My Personal Plan For 2021I’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.
My Goals For 2021
In this article, I want to talk about my goals for 2021, and how exactly how I’m planning to achieve the goals, so I thought it would be fun to write them down and share them with you.
Now, as you know, goals need to be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.
Now, I will show you my financial goals both for trading, because after all, this is what I love to do, but also for wealth building.
After that, I will share with you the goals for my company, Rockwell Trading as well as my personal goals, and also my goals for this channel.
FINANCIAL GOALS
Trading For Income
For my financial goals, let’s kick things off and start with trading.
The plan here is to trade for income, and my target goal is to make $15,000 per month. This is meant to cover my living expenses.
Now, here’s the deal. This is a rough estimate of how much I have in living expenses. So this means that I am looking to make $180,000 per year.
For this trading plan, I opened a new account. I put in $250,000 into this new account, and it is a margin account.
Since having a margin account doubles your buying power, this turns that $250,000 into $500,000 of buying power that I will use for trading to achieve this goal.
To figure out how much buying power I needed, I needed to figure out my living expenses.
So as far as I know, my living expenses are around $9,000 per month.
You might be wondering,
“If your living expenses are only $9,000 a month, why would I try to make $15,000 per month?”
Well, very easy, there is this thing called taxes and I want to account for it. This cost is estimated.
Quick side note. By now you may be wondering why I seem to be unsure of exactly how much my living expenses are. I will cover this later in this article.
So, again, the goal here is to trade for income. My next goal is for wealth building.
Wealth-Building Goals
One of the avenues I like to use for building wealth and one I’ve very knowledgeable about is real estate.
So the plan here is that this year, I plan to buy a 10 million dollar apartment complex.
Now, I’ve already been investing in apartment complexes for the past few years, but the rough idea of the financials is:
- 7 million dollars will be used through financing. So I will find a bank that is basically financing 30% of this.
- I’m actually planning to raise 2 million dollars through investors.
- The last one million dollars will be my own money that I’m putting into this deal.
This is very typical for how investing in commercial real estate is done.
Now, here is the plan. The goal is to sell this for 15 million dollars in three to five years.
So we’re selling it for 15 million.
Then, of course, we have to give back 7 million dollars to the bank, right? Because we’re borrowing 7 million dollars.
2 million go back to the investors because everybody needs their money back right?
Then 1 million dollars will need to go back to me because I also want to make my money back.
Now, this is only ten million dollars. That leaves five million dollars in profits that can be divided among the investors and me.
So essentially, I’m planning on making two million dollars based on the one million dollars that I invested, which would be a very healthy return.
Throughout this whole process, I’ll show you exactly how this process unfolds as it happens, and what apartments I’m looking at with video updates on my YouTube channel as they happen.
My other plan for this wealth-building goal is possibly buying a resort in Mexico, and here’s why.
Those of you who already follow me know with my company, Rockwell Trading, we do have a Mastermind program, and we have Mastermind meetings at least three times a year.
Now, recently due to covid, we weren’t able to have these in-person meetings, but if buying a resort in Mexico is feasible, then not only could we host our Mastermind meetings here in the future, I can also rent these rooms out for Airbnb.
Now while I have experience with real estate, I’ve never been in the hotel business, so this might be a really stupid idea, but maybe it is a good idea.
Right now this is just a goal, and will look into the details deeper to figure out if this will be feasible.
Cryptocurrency
So we talked about trading for income and wealth-building with real estate.
My next financial goal has to do with something that I definitely have on my radar is that this year, and that is cryptocurrencies.
Some of you know that in the past, I’ve been very, very public about being completely against cryptocurrencies, but I can’t deny that Bitcoin had a fantastic run this year.
Bitcoin is now trading above $30,000. So guess what? Seems I was wrong.
Moving forward I will definitely be looking into Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies more closely, and fortunately, I have access to some fantastic resources of experts on cryptocurrency that I will interview for myself.
I will also share these findings with you on my YouTube channel, and future blog posts throughout the year.
My Goals For Rockwell Trading
At my company, Rockwell Trading, we offer The PowerX Optimizer Software, and I am determined to make this the very best software in the world.
For this, I am planning to release PowerX Optimizer 2.0 in the first quarter of this year, and I’m also developing an awesome trading log that will be integrated with PowerX Optimizer.
