In the very near future we will be launching the SMB Options Training Program which we’ve been working on intensively for months. We have had a fair degree of interest in the upcoming program and it occurred to us that it might not be a bad idea to invite a few trainees into the process before our formal launch, … Read More
Traders Ask: Does Every Options Strategy Work with Every Stock or Index?
One of our readers, Cecelia, sent in the following question after watching our SMB Options Trade of the Week which, covered the bearish butterfly trade that has become popular recently: “Will this trade work for indexes only? Do you recommend this for individual stocks such as AAPL?” We get this question a lot and the answer is important for many … Read More
Insights from Wharton School’s Investment Management Club
I gave a talk in Philadelphia on options strategies to the Wharton School Investment Management Club last Thursday. My daughter Halima, who is an undergraduate student at Bryn Mawr College in suburban Philadelphia, sat in on the the talk as well. In addition to wanting to be a supportive daughter, she was my intern four summers ago, backtesting options … Read More
Is it Possible to Day Trade AND Employ Non-Directional Options Spread Strategies?
On the surface, the intraday trading strategies of equities and non-directional options spread trading would seem to be mutually exclusive. Day trading depends to some extent on strong directional movement that allows the day trader to get long or short a stock at at the right time and then ride that direction until an opportune time to exit emerges. Non-directional … Read More
Can I Trade Options While Holding Down a Busy Full-Time Job? How About While I’m Asleep?
While there are common themes to every kind of trading discipline, there are of courses differences as well. Options spread trading, for example is a very different world in many respects from day trading. At SMB, our intraday equity traders tend to focus on the opening hour and the closing hour of trading, with sometimes very high speed activity and decision-making … Read More
Mastering Chess Trading: Insights from Pete in Indonesia
I received an interesting email yesterday from a nice gentleman from Indonesia (SMB gets lots of inquiries from all over the world) who has expressed an interest in SMB’s options training course that we will be launching in May. Pete has studied options trading through literature and has experienced some early success. What I found so interesting about Pete’s email, was … Read More
What I love about options trading
I’m sitting here this morning in the offices of SMB capital in downtown Manhattan, making some notes in anticipation of a blitz I”ll be doing this week, recording the majority of the videotapes that will form the core of our options training program. It brought me back to my first days as an options trader and the intense excitement … Read More
Monthly Options Spread Trading is a Twelve-Inning Game
Imagine a major league baseball game, where your favorite team gave up no runs for the first eight innings and then twelve runs in the ninth. Are you happy if the opposing team gave up one run in each inning of that same game? Of course not. The opposing team won 12-9. Yet the opposing team “lost” each of the … Read More