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How Earnings Season Affects OptionsAs most of you are aware, it is earnings season. So today we’re going to talk about how earnings season can impact options trading, because, as you know, I trade options. Now, just a brief intro. Earnings season happens quarterly, meaning four times a year, and this is when corporations reveal their financial results for the previous quarter. Now, the results of a company’s earnings report can have a major impact on the stock price, and options will often price in the expectations for a big post-earnings move before the event. This is why it is likely that options premium are more expensive during this time. Implied Volatility One thing to know about this and how it can impact your trading is implied volatility. See, there several things that make up an options price, including the market’s expectation for future volatility, and that is called implied volatility. So why is this important? Well, as the buyer of an option, higher implied volatility means that you are paying more for your contract. So if you buy an option before earnings and hold through earnings, you put yourself at risk for a so-called volatility crash. Now, part of the reason implied volatility goes up so much ahead of earnings is because traders don’t know which way the stock is going to go or by how much. I mean, remember Netflix at the beginning of March? Who would have known that Netflix would soar 17%? But you see, once a company reports earnings, there is no more uncertainty, and this is when implied volatility drops, and in some cases, so does the options price. So if you bought an expensive option, there’s a chance that you have to sell it to close at a lower price even if a stock moves in the direction you want it to. And let me show you a very, very specific example of a volatility crash and why it is so important that you understand the concept of volatility and how it can impact your options trading. So I want to show you right here we see Seagate. Seagate reported earnings last week. And so here is the pre-earnings options data. The day before Seagate, STX, was trading at $61.45, and an At-The-Money call with a 61.50 strike price was going for the last traded price of $1.74, and the implied volatility was 128%. On the other hand, the put was going for $1.82 and the implied volatility was also 128%. Now, this was the day before earnings. Now let’s talk of what happened the day after earnings. So again, here Seagate was trading at $61.45 before earnings, but then the next day, Seagate dropped to $59.33. So it fell dramatically and therefore, and the price of the 61.50 call is only a penny. So it’s not surprising that the call is not worth anything, but here’s the key. Even though the stock fell quite substantially, the put only went from $1.82 to $2.51 so it went up because puts go up as the stock goes down. So this means that the put only went up to $0.70, $0.69 to be exact. You see this is how the volatility crash affects the option price, because even though the put is worth more now, and is now in the money, but it also lost a lot of value due to the decline in implied volatility. See, the previous day, it was 128%, this implied volatility, and the day after only 96%. So you have to factor this in when trading options into earnings. How Is Implied Volatility Measured? So let’s talk about this implied volatility thing and how is this measured, right? You know me, I’m all about practical stuff, so I don’t want to bore you with the math behind it and I don’t have to. The good news is that there are plenty of places online that calculate the implied volatility for you, and I want to show you exactly how you can see if the implied volatility, is high, low, or average. Here is the easiest way to do it. You compare the implied volatility to the stock’s historical volatility for exactly the same time frame. The implied volatility measures the market expectation for future price action. Now, the historical volatility measures the volatility for a stock that already occurred over a specific time frame. All you have to do to see if the implied volatility is high, low, or average compare it to the historical volatility. We can use the implied volatility of AAPL Apple’s Q1 earnings season. Apple was trading at 142. For an at-the-money call, expiring in four days, the implied volatility was 71%, and for the put was 70%. The historical volatility of Apple. And this is something that you’re charting software can show you, it makes sense to look at it in 10, 20, 30, 40 days increments. So if we were to look at the past 10 days, the historical volatility was 37%. But the call was trading at 71%. So what does it tell us? It tells us that the premium on this call, and also on the put, was running more expensive than usual. So now we can see, how this is affected by earnings. Now, let’s take a look at the implied volatility of an at-the-money Apple call from the same time that expired later out at, let’s say March 19th. So for calls expiring March 19th, you see right now the implied volatility is much, much, much lower at 43% for the call, and 43% as well for the put. The historical volatility over the past 60 days was 40.69%. Now compare this to the 43% and we see that it is pretty much in line here. So this means that the premium that was on these calls and puts on options that had 53 days until expiration was pretty much average. Why You Shouldn’t Sell Options Into Earnings Options traders are always talking about implied volatility and historical volatility, and now you know what it is. Now I want to tell you why I don’t sell options into earnings. I mean, even though the stock moves in the direction that you want to, your option premium is getting sucked out of there because of the volatility crash. You see, and this where, as an option seller, you might say, “don’t I want the premium to be as high as possible?” and yes, of course, you do. But let me make you very clear why I don’t sell options into earnings. If you have been following me for a while, you know that I love trading the Wheel, and as part of this strategy, we are selling options. Well you see, earnings plays are hit-and-miss. Sure, everybody can get lucky and most people who start trading expect their account to explode from one or two big trades. This is where we have some stocks that are jumping just dramatically. Looking at Intel, INTC over the last three earnings. Huge gap down right when we had earnings, then there was another earnings play, and Intel really crashed down hard again. Then also here during the last earnings season, initially, Intel went up but then started crashing down. You see, some people like these earnings plays because they believe the hype that they can make a lot of money with very little work involved, but see, trading just doesn’t work this way because, in reality, the key to becoming successful in trading is consistency and growing your account systematically. That’s what I mean when I talk about generating SRC profits, right? SRC is an acronym that stands for Systematic because I like to trade what I see and not what I think. This is why I use indicators and have a trading strategy that tells me when to trade, what to trade, when to enter and when to exit. The R stands for repeatable and by trading my plan, I’m able to find repeatable profit-making opportunities. The C in SRC profit stands for consistency. You see, I’d rather make slightly less money more often than biting off all my nails waiting for a big winner. As you know, part of my systematic approach to trading is to use The Wheel Strategy and the PowerX strategy. Now, especially with The Wheel strategy that, where I’m trading right now with you here, the idea is to get paid while you wait to buy the stock, and because I’m collecting premiums on the puts that I sell, I’m looking for stocks with higher volatility, right? This means making more money, and as a rule of thumb, I look for stocks with an IV, implied volatility, of at least 40%. The Wheel strategy can relatively safely produce profits, but I don’t recommend you to trade into earnings, at least that’s not what I do. So I will not target options with an expiration date that includes the company earnings report. I am trading options before we are running into earnings. So this is why I think it is very important that you know when trading options, whether it is buying or selling, that you don’t trade into earnings. At least that’s what I do because earnings are a wildcard and there’s just too much uncertainty. Remember, I’m not looking for fireworks here, I’m looking to systematically grow my account through consistent and repeatable strategies. Where To Check For Earnings Now, I want to give you two more resources, if you want to see for yourself who is reporting and when. These are two websites that are pretty cool that I personally use. So the first one here is “stock earnings.” If you go to stockearnings.com or they even have stocksearning.com, they will show you see the notable earnings that are coming up this week. Now, another one that many people like to use is earningswhispers.com. So that’s another great source for finding out when companies will report earnings because this way you can make sure that you’re not trading right into earnings. It’s always good to know when they report earnings if you have any open positions, whether you’re buying stocks or selling stocks so that you’re not caught off guard. So I hope that this helped you to see how earnings impact option prices and why I never sell options into earnings.