So why do you need a trading log? Well, with this trading log it will be easy for you to analyze your trades.
We all need to analyze our trades, and so this is definitely something that I will tackle this year.
One other feature that I want to look into is possibly being able to execute trades through PowerX Optimizer by integration with actual brokerages.
As it stands right now, you use The PowerX Optimizer to find stock, and then you have to enter the trades into a broker platform separately.
I want to see if I can make this process easier, because, I have the same challenges.
I see it on PowerX Optimizer, and now I have to enter it into the broker platform, so not only making trading easier for myself, but for everyone who uses The PowerX Optimizer.
I’m constantly thinking of ways to improve The PowerX Optimizer, because not only do I believe in it, but I believe in Rockwell Trading as a whole.
I believe this company, Rockwell Trading, can be an Inc 500 company.
I am super passionate about trading, creating the best trading tools, and showing you the very best trading strategies that you can use to grow your account.
It’s because of this drive I have to provide awesome value for you, that makes me believe we can make their list of the fastest-growing companies.
Now I’d like to move on and share my personal goals for 2021 with you.
PERSONAL GOALS
Writing More Books
The first of my personal goals for this year is, I want to publish two more books.
So the first book, as some of you are already aware, will be on The Wheel strategy, which is a trading strategy for trading options.
Right now I’m in the process of giving the book one final proof-read before sending it to the printers, and I only have a few more chapters to go, but I will be rolling this one out shortly in the coming weeks.
The second book I’m thinking about writing will cover wealth-building strategies, which will cover what I’ve been doing over the past years to become a multimillionaire.
When I came to the United States in 2002 18 years ago, I had $30,000, and today I am a multimillionaire, so I know a thing or two about how to build wealth.
I think this would be another great book to share with you, that you can get a lot of value from.
Buying A Plane
Here is an absolute crazy personal goal that I have for this year, and you might actually say that this is a stupid idea, but for years I have been dreaming & fantasizing about owning a private plane.
I’ve decided that 2021 might be the year where I make this a reality.
Now again, this could be an absolutely stupid idea.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty smart about how I spend my money, and I’m not planning to buy a 10 million dollar jet because here’s the deal.
A private plane is an expense, not an investment, right? However, everybody is allowed to spend money however they want, and this might be one of the things that I decide to splurge on.
For other people, it might be exotic vacations, for me, the idea here is a private plane.
So it’s smaller like an executive plane, and this is the kind of plane that I’m looking into.
I’m definitely not planning to fly it myself, so no worries there. I’m planning to have a pilot fly it for me because I have no idea how to do this.
I will look deeper into this and see if buying a plane actually makes sense or not?
These are some of my personal goals. Now, in terms of habits, there are also a few habits that I want to start doing this year.
HABITS
Keeping Track Of My Finances
First of all, I want to track everything. What do I mean by this?
Well, when I say track everything, I want to get better at tracking my wealth, which would be my net worth.
Now I have a rough idea of what my net worth is, but I should be probably getting much better about this so that I know at any given time how many millions I have.
You see, the challenge is once you have money, it’s not that important anymore, but I want to do this and I also want to get a little bit better about tracking my expenses.
Remember earlier, when I was talking about how I wasn’t sure exactly what my monthly expenses were?
This is where being better at keeping track of finances, as a whole comes into play.
I said that I’m planning to trade for income on my YouTube channel and that I think I need $15,000 a month, but I actually don’t know exactly how much I need.
So I need to get better about keeping track of my finances.
Health & Fitness
I also want to get better at tracking my weight and calories. I’m 51, so I’m getting older, so it’s important to take care of this.
I want to track everything from my water intake, calorie intake, and what kinds of food I’m eating.
I also want to keep track of my workouts, and as of now, my workouts are very, very easy to track because it is actually zero, so I want to be better at getting exercise as well.
My YouTube Channel
Now how does all of this affect you? I mean, why would you even care about all this?
Well, this is the beautiful thing about my channel. If you’re interested in what I’m doing with these goals, I’m planning to post videos there throughout 2021.
Five times per week, I will post a daily stock market update.
I used to talk about what was going on in the markets during the “Coffee with Markus” live streams.
These are now separate, daily videos, 5 days a week, and this will be in four minutes or less.
Two to three times per week, I will continue the “Coffee with Markus” live streams, but without the market updates, as they will now be in the other videos.
