S&P UpdateS&P 500 Index. Target of 4210/4220 area still in sight. Nothing to add so I refer you to last weeks update, everything remains in place. Must be noted though, that momentum does seems to be fading. More during the week. Closed all option positions in the last half hour when selling got heavy, probably just profit taking ahead of the weekend, but maybe not. An important target was reached on the Nasdaq which I will post soon. Profited on long Call, lost on long Put, profited on both short Calls and Puts.
Options-strategy
Emotions In Trading: Biggest Account KillerTrading is fun and every trader is happy when their trades move in the right direction, but when a trade goes against you, you will experience a lot of emotions:
Fear, anxiety, regret, doubt, maybe anger…
… and these emotions in trading can lead to some bad decisions that could kill your account.
In this article, I’ll show you how to control your emotions in trading so that you become a more relaxed trader.
1. Recognize Your Emotions
When trading, you WILL experience emotions. The main emotions are:
Excitement
Greed
Fear
Anger
Frustration
Let’s talk about these emotions and how to deal with them.
Emotion #1: Excitement
When trades are going in your favor, it’s natural for you to be excited. We all love to see “green” in the account, but here’s the problem with that: when trades are going in your favor, you may be too excited and take on more risk.
I have seen this over and over again, especially when trading “The Wheel” options strategy. During the first few trades, traders are usually very careful.
They do a great job in picking the right stocks, then they take a few good trades and their account is up nicely!
All of a sudden, they get overconfident. It seems that the trading system can’t lose, and so they increase risk because “things always turn out for the best,” but that’s when trouble starts.
You’re no longer looking for “the best” trades. You feel invincible and want to make as much money in a short amount of time as possible. You start trading with more & more risk, and start choosing stocks that you shouldn’t choose.
Here are a few examples:
TLRY, SPCE, WKHS, LABU
The premium is attractive, and you thought: “I’ll be fine, and if not, I can fly a rescue mission like Markus usually does,” but then you get stuck in a trade, like some of you are.
So please be careful when you experience excitement because it quickly leads to overconfidence, and the markets like to show overconfident traders who’s boss!
Emotion #2: Greed
Next on the list of emotions in trading is greed. Greed is okay as long as you don’t let it take over your trading.
My P&L so far is $69,205 at the time of this writing: My goal is to make $15,000 per month, and thus far, I have made almost $70,000 in less than 4 months!
I could get greedy now and say, “Why not $20,000 per month? Or $30,000?”
But I am going to keep trading with discipline and make sure that my greed doesn’t get the best of me.
Be humble! Be grateful for what the market gives you because if you are greedy and try to squeeze the last penny out of the markets, the markets WILL put you in your place!
Emotion #3: Fear
The next emotion on the list is fear. Fear is a natural human emotion that we all have. In trading, it’s easy to let fear take over because you can see your profits diminishing in front of your eyes!
Here’s the problem with fear: it’s a very strong and powerful emotion that has the power to paralyze you, and cause you to have a bad day — a VERY bad day: You’re sitting in front of your computer all day staring at the “red” numbers — the unrealized losses.
Your mind goes crazy because you’re already thinking about how bad your trading account will be when you realize all these losses.
But what a difference a day can make. Have you ever realized how one day it looks bad, and the next day everything is green again?
Here is what you should do when FEAR takes over:
– Step away from the computer. Shut it down! Go outside. Do something else.
– Take some deep breaths and relax.
– Do not panic, this will cause you more harm than anything else! The market is always changing, it’s just out of our control; so instead of panicking, think about what we can control.
Emotion #4: Anger
Next on the list of emotions in trading is anger.
It’s easy to get angry at the markets because it’s so unpredictable!
You can never tell what is going on and when it will change.
And why are there always losers?
Dang, I should have bought 30 minutes ago… but now the price has gone up again?!
Happened to me yesterday: Every single trade that I entered was timed wrong. I could have gotten a much better fill 30 min later!
But: anger does not get us anywhere. Anger leads to revenge trading, which can lead to catastrophic losses.
Keep in mind:
Markets don’t know who you are.
Markets don’t care who you are.
Markets don’t know if you are in a winning or losing trade.
Markets don’t care if you try to push them around.
If you try to fight the markets, you’ll lose. It’s important not to let anger dictate your trades!
Emotion #5: Frustration
The last emotion on our list is frustration.
It’s easy to get frustrated with trading for the same reasons that I just mentioned:
You can never tell what is going on and when it will change.
And why are there always losers?
Dang, I should have bought 30 minutes ago… but now the price has gone up again?!
Some people react to these events with anger, others with frustration.
Frustration can lead to impulsive trading, and that’s not a good thing.
The best way to deal with frustration is to take some time out from the markets for a few hours or even days until your head clears up.
2. Understand The Effect of Emotions While Trading
In a moment, I’ll share a technique with you on how to control these emotions but let’s first talk about the effect of emotions on your trading.
It’s ok to have feelings. It’s ok to feel these emotions — these are HUMAN emotions. The problems start when you ACT on these emotions while trading.
As you have seen, each of these emotions is causing a reaction, and none of them is good. Emotions cause irrational behavior…
… which leads to impulsive decisions,
… which leads to and bad trades,
… that often leads to losses or drawdowns.
Emotions in trading can be the number one account killer, so you MUST be able to control them.
3. Control Your Emotions By using THIS technique
I have been trading for 20 years, and I still feel these emotions. They say you shouldn’t have any emotions while trading, and based on my experience, that’s not possible! The important thing is to make sure that you don’t ACT on your emotions.
So how can you control your emotions?
Stephen Covey said it best in his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”:
Focus on what you CAN control, and don’t worry about what you can’t control.
And if you think about it, there are only 2 things you CAN control:
Your Thoughts
Your Actions
You can’t control what the markets are doing, you can’t control whether Hindenburg Research is releasing a report on a company you’re in, you can’t control when a big hedge fund gets in trouble and has to dump a bunch of positions, but you can choose how you react.
Let me give you a personal example:
As you know, I am in RIDE .
And the position is MASSIVELY going against me.
I could be angry at short-sellers, especially Hindenburg Research.
I could be frustrated with Lordstowns PR efforts, which suck.
I could look at my unrealized loss every day and fear “What will happen it Lordstown doesn’t recover?”
I could have a lot of negative emotions around it, and NOTHING would change — other than me getting bitter, and maybe even depressed.
So I keep following my plan, which is selling more premium.
This week, I will make $1,050 on RIDE , no matter what the price is doing. If it goes up, good. If it goes down… oh well, I can’t change that.
I just know THIS:
I won’t let emotions dictate my day, and I won’t let emotions dictate my trading.
I believe the Serenity Prayer says it best:
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.“
Shorting GPS and Buying PLUGOnly placing two trades for tonight's open.
First one will be shorting The Gap
Short a naked call at 38 strike for $1.04, going to mange it for 45 days.