NASDAQ:INTCEducation
by rockwelltrading
Trading For A Living: How Much Money Do You Need?In this article, we’ll talk about how much money you need to trade for a living. I’ll share with you my three-step approach and give you an example from my trading account. “How much money do you need to trade for a living?” is one of the most frequently asked questions I get. “Can I start with $5,000 dollars, do I need $25,000 dollars, or maybe even more?” You see, this is a super important question. Now, here’s the deal. There’s no standard answer because making a living is different for everybody. Some traders can live on $5,000 a month. For others, trading for a living means making at least $15,000 a month. Let’s talk about step number one. How Much Do You Want To Make Each Month? Step number one is figuring out how much money you want to make per month. This is the first thing determining what your income goal should be, and it really depends on a few different factors. For example, what are your monthly expenses? How many dependents rely on your income? That’s different for every trader. Additionally, what income do you need to buy cool stuff like cars, boats, whatever it might be? These are just a few examples of what should be taken into account when you figure out how much income you need to generate every month. Now, as boring as this sounds, it definitely helps to make a budget. You don’t have to account for everything, but you should list your major expenses. So in your budget, there should be, for example, expenses for housing. In housing, you include your mortgage, your insurance, your taxes, and expenses for your house maintenance. The next thing to account for is transportation. Unless you’re using a helicopter, for most people this is a car payment or a lease. This also includes car insurance. The next major category is food. Food includes groceries and also restaurants. Now, the next major category is utilities such as gas, water, power, Internet, TV, phone insurance. Some of you also buy your own health and life insurance. You also need to consider any medical expenses like co-pays. The next one is a fun one, travel and entertainment. Where do you want to travel? How often do you want to travel? What else do you do for entertainment? You have to factor these activities in too. This next one is not so fun. This is of course the dreaded taxes we have to pay. Now you need to add all of this up and you will get to a number, which is the amount you need to make each much to cover your expenses. For me personally, this number is $15,000. So you know what my number is, and I’ll show you how I trade for a living so that I can make this $15,000. What Is The ROI of Your Trading Strategy? Now that we have figured out what your number is, it’s on to step number two: factoring in the return on investment, or ROI, of your trading strategy. I like to trade the PowerX Strategy, and I also like to trade The Wheel Strategy. These are my two favorite strategies, and for both strategies, I want to see at least 30 percent ROI based on my buying power. Let me explain what this means. As an example, let’s figure out 30 percent of my buying power. I’m trading a margin account and this means that I can borrow up to 100 percent of my cash from my broker. Let’s say I were to put $20,000 in cash in this account. $20,000 in cash into a margin account would give me $40,000 in buying power, so back to my ROI, the return on investment. I want to see at least 30 percent based on my buying power. So in this example here, if my buying power is $40,000 and we want to find out what 30% would be, we take 40,000 and multiply it by 0.30. This comes to 12,000, so this means that I want to make at least $12,000 per year with $40,000 in buying power in a margin account. To find the ROI based on the cash I put in, which is $20,000, we take the $12,000 (profit we would make with margin) and divide by $20,000 (cash I put in), this comes to 0.60, or 60 percent ROI based on cash. I know this sounds like a lot of numbers, but here’s the good news. This is the most complicated step. Now, I know that for some of you 30% sounds low, doesn’t it? I know that most traders would like to see 50% or more ROI, maybe even 100–200%. But you see for me, it’s more important to be able to generate SRC profits which stand for systematic, repeatable, and consistent. I’ll take 30% in SRC profits any day over 100% in irrational profits trading stocks like GameStop. For me, 30% is good enough to support my lifestyle, but hey, every trader is different, just make sure that you use YOUR number. By the way, if you don’t know your ROI yet, trade your strategy on a simulator first. After 40 trades on a simulator, you will get close to your strategy’s ROI. Determining Your Account Size Let’s move on to step number three because now things get exciting. So step number three is where you use a formula to determine your account size, and I want to give you the formula right now so that you can plug it in. Everything that I do is very, very systematic. Now you know how much income you must make every month, this was step number one. For step number two, you learned how to figure out how much ROI you can expect from your trading strategy. Here is a very simple formula that you can use to calculate how much you should have in your trading account so you can generate the amount of money every month that you determine. In order to determine the buying power you need in your trading account, all you need to do is take the desired annual income that you determined in step number one and divide it by the expected ROI that you determined in step number two. Let’s say that you want to make $10,000 per month. If you want to make $10,000 per month, that would be $120,000 per year. For some, this might be very realistic. So this is step one where you used a budget to figured this out. For step number two, say you’re using either the PowerX Strategy where you can easily make 30% a year, or you’re using The Wheel Strategy which can also help you to make 30% per year. You have determined that you can make 30% per year based on your buying power. Here’s how you would figure out how much buying power you need in your trading account. Your buying power should equal $120,000 desired annual income divided by 0.3 (30% ROI). This means that you need $400,000 in buying power in your account. Now, $400,000 in buying power would mean if you’re using a margin account, you only need $200,000 in cash. This might be more than you expected, and that’s okay. You can actually trade for growth in the beginning. I just want to show you what your goal needs to be if you have a smaller account right now so you know at what level you can actually start trading for income, and at what level you can quit your job. Have Realistic Expectations If right now you’re looking at this example here and you currently have $10,000 or $20,000 in your account, that is really good, but don’t quit your job just yet. I like to keep it real, right? With me, it’s real money, real trades, and also realistic expectations. Well, that is possible if you have a decent-sized account, but let me cover another example so you can see how simple the formula is, and how it works in action. The Numbers In Action So let’s say in step number one you determine, like I did, that you want to earn $15,000 per month, $180,000 per year. Now, again, we are assuming that we’re using The Wheel Strategy and the PowerX Strategy, which gives me 30% ROI per year. Here’s how I determine how much buying power I need to have in my account in order to make $15,000 a month consistently. Again, we take our desired annual income, which is $180,000, divided by 0.3. So that would be $600,000 in buying power. Now, $600,000 in buying power means that you need to have, if you’re using a margin account, $300,000. This is how this worked out for me. At the beginning of the year, on January 11th, 2021, I put $250,000 in cash into a margin account, and this gave me $500,000 in buying power. So $500,000 in buying power, and at the time of this writing on April 26, 2021, my profit thus far this year is $72,908 in REALIZED profits. This means that on average, over the past four months, I made $18,277 per month. Now, my goal was to make, as I told you earlier, $15,000 per month, which means my goal would have been to make $60,000 in a 4-month span. Since I’ve earned $72,908 over the past four months, this means I’m overachieving this goal. This is the important thing because the question is “how much money do I need to trade for a living?” Summary As you can see it’s quite easy to calculate the money that you need in your trading account to trade for a living. However, it is completely unrealistic to open an account with $5,000 and expect to trade for a living, unless making a living means making $125 per month. And I know that there are many people who tell you that you can start with $5,000, and then they do some magic math and tell you they can show you how to turn that $5,000 into a million dollars within a year. This just isn’t realistic. It’s probably not what you want to hear, but I know that this is what you need to hear. The good news is, if your account is not large enough yet to trade for a living, that’s absolutely fine. You can trade for growth and use money management to grow your account. The main difference when you’re trading for income vs trading for a living as I do is, every month I wire profits out of my trading account into my personal checking account. While you’re trading for growth, you keep all of the profits that you make and keep them in your trading account. If you’re still at a smaller account, that is absolutely fine, but now you know what level you need to get. If you’re here right now and you need to get there, then during this time you might need other sources of income. I wanted to do this article to show you a really simple formula so that you can determine how much money you need in your account to trade for a living. Remember, it is possible to make a living trading. It is possible, it is doable. Just have realistic expectations and a plan.
TVC:VIXEducation
by rockwelltrading
2
Why 90 Percent Of Traders Lose MoneyYou might have heard this, “90% of traders lose 90% of their money in the first 90 days of trading.” This is known as the 90/90/90 rule. I don’t even know if this is true, but it seems that a lot of traders are losing money. So this is why today, we’re going to talk about what causes most traders to lose money. Then I’ll give you practical tips on how to avoid it so that you can be part of the few that actually make money with trading. What Do You Need To Become A Successful Trader? There are three things that you need to really become a successful trader. If you’re missing even one of these things, you already have a big problem. So let’s start, with the first thing you need. This is the most important thing that a trader needs and this is a trading strategy. Now, there are traders out there who are trading without a strategy, and the number one reason that I see traders fail is they don’t have a trading strategy. A trading strategy tells you what to trade, when to enter, and when to exit. So as you can see, a trading strategy doesn’t have to be super complicated, but you need to know what to trade. Here is what I see many traders doing since they don’t have a trading strategy. They are going for the flavor of the day, and the flavor of the day might be something that Jim Cramer is saying, something that Cathie Wood, the famous, or infamous hedge fund manager of Ark Investments is saying, or maybe something that they read in the news. This is the worst thing you can do. I’ve been talking a lot to traders, or not really traders, but people who are getting started in the market, and I ask them, “what are you trading right now?” They usually just name the most popular stocks that are being traded. These are stocks like TSLA , AAPL , AMZN , and NFLX . Then recently, as you know, with the GME hype, the GameStop hype, a lot came up there. But you see, if you’re not trading with a strategy, you are not a trader, you are a gambler. Now the second important piece that you need as a trader is that you need to have the right tools, and I can’t stress this enough. Here’s the deal, if you want to compete in what they call the game of games, if you want to really make it as a trader, you need to have professional tools. Think about it this way, if you only have a strategy without a tool, it’s like trying to win NASCAR riding on a lama, right? I mean, it doesn’t work this way. So it is super important that you have the right tools. You can’t win a car race on a lama or on a donkey, you get the idea, right? The third thing you need to be a successful trader is having the mindset. So you see, you can have the best strategy, you can have the best tools, but if you don’t have the right mindset, you will lose money. You see, in fact, I see it all over. Sometimes people think all they need is the right tool, and they will be successful traders. Or they think all they need is a trading strategy and they will be a successful trader, but that’s not the case. The reason why traders fail is not having the right mindset is because they let emotions get the best of them. The two main emotions that we have as traders are greed and fear. I mean, obviously, we are greedy. We want to make money this is why we get into this game of trading in the first place, at least that’s why I started trading. But then there’s also the fear, the fear of losing money, but you got to be able to control these emotions. We will talk about losses in a moment, but one of the challenges, because of greed, traders will often trade too often, meaning that they are overtrading. Have you ever been guilting overtrading? It happened to me