I am planning actually keeping you updated on the wealth-building strategies I was talking about, with video updates.
I will post videos updating everyone on the progress of my goals, and, of course, I also will continue to post videos covering the very specific strategies that I will use for trading.
When it comes to trading, I will continue to show you exactly the two strategies that I’m currently using, which is The Wheel strategy, and the PowerX strategy.
If I decide to trade any other strategies this year, I will post videos about that as well.
I will share videos with my real estate adventures, which as of right now, is where I’m planning to invest in a 10 million dollar apartment, possibly buying a resort in Mexico.
I’ll be sharing everything with you, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
I also want to cover topics I haven’t covered before, for example, credit cards.
I have a bunch of credit cards and I’m using them wisely, so for instance, topics about credit cards like, “The Apple Card, is it worth it?” I have 3 American Express cards so I’ll cover whether or not they’re worth it.
I also can tell you that right now I have 650,000 airline miles, so I will show you exactly what I’m doing to get all of these points because, with 650,000 airline miles, you can go around the world several times.
Another topic of interest is that interest rates are low right now.
So we will talk about, for example, LOC these lines of credit, or does it make sense to refinance your home?
I have been looking into refinancing my home and I will let you know what I found of whether it makes sense or not, and other strategies to employ when interest rates are low, and then when interest rates are high.
For example, when interest rates are high, I will cover high yield savings accounts as well as CDs.
YouTube also has these so-called “shorts” and these are videos below one minute or less.
These will be videos that I do as a quick reference guide. So for example, what is the bid/ask spread? What is Theta in options?
Recap
So let’s just briefly recap, I wanted to share my goals with you for 2021 and they are:
- Will publicly trade here for income with a new $500,000 margin account, with the goal of making $180,000 a year.
- For wealth building. I’m planning to buy a 10 million dollar apartment complex, and am looking into buying a resort in Mexico for the Mastermind meetings for Airbnb?
- I will look into cryptocurrencies and see which cryptocurrency. Does it make sense to invest in Bitcoin? Are there any other cryptocurrencies worth investing in? Is it better to maybe invest in gold or silver?
- I will look into publishing two books.
- Improving the PowerX Optimizer Strategy.
- I’m looking into if a private plane is a stupid idea or not.
- Keeping better track of my health and finances.
- Becoming an Inc. Fastest Growing Company.
- Providing more content on my Youtube channel.
So long story short, this will be an exciting year. I am super excited for 2021.
This is the first time ever that I’m doing anything like this, and I will really be pulling back the curtain throughout to show you everything that I personally do.
I hope that you find this not only interesting but that these are also strategies that you can employ in your life right away, but this really depends on what stage of life you’re at.
You might be at a stage where you are still trading for growth, trying to build an income, and I will show you very specific trading strategies for doing this.
It might be that you have a retirement account and you’re looking back right now.
You’re getting your initial statement and you say,
“You know what? This hasn’t been doing anything over the past year and I want to have better wealth-building strategies.”
If so, there will be videos on my channel as well.
Sometimes you might be wondering,
“Does it make sense for me to open an American Express account or to have an American Express credit card?”
Or something relating to this.
And I will share all of this with you. Hope that you’re enjoying this. And this is what you can expect from me in 2021.
Options-strategy
NGD Cheap contracts with potential if gold continues to run Hey y'all, I have been looking at gold prices and if we can get back above $1960/oz we should keep running up to $2000+/Oz. If this happens have your eyes on NGD, I have options in this company for $3 strike may 21. They are extremely cheap and We could see 100% gain on these contracts or higher. Gold Is looking amazing for the 2021 year and multiple analysts have a 3000$/oz price target. When gold rose to $1960 on Monday NGD saw an 8% gain. Gold will rise when the USD goes down, and also when more inflation happens (current market). We could see Ngd run to $5 Possibly higher. Make sure you do more of your own research and please inform me as well. Look for future outlook releasing sometime this January for NGD as well.
I have added the gold chart into this analysis and it is the orange line.
Thanks,
Ben
Rising Wedge SPY Short Near TermRising Wedge SPY
Entry Short Price 371.70
Target Price 368.83 ish
SL 373.65
Risk Reward 1/3
Georgia elections hovering over the market. Probably going to drag on for a few days.
