Quote from newguy05:
The bottomline is you need to be good at predicting the stock movement (technical analysis, find the correct support/resistance etc..) before even thinking about option writing. Otherwise you will just lose more money quicker than buying stocks.
I lost decent amount of cash when first started, but am doing ok now. If you have to write naked options:
1) Pick stable stock that trade within range with very clear historical support/resistence level. For example pharm stocks and chinese stocks are bad ideas in general as they have a tendency to zap around quickly
2) Do some fundamental analysis to make sure the company is solid. For example, leh or gs instead of c.
3) Pick a strike that's 15%-30% lower / higher than the support / resistence
4) Never go further out than 2 expiration dates
5) BE PATIENT! if the stock support is 45, resistence is 60, DO NOT write when it is trading around 50 for example. Wait until it hits support or resistence
6) Research the overall market. Is it in a strong bull run that may break the resistence? Any news on the period before your option expires that may impact large moves (such as the fed announcements etc..). Any company news that may impact price moves
7) Once all of that is done, and the option is still not filtered out, then look at how much premium you will get (percentage ratio to stock price). If it's less than 1.5% or $0.3, it's usually not worth it.
8) After trade is done, put in stop loss in case of free fall.
9) Monitor the stock daily, any significant change in market sentitment or stock fundamental, cut your loss and sell.
Anyway it's a lot of work, options seem like such easy money until you try it then realized it's actually a lot more risky to make the cash than stocks.
I think options on index futures is a lot better alternative, too bad it's so difficult to find the data/knowledge that we took for granted on stock options. Been a pain in the ass to research