at the beginning of my trading career. I remember when I was still a young trader and new to the whole trading game somebody told me, “if you want to make it as a trader, you have to take at least 100 trades a day.” This person was probably a broker because I tried this, and it is impossible. I traded on a one-minute chart, tried to make 100 trades a day, and I found it just didn’t work this way. Then there is revenge trading. Revenge trading is something that I did in the beginning because I thought, after I took a loss was the time for me to make back the money that I lost. Something important that you need to understand is that the market doesn’t owe you anything. Sometimes the markets give, and sometimes the markets take away. So this is why revenge trading is something that you need to avoid at all costs. The good news is in the long run, usually, the market likes to give, at least to those who are serious. You must understand that losses are part of our business as traders, and it is sometimes really easy to become overconfident. However, whenever you think that you have the markets figured out, is when the market is going to throw you a curveball. There will be always surprises and situations that you have never encountered. Some call these black swan events. Often what I see is that many traders who are new to trading simply focus on the wrong things. Most young or new traders focus mostly on the entry. They think if they can just time the entry, this is when they’ve figured it all out. Well news flash, money is made and lost when you exit a trade. So timing the exits is almost more important than timing the entries. Sometimes traders focus on just having a strategy with a high winning percentage, but this is another mistake. You don’t need a high winning percentage. In fact, you can make money with trading even if you’re wrong half of the time. The magic happens actually when all three things are coming together. So how can you do this? I want to share a little bit with you about what I am doing. Well, first of all, let’s talk about trading strategies. The Trading Strategies First of all, what you need to understand is that there is no “best” trading strategy. It amuses me actually when people argue with me about this. People will ask me what will you do if this or that happens. Well, you see this is where I’m not saying that you should trade my trading strategies. I show you what I personally do, and how I’m making enough money to trade for income to trade for a living, and let you make the decision if it’s right for you. I can’t tell you if my strategies are right for you or not, but I can tell you there is no “best” trading strategy. Either a trading strategy is making money or it doesn’t, right? So if a strategy is making someone money, I would never, ever criticize anybody who is making money with that strategy. Who am I to say you’re doing it wrong? When it comes to the strategies I use, sometimes people ask me, “why do you do it this way? Why don’t you do it the other way?” and I’ll be happy to explain to you why I do certain things. It’s always interesting to see that some people feel that I need to become a better trader, and I appreciate your concern for me, but I’m actually doing pretty good. A trading strategy must fit YOU. It must fit you in terms of capital requirements. There are some trading strategies that you can start with as little as $5,000. There are other trading strategies that require more money. So you need to make sure do you have enough money for this particular trading strategy. The other thing might be time requirements. Some trading strategies require you to sit in front of the computer all day long. Now, this is not for me. I personally like to watch the markets for 10 or 15 minutes before they open, and then for 30 minutes after they open. So personally my own trading is usually just 45 minutes in the morning. Now, fortunately, I don’t have a job, I have nothing else to do but watching the markets, this is why I do it. However, some of the trading strategies that I trade, actually don’t require you to watch the markets at all. So there are time requirements to consider, there are capital requirements to consider, but then also possible drawdowns you need to keep in mind. Without risk, there’s no return. No risk, no reward. See, if you don’t want to take any risks at all, and make sure that you never, ever lose any money, then you should put your money into a savings account. In a savings account your money will be safe, right? But it also earns only about a quarter percent right now. So if you want to make more money with trading, then you have to risk some money. So there’s a fine line regarding the risk and rewards ratio. So you need to be aware of the risk, and the more risks you’re willing to take, the higher the rewards will be. But keep this in mind when you’re looking at a trading strategy, there are a few things where it might make sense for you to trade the strategy or it might not make sense for you to trade the strategy. The PowerX Strategy There are two trading strategies that I like to trade, and the first strategy is the PowerX strategy. Now, for the PowerX strategy, there are a few criteria here according to whether or not it's the “best” strategy. So, first of all, the PowerX strategy is great for a trending market, and it doesn’t really matter if the market is trending up or down as long as it trends. It does not perform well in a sideways or in a choppy market. This is what we are having right now, and this is why right now I am not trading the PowerX strategy as much as I used to last year when we did have trending markets. Now, trading with the PowerX strategy requires a minimum of $5,000. So if you have five to $10,000, that’s actually perfect to get started with the strategy. If you have less than this, I don’t think that this strategy is for you. Honestly, I don’t know a trading strategy that you could trade with less than $5,000. This is where I’m not claiming that I have the best trading strategies. I have trading strategies that I personally have traded for many, many, many years that have stood the test of time and that are proven to make money, at least for me. Now the PowerX Strategy is perfect for growing a small account, and here is why. With the PowerX strategy, you can apply money management, and money management is the turbo boost in your account. It can help you to take your trading to the next level. Now in terms of time requirements, when we talk about this, it takes around 15 minutes per day and you can do this absolutely while the markets are closed. So if you have a demanding daytime job that doesn’t allow you to step away and look at the markets, then actually The PowerX strategy is perfect for you. Again, it does have some limitations so it doesn’t work all the time. So you need to know when to use this strategy. The Wheel Strategy The other trading strategy that I like to trade is The Wheel Strategy. So the Wheel Strategy is perfect for a market that going up, going sideways, even when it is choppy, or when the market is slightly going down. It is not good for a bear market where the market is going down. So you need to know when to apply what strategy. This is where, in the same way as you have multiple tools to fix the home, you need to have multiple trading strategies. So here, when you’re trading The Wheel Strategy, it is an options trading strategy only. Here specifically, you are selling premium. So this is where you could have a large drawdown, which is possible if you’re stuck in a position, as I am right now. I am stuck actually in two positions. So let me show you the two positions that I’m stuck in. One of them is AAPL , I bought it at 133. Right now, it is trading at 120, so I’m losing $13 per share that I own and I own 800 shares. So the question is, are we in a bear market? No, we are not in a bear market right now. Not at all. We are somewhat in correction territory, and correction territory is when a market is going from the top from the recent high to down more than 10%. That is how a correction is defined. According to the Nasdaq, we’re clearly in a choppy market. Since the beginning of the year, we have been grinding higher, coming back, going up, going sideways. In fact, year to date, the Nasdaq is down .37%. So pretty much haven’t moved since the beginning of the year, but we are not in a bear market. So you could have a large drawdown while you’re stuck in a position. Let’s talk about the other position that I’m in. The other position that I’m in is RIDE , and RIDE is not doing well at all. So I’m flying a rescue mission here right now. I bought RIDE at 21.50, and right now it is trading at half of what I bought it for. So obviously that’s not good at all, right? So what I need to do right now, is work my breakeven all the way down by actually doing dollar-cost averaging. Right now, I sold some more puts trying to bring down my cost basis from 21.50 to 18.70, then to 16. What I’m hoping for, and this is part of this strategy, is that I am getting a quick bounce. Now, absolute full disclaimer. What happened here with RIDE, to be honest, why I got into this is because I was getting greedy. This is where trust me, I’ve been trading now for more than 20 years, even after this, I love money. I saw a lot of premium on RIDE and I got blinded by the premium. This could be the one trade out of, I believe, now close to 150 trades where I have to take a loss. So it happens. Losses, as I said, losses are part of the business, and never let greed get into your way. So you could have a large drawdown. So here with this strategy, you need a minimum of, I would say, $10,000 in cash and you have to put it into a margin account so that you get $20,000 in buying power. If you’re trading an IRA, you need at least $20,000 in your IRA because in an IRA you don’t get any buying power. Time requirements for this strategy also require about 15 to 30 minutes per day. I think the best time to trade this strategy is during the open. So this means from 9:30 to 10 a.m. Eastern Time. If you have been following me for a while, then you know, I’m not standing here and telling you, “You have to trade this way. My trading strategies are the best.” I would never do it because they may, or may not fit your style, which is absolutely fine. The Best Trading Tool, The PowerX Optimizer However, if you choose to trade these trading strategies, this is where I believe that I have the best tool in the world for trading the strategies. I’m absolutely biased, but the tool that I have here is the PowerX Optimizer. Here is why I think that this is the absolute best tool for it because this software has been programmed for these two strategies specifically. Now, if you look at any other tools, for example, like TradingView, it is software with which you can do some backtesting and has a bunch of indicators built-in. So first of all, this software, I feel is very complex to learn because you have multiple functions. And it basically allows you to trade any trading strategy whether you use a moving average strategy, you can trade with it, or you’re using a MACD strategy, you can trade with it, or you’re using Bollinger bands, you can trade it with it. But you see, especially with the PowerX Optimizer, it has been designed to support the PowerX and the Wheel Strategies. This is where it shows you exactly the three things that you need to know when you have a strategy. It tells you exactly what to trade, it tells you exactly when to enter, and it tells you exactly when to exit. I’m using this tool every day, and I wouldn’t want to trade without it. I want to be absolutely honest. If you would take PowerX Optimizer away from me, even though I know these two trading strategies inside out, it would be super difficult to find the best stocks to trade. The other super important thing that PowerX Optimizer does is that it actually tells me what would have happened in the past if I had traded this particular stock group on here for example, according to the rules of the PowerX Strategy. This is important to me because it gives me more confidence. The trading report basically tells you if you had followed the rules of the PowerX Strategy, what would have happened over the past year if you had traded a stock. The summary it shows me actually the ROI, it shows me how many winning trades and losing trades I would have had, what is the winning percentage, the profit factor, the average win, and the average loss. This here is based on a $10,000 account. So see if you have a $10,000 account, and your average loss is $122, I mean you’ll be fine, right? You’re not wiping out your account. What is important to me in a tool? So first of all, what I want to have is a powerful scanner, because what the scanner does, a scanner tells me what to trade. Now, the second thing is I want to see what would have happened if I traded this stock with this strategy. This for me is super important. Then, of course, I want to get all the important data for trading. This means I want to know how many stocks or options should I trade, when to enter, and when to exit. So these are the important things. This is, of course, combined with what can I expect from this trade. It’s so important that I also see the risk and reward ratio. So here, for Groupon, I can expect to risk a dollar and trying to make $2.33. Now let me ask you, does this sound good? It sounds pretty good to me. With the PowerX Optimizer, I also have The Wheel Calculator and The Wheel Scanner. The Wheel Scanner shows me what are the best candidates for The Wheel right now. I’m actually super excited because we are about to release version 2.0 of The PowerX Optimizer. Within the software with the new update, we distinguish between the PowerX Strategy and The Wheel Strategy.