Consider 15Jan367P puts at entry point
Option Symbol .SPY210115P367
Comment below your thoughts on this idea.
$VALE Epic! Thinking PT 40 by end of Aug$VALE PT 44 by 5/06/2021-11/30/2022
Thinking PT 40 by end of Aug
Multi-leg:
1) Calls 25 Jun 18th 2021
Return +6,233%
2) Calls 25 Jan 21st 2022
Return +2,271%
Vale S.A., together with its subsidiaries, produces and sells iron ore and iron ore pellets for use as raw materials in steelmaking in Brazil and internationally. The company operates through Ferrous Minerals, Base Metals, and Coal segments. The Ferrous Minerals segment produces and extracts iron ore and pellets, manganese, ferroalloys, and other ferrous products; and provides related logistic services. The Base Metals segment produces and extracts nickel and its by-products, such as copper, gold, silver, cobalt, precious metals, and others. The Coal segment is involved in the extraction of metallurgical and thermal coal; and provides related logistic services. It also offers platinum group metals. The company was formerly known as Companhia Vale do Rio Doce and changed its name to Vale S.A. in May 2009. Vale S.A. was founded in 1942 and is headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
$AAPL Calls 250 Apr 16th 2021 buy on Jan 6th Return +5,564% $AAPL PT 190
by 5/17/2020
Supernova!
Calls 250 Apr 16th 2021 buy on Jan 6th
Return +5,564%
Apple self-driving EV tech,
Partnership with $THBR Indie EV semi-conductor chips
Google Maps; Apple now receives an estimated $8 Billion to $12 Billion in annual payments,
in exchange for building Google's search engine into its products, accounts for 14-21% of
Apple's profits
Google Maps//Apple self-driving tech//EV Semi-conductor chips//$THBR//$TSLA
all ties into each other...
GC - Inverse head and shoulders on dailyTrump just officially signed the relief bill, so DXY dropped 12 cents. Metals - Gold futures up .85% and SLV futures was up 3.5%. GC has possible bullish inverse head and shoulders on daily. The GLD etf has bullish Feb 2021 put/call options ratio of .22. GOLD - Barrick gold, Warren Buffett has stake in that. The most common fibonacci retracement is .50 , which is $1928 for GC. GL!
Call Ratio Spread DebitThe ratio call spread for debit is the same strategy as ratio call spread credit. But now, the upper and lower strike price are farther apart. This change, give different mathematical results as you can see on the chart.
If you didn’t read the previous post, please do.
In the chart we see a ratio spread of 2:1, in this case, the options that were sold are now worth less than the call that was bought. So this position is now with debit.
Inputs: MA (Mastercard)
Debit paid -> 3.8 (-$380 for one position)
Stock price -> 338
Upper strike -> 350 , 2 calls sold
Lower strike -> 330 , 1 call bought
Days to expire -> 36
Implied Volatility -> 0.309 (30.9%)
Date -> 12/11/2020
The Debit paid is $380, the maximum profit is $1620 with less than 1% probability, the maximum loss is theoretically unlimited.
In this example, one call was bought at 330 strike price for 12.7 and two calls were sold at 350 strike price for 4.45 each, in total 8.9.
The debit = 8.9-12.7 = (-3.8)
If at expiration the stock price will be below the lower strike (330), all of the options will be worthless and the loss will be only (-$380).
Maximum profit = Difference between strike – debit paid = 350-330 – 3.8 = 16.2
This position is neutral.
At the expiration:
Between 333.8 to 366.2 the position will be with a profit. $0 - $1620
Under 330.17 the position will lose (-$380) no matter what price.
Above 369.80 the risk is getting bigger.
Call Ratio Spread CreditA ratio call spread is a neutral strategy in which we buy several calls at a lower strike and sells more calls at a higher strike. In a ratio call spread with credit, there is no downside risk. The ratio spread that we see on the chart has a ratio of 2:1.
We can see from the chart the non-linear behavior of options.
Inputs: MA (Mastercard)
Credit received -> 3.1 ($310 for one position)
Stock price -> 332
Upper strike -> 340 , 2 calls sold
Lower strike -> 330 , 1 call bought
Days to expire -> 37
Implied Volatility -> 0.291 (29.1%)
Date -> 11/11/2020
The credit received is $310, the maximum profit is $1310 with less than 1% probability, the maximum loss is theoretically unlimited.