Or close it when it goes above $1.22
Lastly I'm going to buy PLUG as a ratio spread
Short two contracts at the 26 strike and brought the 28 strike for $1.27.
Unusual Options Volume SKLZ $20 APR 30 Call
SKLZ earnings date is May 04 2021
Earnings run up and break of down trend. Stock moved with increasing volume today. Possible break of trend into run up for the earnings with good possible upside if it holds at current levels.
April $20 Calls Lots of volume today 9,000+ contracts traded. Heavy open interest on May 21 $20 thru $35 strike calls indicating more up side.
Consider 21 May options calls above 21.50.
Down trend channel break $18.11
Trigger $21.50
Target 23.50, 24.57 resistance, stretch target 27.50
Wide SL close below $17.00
Close contract before ER to be on the safe side.
3 Tips That Turned My Trading AroundHow did I get here? To moving from Germany in 2002 to the United States, and came here with $30,000 in my pocket.
I put $20,000 in my trading account, and I put away $10,000 for a living. It wasn’t easy in the beginning. It was quite challenging.
Now things are different. I mean, thus far in the first four weeks of 2021, I already made more money than I was able to put into my trading account in the very beginning.
I know if you are there in the beginning right now, you may have $10,000, $20,000, or maybe even only $5,000 or less to get started.
How do YOU get started? This is what I want to focus on in this article. You see, I’ve been trading for a long time and there are a lot of things that I’ve learned the hard way over the years, and I want to go over three very specific things that helped me to become a much better trader.
Don’t Focus On The Outcome Of Just ONE Trade
The first thing here is don’t focus on the outcome of one trade. You see, at the beginning of my trading career, I was really stuck on looking at what happens with just one trade, or what happened on just one particular day, but it is so important that you keep the longer range in perspective here.
Trading is a marathon, not a sprint.
One of the few certainties in trading is that there will be losing trades no matter how good you are, but instead of beating yourself up about the P&L (profit and loss) of one specific trade, keep your eyes on the bigger picture.
For example, I woke up one day, and I saw my account was down $12,000 and it actually got worse over the day getting as low as $17,000.
Now I could have chosen to panic and focus on the red, but you see, this is why I say trading is a marathon and not a sprint.
You need to focus on the broader performance over the course of a few days, a few weeks, or even a few months.
Usually when you look at your account and you look at the P&L, what are your eyes usually drawn to? The red, right? You will focus on the one trade that is not working out in your favor.
I can relate to this because I was just like this in the beginning. Think about it this way, your hand has five fingers. If you take a hammer and you smash on one of the fingers, you focus on the finger that hurts, and not on the other four that are fine. It’s human nature to focus on the bad stuff.
But you see, when you do this, you’re losing sight of all the other good trades and also how you’re doing over the course of the year.
This is super, super important, and you see, one of the keys to my success in trading is consistency and growing my account systematically.
I do this through SRC profits. SRC is an acronym. The S stands for systematic. I like to trade what I see and not what I think.
This is why use indicators and have a trading strategy that tells me what to trade when to enter, and when to exit.
The R in SRC profit stands for repeatable, by trading my plan. By trading and following my plan, I’m able to find repeatable, profit-making opportunities.
The C in SRC profits stands for consistency. You see, I’d rather make slightly less money more often than bite off all my nails waiting for the big winner. So focus on SRC profits. Systematic, repeatable, and consistent.
So remember, it is more important to focus on this than on one trade, right? We will have losing trades and it’s unavoidable.
Don’t Trade On Emotions
The second thing to remember is, don’t trade on emotions. When you’re trading with your hard-earned cash, there’s certain to be emotions involved. When trading there are two main emotions to deal with: fear and greed.
So as traders, we fear that we’ll have a loss, and lose money. There are actually two ways to control this fear.
Number one, you want to keep your losses small. While losses are part of the business, if you keep them small you won’t be afraid of them.
So I like to use, as a rule of thumb here, the 2% rule. The 2% rule means you never risk more than 2% of your account on any given trade. Think about it, if you have a $10,000 account, this translates into risking $200 per trade.
Let me ask you this. If you have $10,000 in your account and you’re risking $200, are you afraid of losses? Probably not, right? If you lose $200, it doesn’t wipe out your account. You can live to fight another day.
Now, number two is don’t trade with money you can’t afford to lose. I know you might have heard this before, but I just want to tell you a story from when I started. In the beginning, I scraped together $8,000 to start trading.
This is before I moved to the U.S. and got serious about trading, and trust me, I could not afford to lose this.
This was 23 years ago, and at that time I was 28. And when I was 28, 23 years ago, $8,000 was a lot of money for me.
It was everything that I had in my savings account, so this is why I was super nervous when I lost money. It made me cramp up and it paralyzed me. I was checking my account every few minutes, anxiously see what’s going on.
Have you ever done this? You check your account every 30 minutes? This is why it’s super important that you trade only with money that you can afford to lose.
I know easier said than done, but keep in mind, if you don’t do this it will actually hurt your trading.
On the other hand, there’s the fear of missing out or FOMO. That is another type of fear, which is really, really critical. This also happened to me at the very beginning of my trading career.
So you see, how many times have you seen a stock that has skyrocketed, and then you beat yourself up for not getting in?
If you’ve ever looked at a stock, see it take off without you, and thought, “Oh my gosh, I should get in” then tried to chase the stock higher, you’ve likely realized afterward that this was a problem.
A classic example of this that you might remember is the craziness that happened with GME, GameStop, not too long ago. People started getting in at $20, then $40, then some at $160.
Another typical example is Bitcoin. If you look back at Bitcoin here, what do you think? Where did most people get in in 2018? Did they get in when it was trading at $600 or $700, or did most people get in when Bitcoin was trading higher around $14,000, $15,000 maybe at $10,000?
Most recently Bitcoin went up from $10,000 to $17,000. Where did most people get in on this move? Probably closer when it was topping $38,000. See this is where it’s the fear of missing out.
For me, when I trade, I’m not going for these hot stocks. I like to trade based on my PowerX Optimizer and The Wheel strategy because they help me to keep my emotions out of my trading decisions by telling me what to trade, the best time to enter a trade, and the best time to exit.
You see, if a stock has moved past my entry, I’ll pass on the trade and wait for the next one, because there will always, always, always, always be another trade. Trust me on this one, because if you are looking at PowerX Optimizer, and you see when you run the scanner every day, it is showing you a bunch of symbols.
So for today, The PowerX Optimizer brought up seven symbols that I could have traded. Tomorrow it will be another two to eight. So obviously there is always another trade and this is why you shouldn’t be too scared.
This is the next one and it is a big one because after all, why do we trade? We trade to make money, right? But there’s a saying, “Bulls make money, bears make money, but pigs get slaughtered.”
You see, as traders, we want to take the trade that makes the most money. We want to find the next Tesla, the next Bitcoin, maybe the next GameStop, but often times when we find them, we’re getting in way too late. So how do we battle this greed feeling? Well, this is where we focus on SRC profits and having a solid plan.
