Posts Tagged ‘Protection’

Why Losing Trades Are Good For You

Many people enter trading, whether it be stocks, options, commodities or other markets, after having been very successful in their primary occupation. Many of these new traders are perfectionists by nature and driven to be successful. This often leads to a couple of fatal flaws in trading:
The reality of the trading business is that [...]

Put Time On Your Side

Many conservative income generation trading strategies depend on the time decay inherent in options pricing. When I establish an iron condor well OTM (out of the money), I am selling option spreads and expecting those spreads to slowly lose value as the underlying stock or index trades within a channel. Other traders may use butterfly [...]

Have You Insured Your Stocks?

Many people think of options trading as very risky and suitable only for the “high rollers”. In this article we will demonstrate one of the ways options can be used in conservative financial portfolios.The basic definition of a put option is that it gives the owner the right, but not the obligation, to sell 100 [...]

Facts and Fallacies About Risk/Reward Ratios

One will commonly hear or read the following “rule of thumb” for trading:Only trade positions with potential profits of at least three times the potential loss.This sounds like a reasonable rule, risking a little to make a lot. However, it ignores the probabilities involved. Buying a lottery ticket for $1 to potentially make one million [...]

Squeezing Additional Income From Your Stocks

Many people think of options trading as very risky and suitable only for the “high rollers”. This article briefly surveys how options can be used in conservative financial portfolios to boost the income from your stocks.For the purposes of this article, let’s assume we have a stock portfolio of conservative stocks, e.g., IBM, GE, etc. [...]

Trading Options: Good or Evil?

You have probably heard people refer to options as a risky enterprise, akin to gambling. And it is true that options trading can be very risky, especially when engaged in with minimal knowledge and preparation. The average stockbroker or financial planner does not have sufficient options knowledge to guide you in the use of options [...]