In this example, one call was bought at 330 strike price for 14.2 and two calls were sold at 340 strike price for 8.65 each, in total 17.3.
The credit = 17.3-14.2 = 3.1
If at expiration the stock price will be below the lower strike (330), all of the options will be worthless and all the credit will be received.
The maximum profit at expiration for a ratio spread occurs if the stock is exactly at the striking price of the sold options. The reason is that the call that was bought has some profit (stock price above strike price) and the sold options are worthless.
Maximum profit = The spread (340-330=10) + Credit received (17.3) – Debit paid (14.2) = 13.1 => $1310 (mulitpling by 100 shers per option contract)
The risk in this position is to the upside. The calculation for the break-even at expiration.
Break-even point = Upper strike price + the points of max profit = 340+13.1=353.1
This strategy has a high probability in general and even more so when used correctly.
The example that has been used could profit the most in the blue zone, where the profit is greater than 50% of the maximum profit, but it will take 34 days out of 37 to reach there.
How implied volatility affect this position?
In a ratio spread, there are more options sold than bought, in the previous posts we saw that volatility increase is harming sold options and benefits bought options, this example is no different.
10% increase in implied volatility, the lines are now in a worse location compare to the original position.
10% decrease in implied volatility, the lines are now in a better location compare to the original position. The position can now reach the 50% max profit zone in 30 days.
The next post will be on ratio spread debit, that looks different from the ratio spread credit, the solution to the partial differential equations of the Black-Scholes model can be seen.
Options strategy Iron CondorIron Condor - a spread with limited risk and limited profit, using four different striking prices but the same expiration date. The position is a combination of puts and calls all of which are Out of the money. The maximum profit is realized between the two inner strikes, and the maximum loss is realized outside of the higher and lower strikes.
This strategy is preferable for beginner traders because there is no unlimited risk theoretically, unlike selling straddle/strangle. When selling an Iron Condor (or Iron Butterfly), the trader is neutral.
Because all the options are Out of the money, the trader receives credit for it.
The inner options are being sold, those options worth more than the outer options that being bought, inner options are closer to the stock price, which means their strike is closer to At the money strike (to more expensive options).
If the stock price closes between the two inner strikes at expiration, all the options will expire worthless. The trader will receive all the credit.
Chart example:
Inputs:
Credit recived-> 13.45, Stock price-> 484,
Top Upper strike (Bought) ->560 Call
Top Lower strike (Sold) ->530 Call
Bottom Upper strike (Sold) ->450 Put
Bottom Lower strike (Bought) ->450 Put
Days to expire -> 46
Implied Volatility -> 46.7% (0.467)
Date - > 02/11/2020
Maximum Profit = The credit recived = $1345
Maximum Loss = Difference in Upper (or Lower) Strike – the credit
= 560 - 530 – 13.45 = 16.55
= 450 - 420 – 13.45 =16.55
Maximum Loss = $1655
If the Iron Condor is not balanced (the differences between strikes are not equal like in this example), the calculations are different.
Like selling Straddle / Strangle, the same conclusions about increase or decrease in Implied volatility are true here.
In these conditions, it will take 10 days for the position to enter the profit zone and 35 days to receive 50% of the credit.
This post relates to previous posts.
Option strategy sell Strangle/Straddle In the chart, you see the strangle strategy when sold, I will show what will happen if the implied volatility changes, you can see this strategy being bought in the next post. You can come back to this post and watch how things play out.
As a rule of thumb, strategies are sold when implied volatility is relatively high and bought when implied volatility is relatively low, the seller would try to anticipate IV decrease and the buyer would try to anticipate IV increase.
Selling Strangle
The strangle is a position involving calls and puts, they will have the same expiration date but different strike prices. Selling Strangle is established by selling Out of the money calls and puts when the stock price is usually in the center.
This strategy when selling a strangle is neutral, the seller anticipates that in the life of the options the stock price will remain between the strikes, and at expiration, the options will be worthless and the seller will receive all the credit.
The green zone is the profit zone, the yellow lines are the break-even lines, the blue lines are losing lines, the lime green lines represent when you can realize 50% of the credit. I added pink broken lines to show where this strategy will have the maximum profit at expiration.
For example, from the chart, these options are from 29/10/2020 close in Zoom.