TVC:NDQEducation
by rockwelltrading
1
Options Trading For A Living In this article, I’m going to show you how I made $52,138 in 8 weeks by trading options (at the time of writing this article March 12, 2021). The key question that I’m always asked is, “Is trading for a living possible?” For me, this is a resounding YES! I’ll break down all the steps from how to trade like a pro, where and how to find great trades, how patience is extremely important when making money, and more. What Do You Need? You might be thinking, “How the heck does anyone make that much money doing something so risky?” The answer is simple. You need: Number One a solid trading strategy, which we will discuss in this article. We will talk about the trading strategy that I personally used to make more than $50,000 in the past two months, and I’ll show you how to do this step by step. Number Two you need the right tools. You will see why that is so important, and I’ll show you the tools that I’m using. Number Three you need the right mindset. I know that mindset is probably the most boring thing to talk about it, so I will not spend a lot of time on this, but having the right mindset is important if you want to trade for a living. Now, there’s one more thing that you need, and this is money. I hate to break the news to you, but if you don’t have any money you can’t put money into your account, and you won’t be able to make money. And yes, I made more than $52,000. Before we talk about the trading strategy, let me just add a very, very important disclaimer. No, these results are not typical. Yes, I am very good at this, and I’ve been doing it for over 20 years. If you start trading this strategy, do not expect the same results. I will talk about this later, but it is super important that you start paper trading on a simulator first. How Much Money Do You Need To Trade Options? The key question that you might be wondering is, how much money did I need to put into this trading account to make this much? For this account, I deposited $250,000 in cash. This is a margin account, so this gives me $500,000 in buying power. Let’s dive in. The Wheel Strategy If you have been following me for a while, you know that I like to trade using The Wheel Options Trading Strategy. There are three steps to this strategy. Step Number One , what we are trying to do here is sell puts and collect premium. When selling options, I typically like to go with expiration dates 1 to 2 weeks out. The idea here is to collect a “weekly paycheck.” I’m putting this in quotation marks because this is where some people say you can collect weekly paychecks with no risk, and that is simply not true. When trading there IS risk. You want to make sure that you trade only the best stocks. What do I mean by this? Well, currently in my account I have positions with companies like AAPL, AMD, DBX, DKS, GDXJ, HAL, HAS, IBM, and JWN. These are all super solid stocks. These are not fly-by-night stocks. You will not see any GME, AMC, BB, BBBY, or any of these meme stocks in my account. We’re talking about super solid stocks, stocks that you have to be okay with owning if you’re assigned the shares. So let’s look at DKS , which is Dick’s Sporting Goods. They are a solid retailer. The idea here is that we are selling puts at a strike price that is at support. Here I looked at short-term support. You want to see at what price level did prices touch several times and then bounce back. They were at the 66 level, so I sold a 66 strike. If DKS closes above then I keep the premium, if it closes below, we would get assigned. Now, another stock that I am trading right now is SNAP , Snapchat. Here we are looking at a strike price of 49. Again, this is where you want to pick super solid companies. I don’t know about you, but do you have kids? My kids live on Snapchat. They’re not on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, but they’re on Snapchat. I believe SNAP it is a super solid company. We see that we had support four, almost five times. So this is where I sold a strike price at 49. You want to make sure that you’re only trading the best stocks and that you always look for support. The support that I like to see is a support level that held at least over the past 8 weeks. So, again, step number one is where we’re selling puts and collecting premium. The basic idea here is that we are buying stocks at a discount, or as many people would say right now, “buying the dip.” This is something that has been working really, really well. It’s a tactic that Warren Buffett has been using for many, many years to scoop up stocks at a discount. Step Number Two is where you may or may not get assigned. This means that if the price at expiration of the stock is below the strike price that you sold, then you have to buy the stock at the strike price you sold it. In this case, if this is happening, then you would go to step number three, which I will share with you in just a moment. Now, if the price is above the strike price at expiration, then you don’t get assigned. You just keep the whole premium and you would go back to step number one. This is why it’s called “The Wheel,” because we keep doing this, right? Step Number Three is when we are assigned, we will sell covered calls and collect more premium. This is the strategy in a nutshell. As you can see, it is not really complicated. The trick is to trade only the best stocks with solid support levels in case you are assigned. Using The Right Tools The second thing that you need is powerful tools. Let’s talk about the tools that I personally use. If you have been following me for a while, you already know that the tool that I use is the PowerX Optimizer. Now, here are the two things for me personally that are super important when we are picking the right tools. First of all, I want to have a scanner built-in. A good scanner not only finds the best stocks to trade, but also tells me what strike price to trade, and at what expiration. When it comes to expiration, I already told you in broad strokes, I’m only trading one to two weeks out. But should I trade this week’s expiration or next week’s expiration? This is super important, and this is where a tool helps me. The second thing, which for me is super important, is that the tool has a calculator. With this calculator, it tells me exactly how much premium I should get, how much risk is involved in this trade, right? These are the important things you need to know. Then, of course, a calculator should tell you how many contracts should I trade based on my account size. When trading options, you know the important things are, that you know what is the underlying stock, what is the strike price, what expiration, what is the minimum premium you want, and of course you want to know the risk. So let me show you exactly how I am finding these stocks. So here we see the PowerX Optimizer. The scanner actually gives us a bunch of symbols that are candidates to consider right now. Now, one of the things that we need to do is we need to make sure that we only pick the strong stocks, and that we only pick those that have a good support level. So one of the examples of a stock that I’ve traded recently is NIO . The scanner actually shows me in the data window what strike prices I should consider right now. It also shows me what premium I can get, and how much this would be annualized. What PowerX Optimizer told me is that right now I could sell at a strike price of 36. And I would get some decent premium for this. Now, we always want to go back over the past few weeks, and if we look over the past 6 to 8 weeks, we see the support see, it touched the level three times. So it looked like there was strong support at 36. Now, the next thing is, and this is where PowerX Optimizer helps you, that you see exactly here how much premium you can get, especially if we are looking at it annualized, right? For me, the minimum option premium that I should get to get at least 30% annualized. For me, that’s what I want to do. This is how I was able to make more than $50,000 thus far this year, and it is only March 12th, and I started on January 11th. Now I also want to know how many options should I trade based on my account. How much in premium would I collect, and what is the premium per day that I would make? So how much money per day do I make when trading this? This is where we go back to why it is so important to have a tool that shows me all this because let me ask you, how else would you find all this out? I mean, if you tried to do this manually, I don’t know, I mean, for me, this is almost impossible to do it. So and believe me, no professional trader does this with only a calculator or a cell phone in his hand. You must know your numbers. Trading is a numbers game, and if you don’t know your numbers, it will be really, really difficult for you to make money. Another key question is, if you don’t have a tool, how else would you find these trades? I mean, every single trade that I did in this account here, that you see over the past eight weeks, that have yielded $52,000, has been taken from this scanner. I mean, if you would force me right now to trade without this tool, I couldn’t do it. This is where I believe that having powerful tools like the PowerX Optimizer is giving you an unfair advantage. Think about it, when trading you are trading against other traders, but you don’t have to be the best trader in the world, you just have to be better than the other trader. You just need to have an edge, and this is where I must say this tool is actually giving me an edge. If you want, you can even say that it is not only an edge, you could call this if you want to, an unfair advantage, but when it comes to trading, you need to play every ace. You don’t want to show up with a knife to a gunfight, you’re trading against the smartest traders in the world. Traders Mindset Now, this brings me to the last point here of how to trade for a living, and this is having the right mindset. This is something that many traders underestimate because they think, “Hh, you know what, that’s fine, I just need a strategy and I need a tool and I will just be fine.” Having the right mindset is important, especially if you want to trade for a living. You must be focused on what I call SRC profits. This stands for systematically, repeatable, and consistent. So this is what SRC stands for, and this is why this so important. You see, as a trader, for me, at the end of the month, I’m wiring money out of my account, out of my trading account into my personal account. I mean, it's great when you have windfall profits. If recently you participated in the GME hype, and you double, triple, quadruple many maybe 10x your account, then good for you. Congratulations, and I really mean this. However, can you do this again this month? What is the next stock that is going crazy like this? Or if you were able to capture the Tesla ride all the way up, good for you, but what happened when Tesla went from 800 to 500? Did you take a hit in your account? See, this where it is super important to have these SRC profits. When it comes to trading for a living it is also important that you have patience, and here’s what I mean. You’ve got to grow your account systematically. So, and how do you grow your accounts systematically? If you don’t have a trading strategy, this is why it’s so important to have a trading strategy that produces these SRC profits, the systematically, repeatable, and consistent profits. So you see how it all comes together. I mean, this is why there’s these three pillars, the trading strategy, the tools that are supporting your trading strategy, and the mindset. Now, the other thing is that when you are trading, patience means that you can’t panic. You see this is where recently, people started talking about these diamond hands, but I think the way how some people talk about diamond hands is just holding on to a losing trade. No, this is not the case. It basically means you let the trade play out. How do you let the trade play out? You follow your plan, but to follow your plan, you must have a plan. So this is where it goes back again to having a trading strategy. Summary To sum things up, first of all, is it, is it possible to trade for a living? The answer for me is yes because that’s what I’m doing. Now, does it mean that you can do it? Again, this is why it’s so important that you practice on a paper trading account first. So you’ve got to have the right trading psychology. For the trading psychology here is that you are aiming for SRC profits and not the YOLO-windfall every now and then profits. To start trading for a living, what are the things that you need? You need to have a strategy, you need to have the right tools, you need to have the right mindset. Now, if you are looking for a strategy, today I presented to you The Wheel Strategy, which I think is a great trading strategy because it’s simple to understand and it gives you an edge, right? You also want to have the right tools, and for the right tools, I might be biased, but I think PowerX Optimizer is the best tool not only for trading this strategy but also for trading the PowerX Strategy here.