Have A Plan
This is actually the third thing that I’ve learned in my trading career. Have a trading plan, and don’t make it too complicated. A solid trading plan is a cornerstone of being a successful trader.
There have been times when somebody will buy a stock, and when I ask them when they’re going to sell they say, “When I made enough money” or as someone said to me recently, “After it went to the moon,” right?
When is this? Probably never. You got to have a plan and this is why I have these two trading strategies, which is The Wheel trading strategy, and it is the PowerX strategy.
So what is a trading plan? A trading plan tells you three things, and I’ve touched on these already. A trading plan tells you what to trade, when to enter, and when to exit.
When it comes to exiting, we exit either with a profit, or we are exiting with a loss because losses are part of our business as traders.
So let’s take a closer look at the three elements of this trading plan. First of all, what to trade. This is in general, a decision that you need to make. Are you going to trade options, stocks, or futures?
It’s important to define what you want to trade so that you don’t get distracted. See, for me personally, I trade stocks and I trade options.
I’m buying options according to the PowerX strategy, and I’m also selling options, according to the rules of The Wheel strategy.
Now, the next question is when exactly are you going to enter? And this is super important, think back to the idea of FOMO, the fear of missing out, right?
You need to know at what price you want to enter a trade and you need to be able to move on it so that you get in, right?
This is where limit orders come in handy. So this is where here for example, with when to enter I’m using again the PowerX Optimizer because it tells me exactly what is the option premium that I should be getting in order to achieve my goals.
So for me, it is super important to have a tool that gives you this information and not guessing when you should get in.
This is why for me, it helps me tremendously to do this on indicators, and the indicators that I like to follow are the RSI, the Stochastics, and the MACD.
By doing this, you see, I can take the emotions out of trading which was rule number two. This is where, again, the PowerX Optimizer for me is an indispensable tool.
Originally it was just programmed for me, my head coach Mark Hodge, and my son a few years ago. Now it’s available for everyone. It saves me hours and hours because it scans for me.
Since I have my rules in place, I can quickly scan the charts to see what I’ll trade and what I won’t trade which makes my life so much easier.
You need a great trading strategy, you need to have professional tools, and you need to have the right mindset.
We can talk about strategies until we are blue in the face, but if you are not following the strategy, it is absolutely useless.
What else does a trading strategy have to tell us? Well, this is where we’ll talk about exiting, and we need to know when to exit either with a profit, and in order to define this, we are using a profit target, or with a loss. For exiting with a loss, I always like to use, when it is possible, to have a stop loss.
Using the logic “when I make enough money” is not a proper exit strategy. I know this because I did that in the beginning, and I was just swinging for the fences.
I entered a trade risking $100 and I wanted to make $10,000, but it doesn’t work this way.
Now, what are great exits? How can you define exits? There are several ways. You can use support and resistance, right?
What are tools for exit rules? You can go for a certain percentage, it really depends on what works best for you. For me, it is a profit target and a stop loss based on the average daily range.
The average daily range measures how much a stock move from top to the bottom, and a good rule of thumb is for a stop loss, you use one times the ADR, and for a profit target, you would use two times the ADR.
For example, let’s pretend the ADR is 40 points, or instead of 40 points we could just say $40. So this means that my stop loss should be when the stock moves down $40. So if I have an entry of $850, we minus $40, this means at $810 I would get out.
Now for my profit target, I would use two times my stop loss. So here in this case it would be $80. So again, if right now, my entry would be $850 plus these $80, right? So I would exit at $920.
Now let’s just say I’m trading 10 shares, right? So this means that I would lose $400 if I’m wrong, but I would make $800 when I’m right. So I’m making twice as much on my winning trades than I lose on my losing trades. So stop loss and profit target based on the ADR.
Now for The Wheel strategy, I do it slightly differently. For this strategy, I use 90% of the max profit. I can’t stress enough how important it is to be prepared when you are trading. If you’re trading without a plan, you’re failing. If not in the short term, then for sure in the longer term.
Summary
So brief summary. What are the three things that really turned my trading around? Let’s quickly summarize it.
Number one, don’t focus on the outcome of one trade. Number two, don’t trade on emotions. And number three, have a trading plan. So these are the three tips that really turned my trading around, and I hope that this helps and that it helps you also to take your trading to the next level.
Selling PutsSomeone asked me about selling puts and I see a lot of people talking about selling TSLA puts
The nearest low is at a price of $591, the trend is long and we had almost 40% drop.
The implied volatility is relatively high but could be higher (if the IV will go higher it is bad for selling options)
The option has 30 days left until expiration.
If the price of TSLA will be above $590 the option will be worthless and all the premium will be received $1610
We need a sharp move up to the green line if we want to buy back the option before expiration and get all the premium.
In the previous epic wave of TSLA people made lots of money by selling naked puts.
Selling naked is for more advanced traders.
Call Option Strike $34I see a lot of people talking about the $34 strike price of SLV
So I decided to show how it looks like.
This option has 85 days until expiration, the last big move did 60% in 90 days.
$34 is "only" 40% from the current price.
The lines are profit and loss lines, the yellow line is the break-even, the dark green 1 point, the light green 2 points, and the blue 3 points.
How I Find The Best Trades Every Time: My 3 Step SystemOn my $500,000 margin account thus far, I’ve realized more than $65,000. Now, I put $250,000 in cash into this, and since it is a margin account I got $500,000 in buying power.
Today I want to show you my three-step process of how exactly I find these trades, and I want to show you two very specific examples of trades that I took today (At the time of this writing on April 15th, 2021). So let’s take a look at how I found and executed these trades with this three-step approach.
Step Number One: Find The Right Stocks
So step number one is where I use the tool, the PowerX Optimizer, and the Wheel Scanner.
I want to show you exactly what this does because the strategy that I use is called The Wheel Strategy. This strategy means that you are first selling puts to collect premium.
The second part of this strategy is, you may or may not get assigned the stock. If you do get assigned, you move on to the third step where you sell covered calls.
So here is exactly what I do, and what I did this morning. The scanner within the PowerX Software updates every two minutes and shows me a list of stocks that meet my criteria.
What criteria am I’m looking for? I want to make at least 30 percent annualized in premium that I would collect. So here’s what I do. First of all, I know that the stocks the scanner pulls up already meet my criteria.
Then I look at the charts to identify support and resistance, mainly support, which is actually step number two.
Step Number Two: Look For Support
I look to see if there is any support. This helps me figure out if I want to own the stock at the strike price that comes up on the scanner.
So for example, American Airlines came up with a strike price, as you can see, of 20 or 20.5. So the key question here is, “Do I want to own (AA) at the price of $20.5?”
Well, looking back at American Airlines to pre-pandemic levels in 2019. I see that American Airlines has been trading very solidly between $26 and $38.