The strategy sold for -> 44.6, meaning credit is received.
Stock price-> 489.68 , Upper strike (call)-> 600, Lower strike (put)-> 400
Days-> 50, Impleid volatility-> 82% (0.82), date-> 29/10/2020
For one position we received 44.6, multiplying by 100 (number of shares per contract) if the stock price will be between 400 to 600 at the expiration date , all the options will expire worthless, the seller will receive all the credit $4460 this is the maximum profit.
Upper break-even point at expiration:
The upper strike + credit received = 600+44.6 = 644.6
Lower break-even point at expiration:
The lower strike - credit received = 400-44.6 = 355.4
Between 600-644.6 and 355.4-400, one of the options is not worthless at expiration, so it has intrinsic value, the seller will get between $0-$4460, the seller will need to close the position before expiration to avoid assignment.
If the price got to 689.2 or 310.8, the position is losing, in this case (-$4460), this strategy has a limited profit and theoretically unlimited loss.
You can see from the chart that It will take at least 22 days to realize 50% of the credit, some traders don’t want to wait until expiration and they prefer to close the position at 50% credit.
How implied volatility affects the position? (20% increase and decrease)
The blue area is the new profit zone, the purple lines are the new losing lines.
If the IV will raise after entering the trade (left chart), the seller will need to wait 18 days before his position will re-enter the profit zone, what was before a profit area will now be a losing area.
On the other hand, if the IV will fall (right chart), the seller will profit much quicker, the losing lines will be farther away.
Selling Straddle
This strategy is a private case to the strangle (the general strategy), in the straddle both options the calls and puts are at the same strike price, usually At the money.
The strategy is sold at the money because the time premium is the largest there.
This means that the seller receives a lot more credit for this strategy, the downside is for getting the maximum profit the stock price needs to finish exactly at the strike price, the probability for this to happen is less than 1%.
The opportunity to realize 50% of the maximum profit will take longer than the strangle, in this example 39 days. The break-even lines will be much closer.
The maximum profit for this example is $11,690, much larger than the strangle.
The risks are also much larger.
How implied volatility affects the position? (20% increase and decrease)
The selling of the strangle and straddle are not for beginner traders, due to the risk involved, a less risker strategy is the Iron Condor .
In the next post, I will show the buying side of the strategies.
Dec Hedge: VXX Puts - 18 Dec expiryDecember's Hedge Trade
This trade hedges OLLI my secondary trade which is riskier as it was strategically structured to be the opposite of the border market movement. Hence if OLLI surges this should mitigate the loss.
It is 15% ($827.42 with comms) of the premium from Dec's Primary and Secondary trade. If things go well I should not need to cash this at all.
Bought 95 Puts @ 0.08, Strike 14
It requires an est -26% drop to reach the strike
JETS ETF Bullish inclined naked Puts - 18 Dec expiryDecember's Primary Trade
As the Primary Trade is this aligned to the larger market direction and is deemed less risky. I'm bullish inclined for JETS as it is considered one of the COVID19 recovery sectors. The 9 Nov vaccine and US election news cause a significant gap upwards.
Vaccine news as we near 2021 could start increasing it's frequency, resulting in traders trying to capitalize on it by entering sectors previously hit hard by COVID19
Sold 140 Puts @ 0.17, Strike 17
BP block: 25k
Max gain - est $2380
"DKNG Long" Bullish will this be able to push to $60+ $DKNGNASDAQ:DKNG $DKNG intersting levels would love to see this break that 54.66 are so we can push into that 55 resistance then I feel the fun will begin and room to 60+ on this one but that breakout anf hold is a must to get this next leg higher
$CGRO entry PT 11.50-11.75 PT 24 and higher$CGRO Innoviz backed by SoftBank and Samsung...
And Bill Gates is in LGVW (spac), portable ultrasound you set up with a mobile device...
$THBR entry PT 10.25-10.40 PT 30 and higher$THBR (fm @Marcoux Faraday)
$THBR $thbrw enters into a definitive agreement with indie Semiconductor, "a leading pure-play provider of next-generation semiconductor and software solutions for the rapidly growing Autotech market
this is major semiconductor sector has been un-phased this year
$THBR + Indie semiconductor are merging with a value of $1.4 bill.