TVC:NDQEducation
by rockwelltrading
1
The Wheel Options Strategy: 29 Things You MUST KnowI’m Markus Heitkoetter and I’ve been an active trader for over 20 years. I often see people who start trading and expect their accounts to explode, based on promises and hype they see in ads and e-mails. They start trading and realize it doesn’t work this way. The purpose of these articles is to show you the trading strategies and tools that I personally use to trade my own account so that you can grow your own account systematically. Real money…real trades. Those of you who have been following me know I love trading The Wheel Strategy, in fact, with my $500,000 trading account that I’ve been trading on since mid-January, I just $50,000 in REALIZED profits for the year. The Wheel Options Trading Strategy is a powerful trading strategy that can be fairly low risk IF you know what you’re doing. This is why, in this article, I wanted to give you a complete squad of trading tactics for trading The Wheel Strategy. I look through all of the comments on my YouTube videos & the questions that I get in my live streams, and I have compiled a list of the questions I get most often. So today we’re going to talk about the 29 things you must know when trading the Wheel Options Strategy. The Wheel Strategy Overview So let’s briefly talk about the basics, and the basics of the Wheel Strategy, are actually pretty simple. So let me just tell you the three steps that we need to do when trading this strategy. Step Number One: We want to sell put options and collect premium. Step Number Two: Here, we may or may not get assigned. Step Number Three: If we are getting assigned we will sell covered call options and collect more premium. If we are not assigned, then we will just stay at Step Number One, and keep selling put options to collect more premium. So as you can see, it’s really not that complicated. I mean, wouldn’t you agree? Now I divided this into 3 sections: The Basics, then Picking The Right Stock, because there’s a lot of questions about this topic, and then we will also talk about Selling Calls After Getting Assigned, as well as What To Do When a Trade is in Trouble. The Basics 1.) I have around $30,000 in my Interactive Brokers account. Is it enough to start trading the Wheel? Here is my recommendation. You should have at least $10,000 in cash so that you can get $20,000 in margin. I highly recommend that you are trading a margin account. If you have less than $10,000 in cash, I do not recommend that you trade with the Wheel Strategy. Now, if you have a smaller account, I recommend that you do a maximum of three positions in your account. As your account grows, you can go up to five positions in the account. 2.) What is the best expiration date when selling options? What I personally like to do is go 1 to 2 weeks out, so this also means that I like to trade weekly options. So I’m looking for a really short fuze here because I believe that this is where you have the most control over the prices here. The idea is actually to collect so-called “weekly paychecks,” and I put this in quotation marks because it always sounds so glamorous, right? However, it’s really important that you know what you’re doing here. Now, the next question that I receive all the time. 3.) Should I use margin to increase my buying power? My answer to this is yes, absolutely. I highly recommend this, however, keep in mind that margin is a double-edged sword, which can work for you as well as against you. 4.) How do I know if I have enough capital if I get assigned? It’s easy. So let’s say that you are selling a 100 put, which means a put with the strike price of 100. This means that when you’re getting assigned you have to buy 100 shares at $100 each totaling $10,000, so this is how much capital you would need. So all you need to do is basically just take the strike price that you are selling of the put, times 100 because options come in 100 packs, and multiply this number by the number of options that you’re selling. Let me give you an example. I recently sold 8 put options of Apple at a 133 strike price. So how do you know whether you have enough money in your account? Well, this is where we are taking the strike price, 133 times 100, times 8. This means you would need to have $106,400 in your account. So please make sure that you are sizing your account appropriately. The good news is, if you do have the PowerX Optimizer, which is the tool that I’m using, it will show you exactly how many shares you can trade. So what you need to do here is that you are actually filling in your buying power, and again, your buying power might be different. How many positions you want to take, and this is where I said if you have a smaller account fill in three, if you have a larger account you want to fill in four or five. Then based on the strike price that you are selling here, it will tell you exactly how many options you should trade, and based on how many options it also tells you how much money you need, and how much margin is required if you were to get assigned. I highly, highly, highly recommend that you do use a tool, because you see, if you do all the math in your head, it can go horribly wrong. The tool that I personally use is the PowerX Optimizer. Many of you already have the tool, many of you are familiar with it. 5.) Is there a certain percentage you buy to close at? Some people say 50% profit is best statistically to close. I like to close a position at 90% of the max profits. So as an example, this morning (March 10, 2021) I sold puts on DKS, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and I sold them for $0.75. So this is where right now I have a working order in there to buy this back at $0.07, which is 90% of $0.75. So, yes, if I can get 90% of the max profit here, this is when I want to exit. 6.) So is there a rule of thumb of what percentage this account is tied up with the strategy? It really depends on how many trading strategies you use, right? So right now I trade two strategies. I trade the PowerX Strategy and The Wheel Strategy. The PowerX Strategy is perfect for a trending market, but the markets right now, are far from trending. They are super choppy going up and down, so, therefore, right now I’m dedicating all of my money in the account to the Wheel Strategy. Once I start trading the PowerX Strategy again, this is where I would just decrease the buying power here and say instead of using the $500,000, I might just use, let’s say 400K, and use 100k for the Wheel Strategy. 7.) What screening criteria does the PowerX Optimizer use for the Wheel Strategy? The PowerX Optimizer has a built-in scanner to find the best candidates for the Wheel Strategy, and there’s a conservative scanner as well as an aggressive scanner. For my criteria, we are looking for stocks between $5 and $300 here. We are also looking for stocks that have a down day because when you’re selling put to collect premium, you want to make sure that you’re selling when the market is going down. We are also looking at the implied volatility because want to make sure that there’s enough premium there. Then most importantly, we want to make sure that the annualized premium is actually at least above 30%. There are a few other minor criteria. First of all, we only look for stocks that have weekly options. This is what I explained briefly a little bit earlier, I’m not interested in trading stocks that only have monthly options. 8.) What can I expect? 30% yearly annualized based on what capital? The capital here this would be based on is the buying power. So in my account, I have a $500,000 buying power. This means if I’m looking for 30% based on the buying power, so this would yield into 60% based on the cash that I put in the account because the cash that I put in the account was $250,000. So when I’m talking about the 30% yearly annualized, it’s based on the buying power. If you don’t trade with margin, then this would be based on your cash. Picking The Right Stock: 9.) Do you have a defined universe of stocks that are your “good list?” Well, first of all, I want to make sure that I’m trading the stocks from the PowerX Optimizer Scanner, and then I just look for stocks that I like overall. These are some of the stocks I've traded thus far this year: There's been DBX, DKS, GDXJ, HAL, HAS, IBM, JWM, LL, MARA, MNST, NIO, RIDE, RIOT, SNAP, and many more others. These are stocks that I really like to trade, and as you see, most of them are very well-known names so I’m not trading any exotic stocks. You also will not find meme stocks like GME or AMC on this list here. 10.) Is there a certain level of IV, implied volatility, on a stock that you won’t go to? I’ve traded some 200% plus of IV is that too high? Just as a rule of thumb, the higher the IV the higher the risk. This means that now stock can really swing back and forth. So for me, what I feel is a sweet spot, I like to see at least 40% IV, but no more than 100%. Sometimes I do take trades that are higher than 100 but honestly, for me, the sweet spot where you find most trades that are fairly safe is anywhere between 60% to 80% implied volatility. This is where I don’t have hard rules here, but I need to like the stock. 11.) Markus, have you changed from your “When I started I just wanted to know the symbol. I did not want to know anything about the company, as it might cloud my view. Trade what you see, not what you think” mentality? My answer is NO, for the PowerX Strategy. I absolutely do not want to know anything about the symbol. However, for the Wheel Strategy, the answer is YES because when trading The Wheel Strategy I only want to trade super solid stocks. 12.) So I noticed that some of the stocks on your list for the Wheel have very illiquid weekly options. Do you watch for options liquidity or just the credit limit and hope to get filled? For me, I don’t care about open interest and volume, and here’s why. I am selling premium and I’m fine letting the option expire worthless, so I don’t need to buy it back. If I can buy it back I will, otherwise no. So this is where here I don’t care about the open interest. But again, it really depends on the strategy. I mean, if you’re trading a different strategy, open interest and volume might be very important to you. For me, it is not. 13.) Besides technical support/resistance levels, how do you objectively decide which are the best stocks? Do you take into account any fundamental analysis to filter out which underlying to trade? No. So here is what I do, and this is it’s pretty subjective, so I don’t have objective criteria here. I must like the company, because the point is, you must be OK owning this company, and I must like the story of the company. Yeah. This is where I always use Peleton as an example because I know that many are trading Peleton and it has lots of premium in there. But you see for me, Peleton, it’s a company that I believe can easily be ripped off, and at some point, a major competitor might swoop in. So I must like the company and the story of the company. This is fairly subjective here because the key is that you must be OK owning that stock at the strike price. 