New at SMB “Futures Friday”

Andrew FaldeFutures

“Trading Conversations” (our weekly open Q&A trading webinar) is now “Futures Friday”! We’ll take this time each week to discuss all issues pertaining specifically to futures traders. Come and learn: What’s working well? What’s been challenging? What markets are moving? And more! As always, don’t forget to bring your questions. We couldn’t be more excited to continue to build this … Read More

Build a Better Options Trading Plan

Andrew FaldeOptions Education

The exercise of building an options trading plan is a very unique breed of business planning. We’ve found over the years that many options traders have career backgrounds as professionals or business owners. Traders with backgrounds like these often bring some of their old business planning tactics into their options trading plan. There are pros and cons to this. Pros … Read More

ALL Traders Are Impacted by Market Probabilities

Andrew FaldeTrading Lesson

Discretionary traders, systems traders, neutral, mean reversion, momentum, swing, and day traders… ALL of these trading styles and niches rely, to one extent or another, on using probabilities. Discretionary traders keep probabilities in mind when making trading decisions. Systems traders rely heavily on many aspect of probabilities to create automated or nearly-automated systems. Neutral traders need to understand tail risks … Read More

CL (Crude Oil) Options Trading

Andrew FaldeSMB Options

March 3, 2018 Andrew Falde SMB Options Desk Trader Yesterday in the Trading Conversations webinar, I was asked for an update on the SPX Netzero Options trades. It was perfect timing because a few minutes before the webinar started, I was approved to put my largest size on the SMB Options Desk into a CL (Crude Oil) Netzero. After mentioning … Read More

Should You Trade the First 30 Minutes?

Andrew FaldeGeneral Comments

Some traders say that trading the open provides some of the best opportunities each day. Others are of the opinion that “the first 30 minutes is for fools — fools that want to be separated from their money.” So which is it? More importantly, which is it FOR YOU? All this noise about “the open” can breed confusion and fear. … Read More