So it seems to be a good company to buy at $20.50. Again, this is my main criteria here, deciding if I want to own the stock at the strike price. However, in the short run, I believe with all of the uncertainty that is going on with the pandemic right now, that the airlines might be hurt.
I mean, you might have heard a few days ago that Johnson and Johnson’s vaccine got labeled as potentially dangerous, and therefore it is paused right now.
It also seems that around the world, the outbreaks are flaring up here in the United States. It seems to be under control, but worldwide there’s a problem. So do I really want to own American Airlines?
They dropped down as low as $8. So is this a good price to own them? This is where I can flag them as saying yes, no, or maybe.
Now let’s talk about the two stocks that came up this morning that I liked (April 15th, 2021). The first one was (PLAY). So PLAY, Dave and Busters, came up with a strike price of 41.50. This is where I thought, “do I want to own PLAY at $41.50?”
I looked back and zoomed out a little bit to pre-pandemic times before the coronavirus hit. They have traded solidly around $38. They’ve been trading as high as $64. I thought about if I’d be OK owning PLAY, at $41.50.
So this is where I sold puts that expire next Friday. So the idea here is that we are staying above $41.50 by next Friday. So here is what happens if I’m right. I sold 24 contracts and I sold them at 50 cents each. Since options come in hundred packs, that’s $50. So the premium collected for 24 contracts, times $50, is $1,200.
$1,200 for a little bit over a week, with today being April the 15th. It expires on April 23rd. So in 8 days, this is not bad at all. Right? This means that I’m making $150 a day.
Now, if it closes below $41.50 I get assigned, and I am okay with this because this is where I decided I want to own the stock at $41.50.
The other one that popped up this morning was Schwab (SCHW). Schwab reported earnings and as a result of this. They plummeted down and there was some really good premium in there, so I sold the 63.50. I sold 16 contracts for 14 cents. Now, this is expiring tomorrow, so this is a different play, right?
The premium I collected here was $224. So obviously way less than the premium that I collected here for PLAY, but this is a play that expires tomorrow. So we want to make sure that tomorrow, April 16th, if Schwab closes above $63.50 I just collect the premium and have nothing else to do. If Schwab goes below 63.50 by tomorrow this is when I get assigned.
So the important criteria here is, for the Wheel Scanner, is the so-called premium per day, or PPD. So in order for my account size to make the 30 percent annualized in premium I want to see at least $100 per day.
So with PLAY, I’ll collect $1,200 in 8 days, when it expires next Friday. This means that we are looking at $150 per day. Then we had Schwab, and we collected $224. If we count today, this makes 2 days, so this brings our PPD to $112.
So my goal is to collect $100 per day, and I want to be in 5 positions at any given time. So if we can do this, this would be $500 per day. $500 per day (this includes weekends), for 365 days, comes to over $180,000 per year, and I’m doing this on a $250,000 cash account, which is a $500,000 margin account.
So, and as you can see, this is a little bit more than the 30 percent annualized, as you can see here.
If we divide $180,000 by $500,000, then we see it is 36 percent. So there we go. You know what, sometimes I achieve the goal, sometimes I don’t. Well so far, this year, I’ve realized $65,000 in profits. So this is REALIZED profits. Now I do have unrealized profits and losses, and we’ll see how this turns out.
And this is in 4 and a half months. So I’m basically on track to make a little bit more than the 36 percent here that I have as a goal. I’m on track to make probably around $200,000 for the year.
Step Number 3: Any Negative News?
This step involves checking to see if there is any negative news. Here’s how I do this. I just Google the stock and click on “News.” When you click on “news,” it shows you the Google searched for news articles, and you can scan these for any negative news.
What I’m mainly concerned about here are lawsuits, and clinical trials. When they have a clinical trial, they can either go very well or very badly. Possible bankruptcies, bankruptcy. So these are the key things that I’m looking for when I look for negative news.
Summary
So how do I find the best trades to trade? My three-step process is I like to make my life simple and easy by using the PowerX Optimizer and running the Wheel Scanner, because I want to make, on a $250,000 cash account, around $180,000 per year.
That would be $15,000 dollars per month. For me, this is trading for a living. I can cover my living expenses with $15,000 per month.
Step number one is where I get the technical criteria. Next is where you look for support and decide if you want to own the stock at the strike price. This is where you simply go through the scanner and say, “yes, no, or maybe.”
Finally, is there any negative news? Because if it is too good to be true it is. You should definitely look up stocks on Google, click on “news.” So you can just read through this fairly quickly and make an informed decision.
So that’s basically it. This is my three-step approach to finding the best trades.
$60,000 Explosion Big Short movie setupIn the movie, the big short Charlie Geller and Jamie Shipley took trades with options out of the money with low probability.
This is an example of such trade, 100 options contract worth $6000 if SOS will run up again, this trade could make $60,000.
If the price will move to $21, this trade could make $120,000
This also shows that options are leveraged, if you would like to buy the shares you would need to pay $39,000 for 10,000 shares.
In this trade, the max loss is $6000, when buying the stocks the max loss is $39,000
How will it end? What do you say?
My Planning Process Revealed In 4 Simple StepsIn this article, I want to show you exactly how I am planning to achieve more in 12 weeks than others achieve in 12 months.
First of all, I’m not saying that I’m an expert on goal setting, because I’m not. I’m just sharing the planning process that works for me, it might be completely different for you.
The Most Important Thing For Me In My Planning Process
One of the things that I have learned over the years that works best for me is, I don’t create a plan for everything. Let me explain what I mean by this.
Many, years ago, I heard about a concept that they use in the military, which is called Backwards Planning. And you might have heard about this.
Backwards Planning
The idea here is that you start with the exact goal in mind and then plan backwards.
I have heard this example many years ago where it was used in the military where they say, for example, let’s say you want to invade a camp on the enemy’s territory.
So the idea here now, is to go backward and say, “OK, what exactly has to happen right before you invade the camp?” Well, this is where obviously you need to have your troops surrounding the camp.
Then you go one step backward. What needs to happen before you have your troops surrounding the camp? And I’m making this up here as we go. I don’t recall this example exactly.
I was not in the military, this is just an example that I’ve heard. So in order to surround this camp with your troops, what do you need to do? You need to get your troops to that camp that you want to invade.
In order to do this, first of all, let’s assume that this is on foreign soil, so you need to get your troops to foreign soil. So this is what the military often uses, so I was told, which is backward planning.
The idea here with backwards planning is that you create a detailed step by step plan of what to do.
Here’s one of the challenges. I don’t do this, because based on my experience, the problem with this is what do you do if something goes wrong?
So let’s say that one of the first steps is that you are getting your troops on foreign soil, well what happens if somehow you can’t because there’s bad weather or you’re getting attacked?
This is where I found that often when you do this, the whole plan becomes kind of useless. This is where for me, I figured out that planning can be overwhelming. It can make the process daunting and can make me feel paralyzed.
I don’t know about you, but what happened in the past before I did what I’m about to show you here is, I got paralyzed. I never achieved my goals because I couldn’t get over the first hurdle of planning.