14.) Since you are suggesting not to sell puts on leveraged ETFs, why are they then included in the Wheel Scanner? You know what? This is a great question and we actually might exclude them in version PXO 2.0. So right now I thought you’re all adults, and as adults, you can do whatever you want. I did not want to restrict you, so but we might exclude it or, we might add an asterisk as a warning sign. It’s a good suggestion, and I know that some get blinded by premium on leveraged ETFs. So I do not trade leveraged ETFs, anything that has 2x or 3x in the description I stay away from this. 15.) Why do you select growth stocks only instead of a mix of value and growth stocks? Seems that growth is in trouble due to interest rates. Growth stocks offer attractive premiums, but value stocks rarely do. I want to give you a very specific example here, and let’s actually go to IBM, because IBM is one of the value stocks that I have traded. I traded IBM after a massive drop where I sold the 117 strike. Usually in IBM, you won’t find enough premium in there. The implied volatility lately, is usually around 34 or 29. So this is the very simple reason why I’m going for growth stocks because I’m looking for a minimum of 30% annualized in premium. Selling Calls After Getting Assigned 16.) If you sell a call lower than your original put strike price can you still make money? This is actually super dangerous, and here’s why. So when you sold a put you got assigned, and you had to buy stocks at the strike price. I’m using an example of AAPL, and I was assigned Apple at $133 per share. Now, if I’m now selling a call, it means that I have to sell stocks at the strike price, so if I’m selling, let’s say a 125 call, it means that I have to sell the shares for $125. Now here’s the challenge with this. I bought them for $133 and now I’m selling them right now for $125. This means that I’m losing $8 per share. Now when you’re trading options, they come in 100 packs. So this means that you would lose $800 per option. So this is where you need to be careful when you’re selling a call lower than your original strike price. If you do this, make sure that it is above your cost basis, and we’ll talk about the cost basis here in just a moment. 17.) Why are covered calls more profitable in your experience than cash-secured puts? Are you targeting a different percentage return? No, I do not. Here’s a rule of thumb for what I do. Let’s jump to PowerX Optimizer and go to the Wheel Income Calculator. Here is something that I did today (March 10, 2021) where I sold calls on RIDE. Yes, and let me, let me quickly double-check before I do this, what did I sell on RIDE? So on RIDE I sold calls that expire March 19th, and I sold them for $0.35, and the calls that I sold were at 23. So by doing this, this actually gave me an annualized return. By default, I am not going as many strikes out, because all I need here right now is a rise in 7%. So if you are rising seven percent here, then I will be able to make money not only on the premium that I collected, the 16.45, but also an additional $7,000 on the stock, right? So this will be a total of $8,500. It’s just the nature of the beast because when you are selling calls you’re usually closer to the strike price, and therefore, usually higher premium for a higher ROI. This is why I keep telling you, I’m always looking forward to getting assigned because selling calls is actually more profitable. 18.) When you sell calls to reduce the cost basis, do you also include the premium received from selling first the put to reduce the cost basis? Yes, I do include the premium. 19.) Is there a risk of the portfolio becoming nothing but stocks and not being able to sell covered calls out of the money (OTM) to hit your targets? The answer to this is absolutely yes. When trading there’s risk, and there is a possibility that you own a bunch of stocks and you cannot sell calls against. So you have to hold on to these, and so for a few weeks, it could absolutely happen that you’re not making any money. I was recently assigned shares of AAPL, and have not been making any money with them because I have not been able to sell calls. But you see, even though I have one dud in my account, it’s only one of my positions, and I still have been able to make almost $51,000 in about 8 or 9 weeks. So, therefore, it’ll even out. So is there a risk? Absolutely. When trading there is always risk. If you are not willing to accept the risk when trading, do not trade, because there’s always the risk of losing money. 20.) Markus, if you haven’t sold a call against the Apple 103 strike price haven’t you been missing out on money? Not really, and here’s why. Right now, if I would try to sell a 133 call on Apple, that is, for example, expiring this week, I would get $0.01. I’m not missing out on any money, right? $0.01 translates into $1. So, no, I’m not missing out. Even if I would go out next week and I’m looking at the 133, I would only get $0.14. That’s $14. For me, it’s not worth it, and again, everybody’s different, so you might have different rules. For me, however, it’s not really worth it. 21.) When running a rescue mission on margin, how does one sell a covered call? My broker requires cash for any call that I sell. If this is true, change the broker immediately, and here’s why. So I own Apple shares, and if right now I want to sell calls against these Apple shares, let’s say 8 calls, it would not have any effect on my buying power. It’s the opposite So here I highly recommend you change the broker if this is true. Your margin requirements should be reduced when selling a covered call, this is how it works. 22.) Why not still sell calls at your cost basis after the stock drops? Because sometimes there’s not enough premium. If there is enough premium, I will do it, but sometimes there is simply not enough premium and then you are sitting on your hands. This is why I said I have this, the one dud in my account, AAPL, is not making me any money, but everything else IS making me money. I was able to sell calls against GDXJ and RIDE. With DKS, MARA, and SNAP, I sold puts. So everything else is making me money. I mean can’t change the wind, I can only adjust my sails and this is what I’m doing here. What To Do When A Trade Is In Trouble 23.) What do you mean by “rescue mission” for those who have not heard it before? But a “rescue mission” is where you have been assigned shares, and now the trade is going against you. You sell more put options below the assigned strike price. By doing this you collect more premium. If you are assigned, you lower your cost basis, making it easier to get out of that trade. You only should consider flying a “rescue mission” if the stock is down at least 30% from your assigned price. 24.) Why not still sell calls after your stock drops? Because there might not be enough premium in there. So very simple, right? If there is, we will do it, if not like with AAPL for me right now, then it is what it is. 25.) What happens when you run out of buying power and can’t sell calls at your target? So first of all, you can always sell covered calls, because you will not run out of buying power for selling covered calls. What they probably meant is what about not being able to sell puts, and there are two things that you can do. Number one, you can either wire more money into your account, which is probably not always feasible. Number two, you can simply close some positions to free up some buying power. 26.) Is it possible to buy options rather than sell options because selling options is supposed to be very dangerous? Well, of course, and that would be the PowerX Strategy. So with the PowerX Strategy, you are buying options if this is what you prefer to do, and if you’re trading the Wheel Strategy, this is where you’re selling options. So pick your poison. I mean, you got to do one thing, either you’re buying options or you’re selling options. So I have a strategy for each of these. 27.) Any point in waiting to make sure that the market has stopped dropping before flying a rescue mission? Yes! You don’t want to try to catch a falling knife. Wait until you see that the market or the stock is stabilizing here. 28.) I understand starting the rescue mission when the stock drops 30%, how do you determine the new put strike price to enter? The next support level? Yes, absolutely. This would be the next support level that you’re looking at. I got assigned at 21.50, and the next possible support level is right around 12,13, so this here it would be a strike price of 12–13, so this is where I would do it. If we go to Apple, which is another stock that I have, I did get assigned here at 133 and the next support level is around 108, right? So I would probably be most interested in selling the 108 strike price. 29.) It’s hard to make money on a small account unless you get assigned. Yes, it is hard to make money on a small account, period. I know that many want to start with a smaller account, like $500 or $1,000, but honestly, it is super, super, super difficult to make money on such a small account. In order to do this, you would have to trade this account way more aggressively, which means that you are basically risking a whole lot. So if you want to try to double a $500 account, you basically have to risk the full $500. This is what many Robinhood traders and these YOLO’ers do. It’s all-in and maybe it doubles or you lose all of the money. So, yes, it is absolutely difficult. So this is why the capital requirements, I highly recommend that for the PowerX Strategy if you want to trade it, that you have at least $5,000, and if you want to trade the Wheel Strategy, that you should have at least $10,000 in cash, which gives you $20,000 in buying power we talked about this at the beginning of the show here. So this is super important. If you do have smaller accounts, there might be trading strategies for you. I want to be honest with you though if there are, I don’t know them. When I started trading, I started with an $8,000 account and I saved until I had $8,000. Now, I shredded that account into pieces, down to $1,600 and then I saved money up again. Then the second account that I was trading was $16,000. Now that one, I also lost more than half. So I lost, I traded this down to $8,000 and this is when I put some more money in, brought this up to $12,000, and this is when it finally clicked. So again, if right now you have a smaller account, good luck, there might be strategies out there. I wish I had some for you. I promise, if I knew how to grow a $500 account I would tell you. If right now, if all I had to trade was with $500 to trade, I wouldn’t do it. I would probably find a way to save money or make extra money with Door Dash, Insta Cart, or something like this until I have at least $5,000. I wish that I could tell you something different, and unfortunately, I can’t. I’m not saying that it is impossible. All I’m saying is that I’m not the right person to teach you these strategies because I don’t know them. Summary If I didn’t cover a question here in this article that you may have, I promise I’m reading through all of the questions that you have, and I will answer them in one of the upcoming Coffee with Markus episodes. I hope that you enjoyed this article because I love talking about trading. Anyhow. Have a fantastic rest of your day and I’ll see you on the next one.
