well, one could make the argument -
that "understanding markets & trading"
doesn't necessarily translate into being successful (profitable) at trading
What percentage of the trading "teachers" make their living from trading?
marc
Help Needed to Understand Options
- Thread starter CriticalK
- Start date
that "understanding markets & trading"
doesn't necessarily translate into being successful (profitable) at trading
What percentage of the trading "teachers" make their living from trading?
marc
Classic.
Well, that's the thing. You HAVE to go thru many rabbit holes to figure out what works for you. A bad start and you can be in a rabbit hole or dead end playing with voodoo theories. ( I dare to try to give an example or say " the market theory that shall not be named".) Worse loose all your money and then some.
Not all of us would have been lucky to go thru Salomon or Goldman's trader program. Even then. what worked before for them during their hayday may not work now. It takes an incredibly deep understanding of the markets to know where the profits are starting to emerge, and be able to ramp up your expertise to take advantage. Now thats edge.
But without the basics or risk control, Your gonna get fleeced. Go ahead and pay for Sle's next BMW.
Not all of us would have been lucky to go thru Salomon or Goldman's trader program. Even then. what worked before for them during their hayday may not work now. It takes an incredibly deep understanding of the markets to know where the profits are starting to emerge, and be able to ramp up your expertise to take advantage. Now thats edge.
But without the basics or risk control, Your gonna get fleeced. Go ahead and pay for Sle's next BMW.
Ha. I drive a 7-year old Honda minivan, my dogs would not fit into any normal car
On a serious note, your best bet is to go through the following sequence -
(a) read a good book on options basics that includes the details of pricing and ituition of volatility. There are a few of them, I mention the titles above. I keep thinking of posting my "visual options guide", but scanning+editing is too much work for me now.
(b) draw a lot of pictures to explain to yourself what exactly this beast is. First, the payoffs, then the conversion and put/call parity, then delta hedging, then distributions etc. Takes about a day of doodling to get a good hang of it.
(c) play with the pricing model (BS is good enough) ad nauseum to undestand the dynamics and sensetivities. Beware that the role of BS for an options trader is very much like a hand-gun to a military man - you can't expect to shoot too far and be too precise, you can easily shoot yourself, and yet it is the most versatile and useful weapon out there.
(d) now that you know the battle field and the weapon, you should go and try to figure out how to make money. Do some back-testing, regressions etc. Beware, though, that "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy" - you will have to modify your strategy when you start real trading and go though many iterations.