I want to show you exactly what I do these days to avoid this.
4 Steps To My Planning Process
Step One: I write down my goal.
Step Two: I plan the next two to three steps, and here’s why.
My idea is, and this is what I found to be true, when I walk the first steps the path will reveal itself.
Imagine walking down a foggy path. You don’t actually see the end of the path where it is leading.
When I have a goal, I realized that when I plan out the first few steps and start walking, as soon as I get towards the end where I can see, the path will again reveal itself.
So this is where, going back to my planning process, it works really for me to plan the next two to three steps.
Step Three: I take action and complete these steps.
Step Four: When the fog starts clearing and I see the next step, then I add more steps or to dos to it.
Planning Process Example
This article is all about my planning process and how to achieve more in 12 weeks than most people achieve in 12 months. So let me give you a very specific example of how I’m doing this.
One of my goals is to buy a resort in Mexico.
Goal & Overview
Usually I write myself a quick overview of what is it that I want to achieve. I’m meeting with my private Mastermind members usually three times per year in exotic locations to trade, relax and make money together.
In the past, we have done it in the Cayman Islands, Bahamas, Puerto Rico, and Mexico and other locations, but finding a hotel with reliable Wi-Fi as well as getting all of our equipment there has been really challenging.
Right now I think that there’s a tremendous opportunity because I know for a fact that the travel and hospitality industry is hurt because of Covid-19.
I don’t know for a fact, but there might be a possibility to buy a hotel or resort for $0.60 to $0.70 on the dollar. So if that’s the case, it would be possible to make a 50% ROI within one to two years and that’s not bad at all, right?
It could be even more, it could be 100%. So this is now where I write down a few to dos.
This is where it goes back to my planning process. So I write down my goal and an overview of what I want to accomplish.
So now you know why I’m doing this, what I want to accomplish here, and now I plan the next two to three steps.
Planning Process Steps
My first step is I want to get an idea of what kind of investment is needed. Is a resort around one million dollars? Two million dollars? Is it more, is it less?
Then I want to get an idea if this is at all possible to make money with, because ultimately if I can make money with it, why wouldn’t I do it?
I mean, just having a hotel to have a hotel does not make sense. So what’s the best location? The location should be up to 1,000 miles away from Austin and here’s why.
I’m planning to buy a plane, and this plane that I have in mind right now has a reach of 1,000 miles.
So I’m looking at possibly Mexico, Puerto Rico, Belize, Dominican Republic, Honduras, who knows. This is where I first wanted to find out what a possible price point is?
Last weekend I was in Sacramento meeting with my head coach Mark, my CEO Debbie, and marketing director Jared. I shared this crazy idea with them and we had some fun looking for hotels online.
Based on my research, I’ve found it’s probably between 1 to 2 million dollars that I would have to invest for anywhere between 20 and 30 rooms.
That was fairly easy and only took me a few hours. I can now move on to the next step in the planning process.
Now the question is, is it possible at all to make money with this? Because if not, then I can stop right here.
Does It Make Sense?
I have been investing in apartment complexes for the past five years. To give you an example, I bought an apartment complex with 48 units here in Austin for 2.3 million dollars.
I’m making $30,000 in rent per month so I know how to run this.
$30,000 in rent per month is covering my financing, which is a mortgage, also insurance. This is also taking care of the property management, utilities, maintenance, renovations as well as capital improvements.
Now I know, having an apartment complex is not the same as running a hotel or resort, but I just wanted to see if this is feasible, and in a moment, I’ll show you why this is making sense.
So you see, I already know on 48 units, which is quite a lot, on $30,000, I can do all of this and I’m making a profit. So that’s good, not a big profit but I’m making a profit.
Now the question is if I need $30,000, let’s divide this by 30 days because now we are going to the resort, this means that I would have to bring in $1,000 in revenue per day.
The resorts that I started to look into were around 26 rooms, 17 rooms, 22 rooms, so let’s just say that I will find something around the 2 million dollar mark that has maybe 25 rooms.
This is what I’m looking for. So the key question is, can I make $1,000 per day in revenue, not in profits, with 25 rooms? It sounds like it’s possible, right?
Again, I have no clue. There’s probably more vacancy, but if I can rent out half of the rooms every day, so 50% vacancy, and I rent them out for $80 per day, this means that I would have rented 12 rooms for $80, which is $1,000.
I know that there’s housekeeping, so there’s probably more than property management and maintenance, right?
But I believe that these are quite realistic assumptions. If they are not, and if you have experience in this space, leave me a comment below and let me know.
Summary
Here’s the important thing. Let’s tie this back to what today’s show is all about, right? How I get more done in 12 weeks than most people get in 12 months.
Now, here’s the deal. How long did it take me to do the first two things thus far? Well, I can tell you four to five hours. And now I know whether it makes sense to pursue it before I go down a rabbit hole.
What is my point with all of this? My point is to stick to something really, really simple when going through the planning process.
Keep it easy where you set a goal, then plan the next two to three steps.
Or if you want to go crazy, as I did here, we could do three to five steps.
Then the most important thing is to take action and complete these first steps. Once you do this, you’ll see whether it makes sense and you can plan the next three to five steps and complete this process.
Bank nifty LongAll the levels with green line are a buy call and with a red line are shorting levels....
For me now bank nifty has entered into a bullish territory and won't bank nifty now till any sign of weekness. I will try to buy on dips bank nifty but only till I find a good risk reward and again I remind you downside my all targets of nifty and nifty Bank are not yet achieved...2 big targets are only done positionally we would try to play this bounce but positionally I won't carry any long as I still think there is more downside left ...
All the levels are informed in the chart so enjoy trading❤️🙏
Best Brokerage Account 2021Let’s talk about the best brokerage account, and in order to do this, I want to compare five different brokers for you.
I’ll be comparing tastyworks, the current broker that I’m currently trading with, Robinhood because many traders are using it, TD Ameritrade because it’s wildly popular, Interactive Brokers because it’s great for international traders, and we will talk about a new broker that I’ve been using for the past couple of months, so I have an account with them.
I want to talk about this and compare them to the others and tell you why I really like this new broker and why I’m in the process of switching over all my accounts.
The first thing to keep in mind when you’re comparing different brokers, you have to pick criteria that fit your needs.
These are my criteria and they might be great for you, or your criteria may be different. So what I’m looking for when finding the best broker.
My Criteria For Selecting A Broker
So the first thing that I would like to know is how much do I have to pay in commissions per month? I use a certain baseline for this.
With my current broker, tastyworks, I looked back over the past three months and I wanted to see how much I spent. From 1/1 through 3/31 I made 150 trades and traded 1,665 contracts.
So I use this as my baseline in order to compare these different brokers. I took to see what if I make 150 trades, or 50 trades per month and 500 contracts that I’m trading per month.