Lower left crayon DD 1/3
✓ Same management took $RPAY public Stock ATM $24+
✓ Current customers: Apple CarKey, MAGNA, BYD, Sirius XM, Tesla, BMW, etc.
✓ $2B+ in backlog
They work with $TSLA and $AAPL
$982M EV (2x 2025 revenue)
$1.44B Equity Value
$SPAC Deal - $NPA DA with AST SpaceMobile (pre-revenue until 2023), who is building the first space-based cellular broadband network.
$1.392B EV / $230M PIPE
(Info from Twitter $THBR thread)
Options Delta ExplainedI’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 is Delta?
What is Delta? You see options prices are influenced by what they call the Greeks.
A few of the Greeks are Delta, Gamma, and Theta. These are just three of the Greeks there are more.
When you’re trading options, it is important that you know about the Greeks and what they do.
For this article, we will focus on Delta, what it is, and why you should know exactly what Delta is.
Then we’ll go through a specific example explaining it, and then I’ll share with you a few things that you need to know about Delta.
So let’s get started.
The Greeks
OK, so as I mentioned, there are the option Greeks. Here are a few of them and what they tell you:
1) Delta is actually measuring the sensitivity. It’s a mouthful, but I’ll show you exactly what it means, for the option’s premium relative to the underlying asset in this article.
In a nutshell, though, it basically says, how much does the option price change if the stock moves $1 to the upside or the downside?
2) Gamma is the rate of change of the Delta.
3) Theta , and Theta basically measures time decay.
What Is Delta?
So what is Delta? Delta is a number between 0 and 1 that measures how much the price of an option changes if the stock moves by $1.
I know all of this sounds super theoretical, so let me actually give you a specific example.
Now, the example that I want to use here is Microsoft MSFT when it was trading at $211.20.
I want to cover different strike prices of options, because, again, options have strike prices and expirations.
We are looking at the current price of this option and we will look at the new price of this option if MSFT moves by $1 from $211.20 to $212.20.
When you bring up the option chain in your trading platform, in my case I use Tastyworks, the option we are using as an example is expiring on November 27th.
Here, you would see there are different call options on this site with different strike prices.
You would also see that they have all sorts of different Deltas. So let’s get started with the 205 that is right now trading at $7.30, and the Delta is 0.8.
Remember, the Delta is 0.8 because again, the Delta is between 0 and 1.
I’ll tell you about negative Delta in just a moment. The current price of the option is what we are seeing right here.
We look at the last traded price, the last traded price is $6.92.
So what does it mean? It means if MSFT goes up by $1 to $212.20, that the new price is $6.92 plus the Delta ($0.80).
So, you see this where it’s really important that you understand Delta. Some people think that options move even more than the stock, and this is not true at all.
So option prices always move less than the stock price. So the new price here of the option would then be $7.72.
So this is for a strike price of 205, and this is a strike price that is so-called ITM “In The Money” because its value, its strike is less than the current price.
Now let’s take a look at a strike that is at the money.
Now assuming MSFT is trading at $211 we will use the 210 strike price.
The 210 strike price has a Delta of 0.57, and this would be a so-called ATM “At The Money” with a Delta of 0.57.
Again, it is between 0 and 1. The current price of the 210 strike here is $3.05. We are using the last traded price here.
So if MSFT moves by $1 upwards, this option only moves 0.57. So this means that this option moves to $3.62.
Lets cover one more example.
So if we are using a strike of 215, that would be OTM “Out Of The Money,” and the Delta is 0.27. So the current price of this option is $1.06.
So if the stock moves up by a dollar, this option only moves up by $0.27.
Even though the stock moves up by $1, this only moves to $1.33.
Things You Need To Know
So let’s talk about the things you need to know.
Options that are ITM have a higher Delta then options OTM. So this means that ITM options move more.
Now, if you were to look back at your options chain, you see that the Delta for deep in the money options is 0.98.
So this basically means that if the stock goes up by $1, the price of this option goes up by $0.98, so the deeper in the money, the closer to $1 the price will move.
So options that are ITM are more expensive. This is where it’s important that you see that there’s a relationship between the Delta and the price.
The higher the Delta, the higher the price, because the higher the Delta, the more it is in the money.
As a rule of thumb, options ATM “At The Money” which are right where the strike price is right at the level where the current price is, are usually around 0.5.
Now, all this applies to call options. Now put options have a negative Delta which is between -1 and 0.