TVC:NDQEducation
by rockwelltrading
Trading Stocks vs Options: Which Is Better? I’m Markus Heitkoetter and I’ve been an active trader for over 20 years. I often see people who start trading and expect their accounts to explode, based on promises and hype they see in ads and e-mails. They start trading and realize it doesn’t work this way. The purpose of these articles is to show you the trading strategies and tools that I personally use to trade my own account so that you can grow your own account systematically. Real money…real trades. Stock Trading vs Options Trading Stock trading vs options trading, what should you trade? What is better? Is it better to trade stocks or is it better to trade options? That’s what we’re going to talk about today. I will also show you practical examples from trades that occurred today, so let me jump onto the desktop. Now, I want to use an account size of $20,000 as an example here where I’m comparing whether it is better to trade stocks versus options. Depending on your account size, just multiply the numbers that I’m showing you by whatever your account size is and you’ll get the idea. So the idea is, on a $20,000 account, we want to risk 2% of the account. This would be $400, nothing more. Comparing Stock Trading vs Option Trading Now, as we are comparing stocks and options, here are the things that I want to compare. First of all, I want to write down how much we are risking stock trading vs options trading. I also want to write down the reward, how much are we planning to make on the stock or the option. Based on this, I want to write down the risk/reward ratio, and also very, very important, the buying power. What is the buying power? The buying power is the amount of your account that you need to reserve for this trade. It is not the risk and you’ll see this in just a moment. Let’s take a look at some very specific trades that happened this morning. INSW Stock Trading vs Option Trading The first trade that I want to discuss is INSW . So this morning (at the time of this writing) on the PowerX Optimizer, INSW came up as a trade, as a buy to open. And the idea here is that we are buying 239 shares based on a $20,000 account at $22.84. Our stop loss was at $1.67 and I was trading 239 shares. I want to keep it a little bit easier for all of us with the math so let’s round up and call it 240 shares. What is our risk? Per one share, we are risking $1.67 and we are trading 240 shares, meaning that our risk is exactly $400.80. So here let’s just round it to $401. Now, what is the potential reward that we are looking for? Here we are looking for a reward of $8.62 per share. $8.62 times 240 shares, so we’re looking to make $2,069. So we’re putting this into our table, $2,069. So the risk/reward ratio here, PowerX Optimizer is calculating it, it’s 1:5.16 so let’s just say 1:5.2. Now for the buying power. Again, we are buying 240 shares, and the cost per one share is $22.84, so we need $5,482 in buying power. So this is how much our buying power will be reduced when we enter the trade. Now, let me ask you, is this making sense thus far? Just so that you know what happens when you’re trading the stock? And again, we are trying to risk around 2% of the account here, $401. Now, let’s take a look at the option here. So I prefer to trade the in the money, I’ll do another article on the difference between ITM and ATM. But here we are talking about the $22.50 call, and the risk was $172 per one option. So if we want to risk $400 overall, we’re dividing this by 172 and we can trade 2 options risking $344. We’re risking a little bit less and this is just based on the price of the option. In terms of the reward, we’re looking to make $6.80, it’s $680 per one option and we are trading 2 options, meaning that if this trade works out, we would make at least $1,360. Now, according to The PowerX Optimizer, we were making a little bit less. So let’s take a look at the risk/reward, the PowerX Optimizer calculated for us. So the risk/reward was slightly lower at 1:3.95. Now we’re rounding it up so it’s 1:4.0. So as you can see, the risk/reward ratio when trading the option is slightly worse but here’s the deal. What is the buying power that we need for this? The buying power that the broker will deduct from the overall buying power in the account is our entry price. So here we were trying to enter at $2.16, we can round it up to $2.20, and since we are trading 2 options this means that our buying power is $440. Can you already see what the difference is between stock trading vs options trading here? Your buying power is less than 10%. Now, keep in mind, the buying power is not what you’re risking. The buying power is just how much of your $20,000 is being held in reserve for this particular trade. So you can’t use this money anymore. If you trade the stock, you would still have around $14,500 left. However, if you’re trading the option, you would still have $19,500 left. Is this making sense thus far? TVTY Stock Trading vs Option Trading The other trade that I want to show you is TVTY . Here we wanted to trade 392 shares, so let’s just round it up to 400. Now let’s discuss the risk first. So the risk is $1.02 per one share. We’re taking $1.02 times 400 shares, meaning that we would risk $408, which is still within our parameters. We were planning to risk around $400 so here it would be a little bit more, it would be $408. Now, if this trade works out, here is what the reward would be. So the reward is $5.61, that’s how much we are trying to make on this trade. And if we take the $5.62 times 400 shares, we are trying to make $2,248. So the risk/reward, if we look at this, is 1:5.5. Now, here is the buying power that we would need. TVTY is trading at $11.30, so this is where again, $11.30 times 400 shares, we need $4,520 in buying power. Again, not a big deal if you’re trading a $20,000 account, it will be reduced and you’ll have less money to trade right now, around $15,500. Very, very, very important, this is not the risk. This here is the buying power that is needed. Our risk is $408. Our risk here per one option is $141. So if we want to risk $400 overall, we’re dividing it by $141, it’s 2.83. Now, in order to make it all a bit easier to compare apples with apples here, I am actually saying that we would trade 3 options, and $141 is what we are risking per one option, so $141 times 3. It’s a little bit more than our $400, but I think we are still OK here. So we would risk $423. Now the potential reward per one option is $444. So this is where we take $444 times 3, and again, this is where we are looking at $1,333. As you can see, the risk/reward ratio here is worse than if we would trade the stock. It is 1:3.15 so we are rounding it again to 1:3.2. Again, it would be better to trade the stock, but you’re using quite a lot of your buying power. For the option, all you need, all that is reduced, is your entry price, and the entry price it’s $2.47. So let’s say $2.50 times 3 is $750. As you can see you need less buying power, but you also have a smaller reward. But this is why I say usually on a smaller account, it makes sense to trade options instead of stocks. Now the other important thing, especially when you trade a retirement account, is that you don’t get a margin account. This means that you cannot leverage the money that you have in the account and you cannot short stocks. So in the US, in a retirement account, you cannot short stocks. However, what you can do in a retirement account is that you can trade put options, and with put options, you can bet on a falling market. So this brings me back to the question… What is better, stock trading vs options trading? Well, this is why I wanted to show you a direct comparison using a real-life example. This way you see exactly when it is more advantageous to trade stocks, and when it is more advantageous to trade options. Long story short, often for smaller accounts, since you use less buying power, it makes more sense to trade options. And now you have a direct comparison between stock trading vs options trading that will hopefully help you decide what is best for you.