Again, for you, it might be different, but we need to have somehow a baseline, especially when we are comparing the commissions per month that I’m spending right now, that I would be spending on Robinhood, TD Ameritrade, interactive brokers, and this new broker that I’m trading with.
Now, every single broker has some other fees, and you need to see which of these fees are important to you. Here are the ones that are important to me.
I want to know if there any wire fees and if so, how much are they?
Also, are there any assignment fees? Assignment fees are important to me because I’m trading The Wheel Strategy, and part of this strategy is getting assigned shares, so I want to know how much this will be.
Information about their customer support is also important to me. What happens if I need help and I need to call or e-mail them? Do they have an online chat feature? So this is important for me.
What about the platform? Every single broker offers a platform for you, so which one best fits your needs?
This is where we get a little bit more technical because I want to talk about levels three and four. What does this mean?
Well, it means that, especially when you are selling options which you do with The Wheel Strategy, you need certain option trading permissions, so you want to know how easily can you get level three and four if this is important to you.
Now, last but not least, I love having live data. I don’t know about you, but I want to make sure that live data available with these brokerages.
I also want to know how much it costs if anything. So let’s get started and let’s talk about the first broker here, tastyworks.
tastyworks
I am currently using tastyworks, and I know exactly how much money I spent on tastyworks.
On this particular account, I spent $550 dollars in commissions.
For the baseline of 50 trades and 500 contracts per month, I spent around $180 in commissions.
Now for tastyworks, how much are wire fees? When I wire money out, which is once a month, it costs me $25.
What about the assignment fees? The assignment fees for tastyworks are $5. I want to explain to you exactly how they are charging.
So with tastyworks, they charge $1 per contract and they do have a $10 maximum. So you’re never paying more than $10.
Even if you’re trading 50 contracts, you will only pay $10.
They also have no closing fees and this applies to options trading. For stock trading, these days, trading stocks is free pretty much everywhere.
So we want to worry about options here because that’s what I’m mainly trading.
What about customer support? I must say their support is good. The experiences that I have had thus far when I contact them by chat are very quick.
When contacting them through chat, they usually only have me on hold for three to ten minutes.
Now, what I do not like about tastyworks? You cannot call them, and sometimes I would rather speak with someone on the phone, so this is why I’m not labeling it “very good,” I’m just labeling it as “good” because you can’t call them.
As for their platform, I think it is pretty good. However, I’m just using a fraction of the platform, so for me, the most important function is actually placing trades.
I’m not using any of the complicated curves that you can have and all of the analysis tools, but again, if this is important to you, then you need to make sure that this platform meets all of your needs.
For me, it does what I need it to do, which is entering trades.
Now level three and four is actually something that is quite easy to obtain with tastyworks. So no problems there, and live data is actually free.
Robinhood
As for Robinhood, how much would you pay in commissions per month? Well, Robinhood has always advertised you pay zero commissions, and that is true. For options trading, you also pay zero dollars, which is actually pretty cool.
Wire fees are a whopping zero dollars with assignment fees being zero dollars. So thus far Robinhood is really good in terms of commissions, right?
Well, what about customer support? Now, full disclosure, I do not have an account with Robinhood, so I’ve never contacted them, but based on what I have heard, it is pretty bad.
What about based on what I’ve seen? I don’t know if you’ve been following the news, but back when we had the GME craziness, Robinhood restricted trading for several days.
I don’t think that was fair. I don’t think that they should have done that, but they did.
This makes it seem to me they don’t have their customers in mind. Now, again, full disclosure, I don’t have an account with them and never contacted them. I’ve just heard that customer support is pretty bad.
What about the platform? I don’t know first hand, but I’ve heard it’s good. Again, this is where I go from hearsay because I don’t have an account with Robinhood, never had one, & don’t want one.
In terms of levels three and four, I heard from traders who have an account with them say it is fairly difficult to obtain levels three and four.
If you’re trading The Wheel Strategy, this is super important. As for their live data, it’s free.
TD Ameritrade
Now on to TD Ameritrade. How much would you spend with TD Ameritrade based on my baseline? You would pay 65 cents per the contract that you trade.
So if you’re trading like me, 500 contracts per month, times 65 cents, that comes to $325.
What about the wire fee? The wire fees here are also $25, the same as with tastyworks, but assignment fees are zero.
Now, what about customer support? Customer support used to be good. Right now I would say it is decent.
There was a time when you could call them they would pick right up. These days you are probably on hold for anywhere between 15 minutes and 2 hours because they got bought by Charles Schwab.
There seems to be a lot of consolidation going on and because of this, and because of this, it seems that customer support is suffering.
What about the platform? ThinkOrSwim is probably one of the most powerful trading platforms out there, and it is fairly complex.
For me, I just need to enter simple orders such as buy and sell orders. So for me personally, it is too complex.
It took me a long time to learn it. For those of you who have ThinkOrSwim, you either love it or you hate it. Either way, it is so complex, so you probably had to spend hours and hours learning it.
Levels three and four are fairly simple to acquire, and also live data here is free.
Interactive Brokers
Now with Interactive Brokers, I personally do have three accounts. I’ve been using them since 1999.
They’re a great choice for international traders. However, Interactive Brokers charges 65 cents per contract.
So very similar here to TD Ameritrade. If I would trade on Interactive Brokers I would actually spend $325.
The wire fee here is a little bit cheaper, $10. The assignment fees, if you get assigned, are zero.
Now their customer support, based on my experience is pretty bad. I’ve tried contacting them by chat, by phone, by email, and if you’re trying to contact them by chat, you will most likely be on hold for at least 20 minutes.
If you try to contact them by phone it is not unusual to wait 30 to 60 minutes until you get connected.
Their platform here is actually simple to use, but I find it’s pretty clunky. So just if you want my opinion and again, this is just my opinion.
You on the other hand might find this platform blazing fast and think it’s the best trading platform there is.
Now, in terms of levels three and four, yes, it is fairly easy to obtain, but they charge you $14.50 for live data, so just keep this in mind.
This is a monthly fee so you just need to know what you need.
So with the new broker, and I’ll tell you in a moment who that is, but when I saw all this mess going on in February where several brokers restricted trading, I said, “you know what, this is not fair.”
When I heard from some of you say, “My broker suddenly raised the margin requirements and I didn’t have a margin problem before and now I have a margin call,” or that you’re on hold forever before you get any customer support, I set out to find a great broker, and here is the new broker that I’m currently using.
Tradier
The new broker that I’m using is Tradier. I will move all of my accounts over to them because of what they’re offering.
The commission per month, it’s a $10 flat fee. $10 no matter how many options you trade.
This is a special rate for those of you reading these articles, and following me on YouTube.
So I think it is an absolutely cool model because it is a flat fee no matter how many contracts you trade.
Now, this, of course, is great if you are trading a lot of contracts like me. You have seen it, 500 contracts per month, with 150 trades, so I’m a very, very active trader.
I think it is absolutely cool that instead of paying $180 per month, all I’m paying right now is a $10 flat fee. That is pretty cool.
