

Self-appointed gurus like you often have insatiable need to bolster their fragile egos by relentlessly brainwashing others without realizing that they have the clarity of a New York sewer after thanksgiving. A theme you've demonstrated on this forum over and over again.

Maybe you could drop your ego down a notch or two, and post something constructive with an intention of actually helping fellow forum members, and without passive agressivity and without embedding your craving for significance into your posts. Otherwise you should take your hidden egoistic agendas and your counter-transference to a therapist clinic.

Subject closed. Time to move on.
 
Yeah I do have the CFD route but had been coy on margin call/leverage hence stayed with Options so far. I take due note on your remarks on Commodities which i haven't explored at all TBH....
 
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