OptionsANIMAL - are they any good

spindr0 said:
Thanks for your assessment of your OptionsAnimal experience.

>> OptionsAnimal is very helpful helping students protect capital with strategies such as the married put and the collar trade. <<

Are these opening positions or legged in positions?

>> I believe that this program is catered to clients with large accounts to take shares as an adjustment. <<

Take shares as in assignment or adjust option positions?

>> One of the most difficult things about this program is that the gains are very small. Most of the Animal Trades are 5% winners. After paying for the education, I was promised by the sales person that I could make my money back in two months after graduation. I do not believe that is possible without betting the farm... I have several friends that are OptionsAnimal students and the money is rolling in for them. <<

If OA recommends trading small and aiming for singles, why are some of your OA friends taking in the money yet you are not? Have they gone rogue? :)
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Great questions. My opening positions are positions that I leg into. This helps to not buy all at once.

I do not trade with a very large account. About 100k. I only trade stocks that I follow and understand such as NVDA, SQ, AMZN, TWTR, FB, SPLK, MELI. Given the risk parameters for OA, I am not going to buy an option to trade AMZN or MELI. It is much more than the 2% account risk. A lot of the stocks that I trade have horrible bid/ask spreads. So this may affect my performance. My friends have much larger accounts and take ungodly risk trading Iron Condors and double diagonals. I do not take dangerous risk.
 
spindr0 said:
What is Gregs fund? Is that the personal money of an instructor or something else?

If one loses money with long stock collars in a roaring bull then there must be some terrible stock selection involved.
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Well, it depends on how wide or tight the collar is. Trading a collar with a combined delta of 20 one is only going to make 20% for every dollar the stock goes up. That will not do much to help one's portfolio grow in a roaring bull market, but I have not seen the results from Greg's portfolio so I do not know if he lost money. He is a great trader, but the market often gets the best of us sometimes.
 
as jeff would say: it depends. there's no formula. i look at the technicals, option cost, am i expecting a quick more or slow grind...yes i had MNST too. stay with it, i rolled my Jun 65 Calls down to June 55. the miss was due to international orders being pushed out. they're killing it.
 
DMckay said:
Well, it depends on how wide or tight the collar is. Trading a collar with a combined delta of 20 one is only going to make 20% for every dollar the stock goes up. That will not do much to help one's portfolio grow in a roaring bull market, but I have not seen the results from Greg's portfolio so I do not know if he lost money. He is a great trader, but the market often gets the best of us sometimes.
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Ask for his performance. He's a good teacher. Whatever he's doing in his collar sure ain't working.
 
rob c said:
as jeff would say: it depends. there's no formula. i look at the technicals, option cost, am i expecting a quick more or slow grind...yes i had MNST too. stay with it, i rolled my Jun 65 Calls down to June 55. the miss was due to international orders being pushed out. they're killing it.
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What was your original trade structure for MNST?
 
Don't mean to split hairs but are you legging into the combo or are you averaging in by buying (or selling) the combos at different prices, eg. increasing position size?

My initial question was geared to what is OA recommending when it comes to long stock collars? Buy all three legs of the collar all at once or take the position in the underlying and then leg into the collar?
 
Yes, a narrow collar will not do much to help one's portfolio grow in a roaring bull market. If the collar can only make 20% for every dollar the stock goes up then it can only lose 20% for every dollar the stock drops. In order for "Greg" to lose money with long stock collars in a roaring bull then either he has a lousy picker or his risk management sucks (take small profits, incur large losses). Or both. He should have under performed but still should have been positive in a roaring bull.
 
spindr0 said:
Don't mean to split hairs but are you legging into the combo or are you averaging in by buying (or selling) the combos at different prices, eg. increasing position size?

My initial question was geared to what is OA recommending when it comes to long stock collars? Buy all three legs of the collar all at once or take the position in the underlying and then leg into the collar?
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The typical OA answer to just about every question is that "it depends". Over earnings, I've seen a few instructors structure a collar trade. Some will buy a put as a part of a collar trade. Some will structure a covered call and then adjust the covered call to a collar trade and honestly it really depends on the market conditions and the equity. The best use for the collar trade is for a bull put gone wrong then one takes the stock and collar. That is the most common recommendation for the collar. I hope that this helps some.

As for Greg, I do not know what he held in his account. A lot of people in the OA felt that the market was overbought last year and some structured trades for a pull back. The pull back did not really happen until this year. That could be one of the reasons his account may have been down. Also, the trades are pretty conservative. Too conservative for my taste.
 
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