Now the wire fees are a little bit more expensive. The wire fees are $35, but again, I’m using it once a month.
So, therefore, if I’m adding this up, all right, and I say, well, that is $205 per month versus $45 a month, and for me, that adds up.
Right. It’s only a $10 difference from tastyworks, and I’m not wiring money in and out like crazy. I’m just wiring it out once a month and that is okay.
So the assignment fee here is a little bit higher, at $9 as of right now. So over the past three months, I had 3 wires and I had 8 assignments.
This is for the year. This means that per month I have 1 wire and approximately 3 assignments.
So as you can see, this is why the assignment costs here for me are not that important.
Again, these are my numbers, your numbers might be completely different, and that is fine.
This is where the cool thing is you have probably your brokerage account statement, so you can take a look at that, and then you know exactly how much you’re paying right now.
So the customer support, I must say based on my experience, over the past two months that I’ve been using them, is awesome.
What do I mean by awesome? By awesome I mean that I can pick up the phone right now.
I can call them, and within two to three rings, somebody picks up. The customer support team is in North Carolina, so I’m not going overseas, they are here in the United States.
They have been super responsive by email and by phone. I don’t even know if they offer a chat on the website because I was just so happy that I can finally talk to somebody.
Again, I’m coming from tastyworks, and on tastyworks, I’ve never, ever been able to talk to somebody because their business model is that they’re all doing it by chat, so I love this.
What about their platform? Their platform is simple, and in my opinion, it is super easy to learn.
So you can learn this platform in literally 10 minutes because that’s what they do. They just say, hey, if you want to enter trades, which I want to do, it’s fine.
They don’t have all of the bells and whistles that the other platforms have. So I would say it’s more comparable to Robinhood instead of a platform like TD Ameritrade because with Robinhood you just enter the trade and it is good.
So it’s simple and easy, does the trick for me.
Levels three and four are super easy to get. And live data is free. So this is what this new broker is all about.
For our members, we have created in our private community a special discussion group, and in this discussion group, we are here to help you, support you, with this particular brokerage. Which again is called Tradier.
So, for example, people have been asking if they open an account for business, an LLC for example? And the answer is yes. So you can ask us if you want to, of course, you can contact them.
So this is what we have here. We have a Tradier discussion group.
We do have tutorials for you such as videos on how to open an account, how to set up a paper trading account, and that reminds me, they offer paper trading. As you know, I highly recommend that you trade on a paper trading account first.
There are also videos on how to fund your Tradier account, how to place a stock entry order for the PowerX Strategy, how to place options order for the PowerX Strategy, entering orders for The Wheel Strategy, how to check your positions.
Summary
OK. So, again, my promise is to show you the best broker and this is the best broker for my needs. Now, for your needs, it might be different, but I thought that I compare here that the top five brokers that most traders are using right now.
$TSLA bulltrend continues? Long call vertical spread!TESLA smooth RSI confirms the breakout, well defined loss level.
Max profit: $165
Probability of Profit: 60%
Profit Target relative to my CAP: 46%
Max loss with my risk management: ~$100
Req. Buy Power: $355 (max loss without management at expiry, no way to let this happen!)
Tasty IVR: 16 (relative low)
Expiry: 51 days
Buy 1 TSLA May21' 595 Call
Sell 1 TSLA May21' 600 Call
Debit Call spread for 3.35db, because IVR is relative low.
Stop/my risk management : Closing immediately if daily candle is closing BELOW the box, max loss in my calculations in this case could be 100$. Probability of loss in this way: ~20% .
Take profit strategy: 50% of max.profit in this case with auto sell order at 4.2cr. Probability of profit this way: ~80%.
Of course I'll not wait until expiry in any case!
If you liked this article, check my other ideas.
Anyway: HIT THE LIKE BUTTON BELOW , and for fresh option ideas FOLLOW ME( @mrAnonymCrypto ) on tradingview !
AMD/XILINX - WILL THE AQUISITION PUSH THE PRICE HIGHER?NASDAQ:AMD is slightly up today, POSSIBLY on the hopes that the XLNX acquisition will be passed at their meeting. I am still bullish on AMD with the first price target being at the 50% fib retracement level of $84, and the second being $89.
Options activity has been 3 to 1 calls to puts for this Friday with the average strike price being $82, which suggests we will not drop far in price unless market sentiment shifts. XLNX news will make or break this asset in the very near term, however I strongly expect a earnings run up if the price is effected negatively by today's news.
TRADE AT YOUR OWN RISK.
LIKE/FOLLOW IF YOU AGREE :-)
Are Trading Courses Worth It?So let’s talk about trading courses. Are these trading courses really worth it?
As you know, there’s definitely no shortage of them out there.
With all these free videos out there, do you really need to buy a trading course, and if so, what is the best trading course?
What Is The “Best” Trading Course?
Let’s actually start with the elephant in the room. Which trading course is the best?
This is one of the questions that always hear, as well as, “Which trading course should I buy?” and “What is the best trading course?”
Here’s something that may surprise you. There is no “best” trading course. You see there’s only “best for you.”
So what does this mean? This is where many traders make a mistake in the beginning. You need to know what you want from a course before you buy it.
So what do you want from a course? You probably want to make a lot of money, and that’s cool, but how exactly do you want to do this?
Criteria To Consider
Let’s go over some criteria. What do you want to trade? I mean, do you want to trade stocks, or do you want to trade options?
Maybe you don’t care and you just want to trade whatever makes the most money, and that’s cool, we can talk about this.
Do you want to day trade or do you want to swing trade? What’s the difference? When day trading, you need to be able to spend time in front of the computer.
You might not be in the position right now to be able to do this, to be in front of the computer. So, therefore, swing trading might be better suited for you.
Another important factor to consider, your account size. Do you have a small or large account?
This is important to consider depending on your goal. Are you trading for growth, meaning that you want to grow your account, or are you trading for income?
So do you want to have a strategy that you can trade on a larger account, like a $200,000-$400,000 account, or are you in the stage in your trading life where you have a rather small account of maybe $5,000 or $10,000 and you want to grow it?
These are important criteria to consider when deciding what the best trading course is for you. There is no one-size-fits-all trading course.
I mean, I would love to tell you, “you know what? I have the perfect trading course for you.” This actually might be true depending on your criteria. It’s really super important that you understand what to look for when you look for a training course.
Let me give you just a few more criteria that I think are universal criteria for any training course.
For example, is the instructor of the training course a real trader? I mean, is he actually putting money on the line?
Is he trading a real account? Or is he just showing you woulda, coulda, shoulda trades and say,
“You know what? Here is how much money you could have made if you bought Tesla last year and now it is up, 500%” or something like this?”
So is the instructor actually placing real trades so that you see he is actually trading for income?
That’s actually a bonus, right? So I would say, are they trading for income? How is the instructor making money?
Because honestly, I think if you can’t make it as a trader, if you cannot trade for income, you have no business teaching others.
