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Importance of Optimizing RSI Calibration with NINJASIGNALS V4This is a great example of why it is helpful to scan through multiple RSI Calibration values when calibrating Ninja Signals V4 to fit a given chart. Different currency pairs and candle sizes often require different RSI Calibration values to maximize trading success. Often times, different RSI Calibration values may result in a significantly higher net profit, win-ratio, or both. In this particular example, we found that using a small RSI Calibration value of 2 resulted in both a significantly higher net profit and win ratio. We typically use RSI Calibration values of 2-12 when fitting Ninja Signals V4 to a chart. Smaller RSI Calibration values result in a larger number and frequency of trades, whereas larger RSI Calibration values result in a smaller number and frequency of trades. We hope you find this helpful and informative. Feel free to send us a message on TradingView if you have any questions. Happy Trading! Ninja Signals V4 (Script) Ninja Signals V4 (Strategy)
Education
by Bitcoin_Ninjas
1
Trading For A Living: How Much Money Do You Need?In this article, we’ll talk about how much money you need to trade for a living. I’ll share with you my three-step approach and give you an example from my trading account. “How much money do you need to trade for a living?” is one of the most frequently asked questions I get. “Can I start with $5,000 dollars, do I need $25,000 dollars, or maybe even more?” You see, this is a super important question. Now, here’s the deal. There’s no standard answer because making a living is different for everybody. Some traders can live on $5,000 a month. For others, trading for a living means making at least $15,000 a month. Let’s talk about step number one. How Much Do You Want To Make Each Month? Step number one is figuring out how much money you want to make per month. This is the first thing determining what your income goal should be, and it really depends on a few different factors. For example, what are your monthly expenses? How many dependents rely on your income? That’s different for every trader. Additionally, what income do you need to buy cool stuff like cars, boats, whatever it might be? These are just a few examples of what should be taken into account when you figure out how much income you need to generate every month. Now, as boring as this sounds, it definitely helps to make a budget. You don’t have to account for everything, but you should list your major expenses. So in your budget, there should be, for example, expenses for housing. In housing, you include your mortgage, your insurance, your taxes, and expenses for your house maintenance. The next thing to account for is transportation. Unless you’re using a helicopter, for most people this is a car payment or a lease. This also includes car insurance. The next major category is food. Food includes groceries and also restaurants. Now, the next major category is utilities such as gas, water, power, Internet, TV, phone insurance. Some of you also buy your own health and life insurance. You also need to consider any medical expenses like co-pays. The next one is a fun one, travel and entertainment. Where do you want to travel? How often do you want to travel? What else do you do for entertainment? You have to factor these activities in too. This next one is not so fun. This is of course the dreaded taxes we have to pay. Now you need to add all of this up and you will get to a number, which is the amount you need to make each much to cover your expenses. For me personally, this number is $15,000. So you know what my number is, and I’ll show you how I trade for a living so that I can make this $15,000. What Is The ROI of Your Trading Strategy? Now that we have figured out what your number is, it’s on to step number two: factoring in the return on investment, or ROI, of your trading strategy. I like to trade the PowerX Strategy, and I also like to trade The Wheel Strategy. These are my two favorite strategies, and for both strategies, I want to see at least 30 percent ROI based on my buying power. Let me explain what this means. As an example, let’s figure out 30 percent of my buying power. I’m trading a margin account and this means that I can borrow up to 100 percent of my cash from my broker. Let’s say I were to put $20,000 in cash in this account. $20,000 in cash into a margin account would give me $40,000 in buying power, so back to my ROI, the return on investment. I want to see at least 30 percent based on my buying power. So in this example here, if my buying power is $40,000 and we want to find out what 30% would be, we take 40,000 and multiply it by 0.30. This comes to 12,000, so this means that I want to make at least $12,000 per year with $40,000 in buying power in a margin account. To find the ROI based on the cash I put in, which is $20,000, we take the $12,000 (profit we would make with margin) and divide by $20,000 (cash I put in), this comes to 0.60, or 60 percent ROI based on cash. I know this sounds like a lot of numbers, but here’s the good news. This is the most complicated step. Now, I know that for some of you 30% sounds low, doesn’t it? I know that most traders would like to see 50% or more ROI, maybe even 100–200%. But you see for me, it’s more important to be able to generate SRC profits which stand for systematic, repeatable, and consistent. I’ll take 30% in SRC profits any day over 100% in irrational profits trading stocks like GameStop. For me, 30% is good enough to support my lifestyle, but hey, every trader is different, just make sure that you use YOUR number. By the way, if you don’t know your ROI yet, trade your strategy on a simulator first. After 40 trades on a