TVC:NDQEducation
by rockwelltrading
How To Manage A Trade That's In Trouble - My Options Trade On TQI’m Markus Heitkoetter and I’ve been an active trader for over 20 years. I often see people who start trading and expect their accounts to explode, based on promises and hype they see in ads and e-mails. They start trading and realize it doesn’t work this way. The purpose of these articles is to show you the trading strategies and tools that I personally use to trade my own account so that you can grow your own account systematically. Real money…real trades. What Do You Do When You Find Yourself In A Trade That's In Trouble? So you have a trading strategy. You have your trading tools ready to go at your fingertips. You trade with a paper trading account to make sure your trading strategy is solid. You’re finally ready to start making real trades. You start trading and everything goes according to plan until a trade comes along when it doesn’t. Now you find yourself in a trade that is in trouble. How do you handle this? Well, the first thing you need to remember to do is to keep your cool. One of the most important aspects of trading is being in the right mindset. This is important because trades will go against you from time to time. It’s just the nature of the business, and you can’t lose your cool when this happens. If you aren’t in the proper mindset when a trade goes against you, then you will not be properly equipped to manage it, and I have some good news… there IS a way to manage a trade that’s in trouble. I was in such a trade recently, and I will show you how I handled it. How I Managed A Trade In Trouble Step-By-Step I was recently in a trade with TQQQ . I opened up my trading software and say I was at -$3,500 open P&L with this trade. 1) The first thing that I did is I sold a put with 150 strike price and I received $66 in premium . 2) However, what happened is with this particular trade was I got assigned. So I had to buy 100 shares of TQQQ for $150 each. At this time TQQQ was trading at $116 which was not good because I bought it at $150. However, as soon as I was assigned these shares, I starting selling calls against these shares. This is how The Wheel Strategy works. You first sell puts and collect premium. If & when you get assigned, you then sell covered calls against these shares at a higher strike price to try and get “called away” to sell the shares at a profit, and you keep doing this while collecting premium until you do get called away. Now understand, you will get assigned trading The Wheel Strategy, but trust me this is a good thing. 3) So I then sold a call with a strike price of 155 for $2.10 . Now with this call, I could have actually been “called away” on this trade and sold the shares at a profit, but I felt that I could just instead hold onto the shares to possibly sell them for a higher profit. So I just kept the premium of $210 ($2.10 multiplied by 100 shares) I collected on this, and then the next day I bought the call back for $0.37 . So $2.10 I collected in premium minus $0.37 that I paid to buy the call back, comes to $1.73 which means I made $173 in premium. These are realized profits. 4) Next, I sold another call, this time with a strike price of 150 for $0.45 and I also bought it back for $0.05 2 days later to keep from being called away to sell them later at a higher profit, but collected more premium. So this means if you take the $0.45 I collected and subtract the $0.05 I paid to buy the call back this comes to $0.40 which means I made another $40. If you add up all the premium collected so far ($66, $173, &$40) I have made a total realized profit of $279 so far over the last 15 days, which is not too shabby. 5) The price of TQQQ started plummeting, so instead of selling another call, I instead, decided to sell two puts with a strike price of 100 for $1.14 . I chose to sell two, based on what my account size allowed if I were to get assigned again. So with each share yielding me $1.14 in premium a share, this comes to $114 each contract, and since I sold two contracts, I collected $228 in premium total ($507 overall). What Happens If You Get Assigned again? Now you might be thinking selling puts was a bad idea. I mean, what happens if TQQQ is below $100 by expiration, and I have to buy 200 more shares of TQQQ ? It would actually be really, really awesome if this would happen. There are actually two scenarios of what could happen and they are both awesome. In the first possible scenario, TQQQ stays above $100 by expiration, which is in one week. In this case, I keep the $228 and my total profit from this trade goes up to $507. Now scenario two, and this is the one that would make some people nervous, is if TQQQ drops below $100 on expiration. In this case, I have to buy another 200 shares for $100. Here is why this would be a good thing, and why buying more puts was a smart move, but I’ll let you be the judge. If scenario number two happens, I would have bought 100 shares for $150 and I would have bought another 200 shares for $100. So this means that right now my cost basis is lowered when you average the cost of the total price I would have paid for all 300 shares. So I did buy 100 shares times 150, plus 200 times 100, and I’m dividing all of this by 300 so that I get my average price per share. This means $116.60 is the average price I paid per share. So this means as soon as TQQQ moves back up to $116 I break even, and if it moves above $166 I’m making money. So $116.66 is my new magic level instead of $150. Now look at this, is it more likely that over the next few weeks TQQQ goes above $116.66 or $150? $116 right? So by doing this, if scenario one happens, okay, great, I just keep racking up premium, and that’s fine. If scenario two happens even better, I’m lowering my cost basis here. If the new average price per share is $116.66 per share, instead of what it actually was which was $150, it is easier to get back into the green. Summary This is how I managed this trade. At first glance, it simply looked like it was in trouble, but in reality, all you need to do is keep collecting premium, and when you can, lower your average price per share. Both of these things will lower your cost basis, making it easier to get back into the green when a trade is going against you. This is the beauty of The Wheel Strategy, even when a trade is going against you the strategy is still going according to plan.
NASDAQ:TQQQEducation
by rockwelltrading
1
How To Place A Wheel TradeI’m Markus Heitkoetter and I’ve been an active trader for over 20 years. I often see people who start trading and expect their accounts to explode, based on promises and hype they see in ads and e-mails. They start trading and realize it doesn’t work this way. The purpose of these articles is to show you the trading strategies and tools that I personally use to trade my own account so that you can grow your own account systematically. Real money…real trades. All right, so how exactly do you place a trade for The Wheel? Well if you have been following me for a while, then you know that I love trading two strategies. The first strategy I trade with is The PowerX strategy and it’s my bread and butter strategy. The second strategy I love trading is The Wheel strategy and this strategy has a very high winning percentage. In fact, I’ve been trading it publicly live on my YouTube channel over the past few months, and thus far, knock on wood, I have a 100% winning percentage. Having a trading strategy is key, but how do you actually place a trade? In this article, I will show what steps you need to take, from what type of account you need, to how exactly to place the trade. I’ll show you these steps using two popular brokers, first on tastyworks, and then on Interactive Brokers because I know that many international traders use this platform. Getting The Right Trading Permissions Firstly, you can trade The Wheel in any account you want, even in a retirement account. You just need to make sure you have the right options for trading permissions. When it comes to options trading there are four levels. On any account opening form they ask you, as any broker would, “What type of activity do you plan to conduct in your options account?” It doesn’t matter whether it is a cash account, a margin account, or a retirement account, all you need for trading The Wheel strategy is the lowest permission possible which is Tier 1. With Tier 1, you can write and sell covered calls, as well as writing and selling cash-secured puts. This is exactly what we are doing with The Wheel strategy. So this is step number one because if you don’t have these permissions, there’s not a whole lot that you can do. Contact your broker and make sure that you have Tier 1 options permissions, which again, are writing covered calls and cash-secured puts. If you have a higher Tier, like Tier 2 or 3, that’s okay, because Tier 1 is included in the higher Tiers. The 4 Things You Need To Know Before placing a trade, there are the first four things that you need to know: What type of option are you trading? Are you trading a call or a put? You need to know what is the expiration of the option. What is the strike price? What’s the minimum premium that we want to get in this trade when trading The Wheel strategy? For those who may not be aware, when I take a trade I send out an alert notifying those who opt into our Power Income Alerts feature. I recently sent an alert out for a trade with WYNN that I recently took. According to this alert, the idea is we believed that WYNN would stay above 70 by October 30th, but if it is less than $70, we would be assigned shares, then sell calls against the position. The alert contained the four things needed to know in order to place the trade. It had the strike price, the expiration, and the credit that we wanted to achieve. With this information from this alert, I’m now going to explain to you how would enter this trade in tastyworks, and then I will explain to you how exactly you do this on Interactive Brokers as well. How To Enter A Trade In Tastyworks Once you bring up the tastyworks platform, the first thing that you need to do is enter the symbol. In the upper-left-hand side, we would enter WYNN because this is the stock that the alert went out for, so we type in W-Y-N-N. Now, the second thing is, as soon as we bring it up, you click on the “TRADE” on the left-hand side. After you click the “TRADE” tab, you have to select the expiration from the list that populates. According to the alert, the expiration we are looking for is October 30th so this is the expiration we would select. Now you’ll see all the calls on the left-hand side and all the puts on the right-hand side. You just click on the bid price, and after clicking, it’ll say “S1”. So this means now that you are selling one contract. Now, depending on your account size, you might want to sell more than one contract. This is why the alert will tell you the buying power that you would need to trade one option if you want to trade it cash secured, which I highly recommend you do cash secured, and that would be $7,000 for each option that you want to trade. So for me personally, in the account I was using, I wanted to trade three options so I adjusted the quantity until I saw three options. So the next thing is that you need to specify is the minimum amount of premium that you want to achieve. In the alert, I specified that you should receive at least $0.50 credit. The bid/ask of this option right now is between $0.80 for the bid and $0.84 for the ask, and it makes sense to go with the mid-price which most brokers suggest. Now click on “REVIEW AND SEND”, and then you have the opportunity to quickly reviewing your order. So now we have three WYNN options here that we are selling (-3), with an expiration of October 30th, and a strike price of 70. You’ll see a P which stands for “put,” and STO means “sell to open.” The limit order I used to sell it was at $0.82. Now $0.82 is above the $0.50 credit that I suggested that you get at a minimum in the alert, so if you are able to get more than the minimum, good, do it. There are estimated commissions and fees, and then you just have to hit “SEND ORDER” and the order gets placed. You now just have to wait to get filled. If you’re not getting filled right away, you can adjust your bid and ask, so instead of going for $0.82, you can then try lowering your bid to see if you get filled. As you can see, it’s very simple, and next, I want to show you also exactly how to do this on Interactive Brokers, and it’s just as easy. How To Enter A Trade In Interactive Brokers All right, so let’s go over how to place a trade with the Interactive Brokers platform. Now I will be using the information from the same alert we used when placing the tastyworks trade. This platform looks slightly different, but the functionality is always relatively the same. There will be a place where you can enter the symbol, so we are typing in WYNN as the symbol in the upper left. As soon as we hit Enter, it will ask us if we want to trade stocks, or do we want to trade options, so of course, we pick “options.” This will bring up the options chain. An alternative way to bring up the options chain is to click “New Window” above the field where you input the stock ticker and click “OptionTrader” to bring up the options chain. I will look almost similar to how it looks on tastyworks. So here again, we enter, simply W-Y-N-N and now we need to pick the expiration. The expiration going back to the alert is October 30th and a strike price of 70. Just like we did in tastyworks, after selecting the strike price of 70, we click on the bid. Once we click on the bid, it will bring up the order at the top. It asks for a limit order, and we can also adjust the number of contracts. So instead of trading one contract, we can trade three contracts. We can also adjust the limit order to 82, as we had with tastyworks. When we’re done, all we need to do right now is hit the T for Transmit. Summary As you can see, there are differences between these packages. I personally use Interactive Brokers a lot, and it is very popular with international traders. I also use the tastyworks platform and find it a little bit easier to use. Now you know how to place a trade according to the Wheel, using tastyworks and Interactive Brokers. Other brokers, other than these two, will be very, very similar. After reading this article, you now know what type of account you need for trading The Wheel Strategy, and you can use a cash account, a retirement account, or a margin. It doesn’t matter as long as you have Tier 1 options permissions meaning you can write/sell covered calls, and cash-secured puts. Within the platform, all you need to do is input whether you’re trading a call or put, the expiration, strike price, and what’s the minimum premium that you want to collect. It really is that easy.
NASDAQ:WYNNEducation
by rockwelltrading