In my opinion, one criteria of great trading courses are those that provide coaching and support. Now let’s talk about are trading courses worth it?
Are Trading Courses Worth It?
So let’s talk about this and let’s be honest. There are many free resources available out there.
Especially on YouTube. This is where I think it is very important that you don’t feel pressured to buy anything just yet, especially if you’re a beginner or new to trading.
You want to have a basic understanding first.
You want to learn some basics like how to place an order. You should learn the difference between a call option and a put option?
What is theta in options? So for basic stuff like this, I don’t believe that you need to pay anybody anything.
I mean, on my Youtube channel there are probably more than 700 videos you can watch, all for free.
Here’s the important thing. Trading courses, or no trading courses. Trading courses are not the magic bullet that will solve all your problems, and here’s why.
You see, trading is a skill. Think about it, how do you acquire a skill? Do you acquire skills from just reading a book or watching a video? No, you actually have to do it.
If I wanted to learn how to paint, is it enough if I just read a book on how to paint to become a great painter?
No, I have to try it. If you want to learn how to play golf should you just get a book that tells you how to play golf, and you read the book and now you can magically play golf and participate in tournaments?
No. Same in trading, right?
Trading is a skill like everything else, and so I hate to break it to you, but there are no shortcuts to success.
You have to put in the work. It not what you want to hear, but if you were hoping that I give you the magic course that automatically makes your money hand over fist, honestly it doesn’t exist.
A trading course teaches you the basics and it teaches you some tips, but you have to learn how to trade for yourself.
How do you do this? The best way to do this is on a simulator. I want to give you a very specific example from my personal life right now.
My daughter is 15, her name is Vivian, and Vivian has a learner’s permit. She would like to get to her driver’s license once she’s 16.
Now, there is the possibility that parents, here in Texas at least, can teach their kids how to drive.
So I am Vivian’s instructor, and so I am sitting next to her in the car, but she has to drive. What we are doing right now, we are putting in 50 hours of driving.
Vivian has a little spreadsheet on the back of her door to her room where she’s marking off every time that we are driving for an hour.
I wish that this would exist for traders, that they have to put in at least 50 hours on a simulator with an experienced instructor before they trade live, but unfortunately, this is not how it works.
We do 50 hours of driving, and out of these, we have our goals.
For example, we will do 10 hours of night driving, because driving at night, as you can imagine, is different than driving throughout the day.
We will also do 10 hours of interstate driving. If you’re on the interstate you need different skills because now suddenly everything is much faster.
This is how we have broken it down into different skills that she needs to acquire.
So are trading courses worth it? To recap what I mentioned earlier, I believe that trading courses are worth it, and here’s why, with a few “IF’s.”
I believe a trading course is worth it IF the instructor is an experienced trader. Think about it, I mean, in order to be able to teach my daughter Vivian how to drive, I need to be an experienced driver.
I need to have a driver’s license. I need to have a spotless record otherwise, I wouldn’t be allowed to teach her, right?
If you want to learn golf, wouldn’t you hire an experienced golfer instead of just asking, your neighbor? I believe this is important because after all, we want to make money with trading.
Now, the other important thing is, trading courses are worth it if the instructor can give you shortcuts.
So what do I mean by this? I mean, you can acquire any skill on your own.
I believe this. I believe that probably you could learn how to play golf if you read a book, watch a few videos, and then just put a lot of time and effort in there, but what do I mean by shortcuts?
Shortcuts are there to save you time and money, especially when trading, right? I mean, if the trading course, and if the instructor can help you to avoid a few losing trades.
Losing trades are easily a few hundred dollars, sometimes a few thousand dollars. However, if you could trade losing $1,000 versus investing a few hundred dollars in of course would you do this?
Or if you could avoid losing $20,000, would you invest $2,000 in a course? Probably, right?
I also think that this is super important, especially for trading, but I believe trading courses are worth it if there are coaching and support involved, and here is what I mean by this. Most of you already know I am offering a trading tool, it’s the PowerX Optimizer.
Some of you have seen me using it on my “Coffee With Markus” Live streams on my Youtube channel, and I use it every day in my trading.
But here’s the deal. A tool is just helping you a little bit, right? I believe that this is a bonus. So a trading course is super helpful if there are tools involved.
Back to the golfing example, if you want to learn how to play golf and you get lessons from a pro let’s say, he says,
“Oh, yeah, and by the way, before you diddle around and get the wrong clubs, I actually have the perfect clubs for you.”
I mean, wouldn’t that be much easier?
So this is where the tool that I personally use and that is available to you is the PowerX Optimizer, and I love it.
We are coming out with a version 2.0 soon.
So I think training is very important. So this is where, for example, a training course is helpful if it gives you the important things about getting started, but then also of how exactly do you trade stocks, and how exactly do you trade options.
If we are looking at trading stocks, you need to know what are the different order types, how do you place a stock to the long? How to short?
How to set profit targets and stop losses, right? So this is one of the things where it’s really important that a trading course shows you how to do this, but that’s what I mentioned earlier.
I think the coaching and support here are super important, right? Because this is where you need ongoing handholding. For me, this makes a lot of sense.
Summary
So are trading courses worth it? Which trading course is the best? It really depends on what do you need.
I know that some of you have wasted a lot of time and money on various training courses just to find out that it is not for you.
This is why I say before you buy a course, okay, know what your goals are. Know what you want from a course.
I think that is super important. Know exactly what do you need help with. Then you choose the right one because again, there’s no one size fits all.
Trading is a skill, you have to put in the work. I wish I could tell you,
“Oh, you know what? All you need to do is invest in the PowerX Optimizer and tomorrow you will be the best trader in the world.”
No, you know that I’m giving you a 90-day money-back guarantee because I believe that it takes maybe a week, two, three, four weeks to really learn how to use this tool, to practice on a simulator, and I don’t want you to feel rushed at all to say,
“Oh, I’m under the clock and I only have 30 days to evaluate this tool and this course,” right?
I mean, take your time. Take 90 days, because most traders fail in the first 90 days and I want to make sure that you are succeeding
Call option PLTR until MarchHello traders,
I got a signal in my system.
PLTR was trading sideways for some time.
The implied volatility is down from 160% to ~100%
In the 71 days, we have earnings.
The stock is in a general trend up.
I always diversify my portfolio never all in.
NOVARTIS AG, NVS - 4.0% in 35 daysI understand the euphoria of picking on a winning horse and getting returns in excess of or even more than 100%, but what you need to pay attention to is money management and managing your positions.
You can buy stocks, you can buy futures, you can buy bonds and you can buy and/or sell options.
The key is always to use the instruments that we feel confident in and to have the ideal timing.
It is never just one of these two individually.
In this case, we have opened a position in our portfolio on Novartis (NVS), which will surely generate us a 4% return within a month.
Our goal is always a monthly return between 4%/5% monthly which on a compound growth we get an average of 50%/60% annually.
NYSE:NVS