Well, the price of a put decreases if the option goes up. So the Delta for put options is all negative.
Now, put options that are ATM, are usually closer to one. And options that are OTM, don’t move a whole lot.
This is very important because some people just think,
“Oh, my gosh, I’m buying out of the money options because they are cheap. It is so much cheaper to pay $1.6 than $6.92.”
But they don’t really move a whole lot.
Now here’s a really cool tip that you might not have known.
The Delta is a rough estimate of the probability of the stock price closing above the strike.
So here, you see with a delta of 0.8, it means that there’s an 80% probability right now that the stock will be above that strike price.
If the Delta is 0.27, then that means there’s a 27% probability that the stock will be above that strike price.
So I think it’s kind of cool as an options trader to know this.
So the Delta is giving you a rough approximation of how likely is it that the stock will be above or below the current strike price on exploration.
Now here’s the tricky part, Delta is not fixed. So the Delta changes as the price changes and here’s why.
Right now, if, for example, MSFT (trading at $211) goes up to 215, the current strike price of 210 is deeper in the money therefore, then the Delta will be higher.
So now you know what Delta is, how it influences the option price, and you see that this is important when you are trading options.
SLG bullish inclined naked puts - 20 Nov expirySLG is a REIT, I identified this company through Finviz, so far it seems like a pretty decent tool to identify opportunities. Real estate similar to travel is another sector that has been beaten so badly. As such I don't think there are many speculators monitoring this company to move the price wildly
Since the drop in Mar, unlike the broader market. SLG has not recovered and has been ranging for the entire Q3. The recent earnings has been pretty positive but it did not result in a spike or a huge price movement. This gave me the confidence to sell PUT options.
My PUT sells also aligns to the broader bullish market movement and RSI is at a low of 45
Sold 30 PUTs @ 0.87, Strike 40
BP block: 14k
Implied Volatility is contast around 0.62
Max gain est: $2610
Hyatt bullish inclined naked Puts - 16 Oct ExpiryHyatt is part of the hotel sector that has been battered by COVID-19 and since Mar it has slowly been gaining ground by following the overall market's bullishness. As it is one of the hugely weakened sectors, I don't expect much speculation/volatility in this sector (Near term).
At this point (24 Sep), the market has been bearish across sectors. H's price movement has not fallen significantly vs the other more speculative sectors like tech. Since 17 Sep, price has dropped -13%.
I placed a naked put at Strike price of 45 as it is near a key S/R line.
Despite the past few negative days the larger trend is still bullish (Yellow line)
RSI is also at 40 which seems to be the average low
I also like it that it is the opposite of my JETS trade as it acts like a hedge. This seems like a viable hedge strategy as I can win both or lose one where the other will mitigate that loss (To an extend). Another hedge thought would be to potentially buy a cheap OTM Vix put or call. But let's see.
Sold 40 Calls @ 0.45, Strike 45
BP block: 20k
Max gain - est $1800
OLLI Bearish inclined naked calls - 18 Dec expiryDecember's Secondary Trade
This trade is slightly more risky and is the opposite of the general market movement (bullish).
I shortlisted Ollies out from the category of Discount Outlets from Finviz screener. Unlike the rest of the market that gapped up, this category fell after the 9 Nov US election news. This was one of the reasons why I feel the company's stock direction in the shorter term will be somewhat opposite of the market especially if there are vaccine related news.
OLLI also had a good price for a strike above the current Support and Resistance line and is a good 19% from the entry price. I'm slightly worried about the Earning release on the 2 Dec, but i think with potential vaccine news traders will be optimistic and move their money to COVID19 recovering sectors like Travel etc.
I will be hedging this trade with a bullish VXX trade, paid by the Dec premiums
Sold 18 CALLs @ 1.85, Strike 105
BP block: 19k
RSI: 51
Max gain est: $3330
JETS ETF Bullish inclined naked Puts - 22 Jan expiryAs the Primary Trade is this aligned to the larger market direction and is deemed less risky. I'm bullish inclined for JETS as it is considered one of the COVID19 recovery sectors.
More vaccine news and it's potential positive speculation could start increasing it's frequency, resulting in traders trying to capitalize on it by entering sectors previously hit hard by COVID19
Sold 120 Puts @ 0.30, Strike 19.5
BP block: 28k
Max gain - est $3600