simulator, you will get close to your strategy’s ROI. Determining Your Account Size Let’s move on to step number three because now things get exciting. So step number three is where you use a formula to determine your account size, and I want to give you the formula right now so that you can plug it in. Everything that I do is very, very systematic. Now you know how much income you must make every month, this was step number one. For step number two, you learned how to figure out how much ROI you can expect from your trading strategy. Here is a very simple formula that you can use to calculate how much you should have in your trading account so you can generate the amount of money every month that you determine. In order to determine the buying power you need in your trading account, all you need to do is take the desired annual income that you determined in step number one and divide it by the expected ROI that you determined in step number two. Let’s say that you want to make $10,000 per month. If you want to make $10,000 per month, that would be $120,000 per year. For some, this might be very realistic. So this is step one where you used a budget to figured this out. For step number two, say you’re using either the PowerX Strategy where you can easily make 30% a year, or you’re using The Wheel Strategy which can also help you to make 30% per year. You have determined that you can make 30% per year based on your buying power. Here’s how you would figure out how much buying power you need in your trading account. Your buying power should equal $120,000 desired annual income divided by 0.3 (30% ROI). This means that you need $400,000 in buying power in your account. Now, $400,000 in buying power would mean if you’re using a margin account, you only need $200,000 in cash. This might be more than you expected, and that’s okay. You can actually trade for growth in the beginning. I just want to show you what your goal needs to be if you have a smaller account right now so you know at what level you can actually start trading for income, and at what level you can quit your job. Have Realistic Expectations If right now you’re looking at this example here and you currently have $10,000 or $20,000 in your account, that is really good, but don’t quit your job just yet. I like to keep it real, right? With me, it’s real money, real trades, and also realistic expectations. Well, that is possible if you have a decent-sized account, but let me cover another example so you can see how simple the formula is, and how it works in action. The Numbers In Action So let’s say in step number one you determine, like I did, that you want to earn $15,000 per month, $180,000 per year. Now, again, we are assuming that we’re using The Wheel Strategy and the PowerX Strategy, which gives me 30% ROI per year. Here’s how I determine how much buying power I need to have in my account in order to make $15,000 a month consistently. Again, we take our desired annual income, which is $180,000, divided by 0.3. So that would be $600,000 in buying power. Now, $600,000 in buying power means that you need to have, if you’re using a margin account, $300,000. This is how this worked out for me. At the beginning of the year, on January 11th, 2021, I put $250,000 in cash into a margin account, and this gave me $500,000 in buying power. So $500,000 in buying power, and at the time of this writing on April 26, 2021, my profit thus far this year is $72,908 in REALIZED profits. This means that on average, over the past four months, I made $18,277 per month. Now, my goal was to make, as I told you earlier, $15,000 per month, which means my goal would have been to make $60,000 in a 4-month span. Since I’ve earned $72,908 over the past four months, this means I’m overachieving this goal. This is the important thing because the question is “how much money do I need to trade for a living?” Summary As you can see it’s quite easy to calculate the money that you need in your trading account to trade for a living. However, it is completely unrealistic to open an account with $5,000 and expect to trade for a living, unless making a living means making $125 per month. And I know that there are many people who tell you that you can start with $5,000, and then they do some magic math and tell you they can show you how to turn that $5,000 into a million dollars within a year. This just isn’t realistic. It’s probably not what you want to hear, but I know that this is what you need to hear. The good news is, if your account is not large enough yet to trade for a living, that’s absolutely fine. You can trade for growth and use money management to grow your account. The main difference when you’re trading for income vs trading for a living as I do is, every month I wire profits out of my trading account into my personal checking account. While you’re trading for growth, you keep all of the profits that you make and keep them in your trading account. If you’re still at a smaller account, that is absolutely fine, but now you know what level you need to get. If you’re here right now and you need to get there, then during this time you might need other sources of income. I wanted to do this article to show you a really simple formula so that you can determine how much money you need in your account to trade for a living. Remember, it is possible to make a living trading. It is possible, it is doable. Just have realistic expectations and a plan.
TVC:VIXEducation
by rockwelltrading
2
Using Obscure Candle Sizes to Maximize Profit w/ NINJASIGNALS V4This is a great example of how effective a small change in candle size can be when using our Ninja Signals V4 trading script. By simply switching from 1h candles to 67m candles, we were able to achieve significantly better results. In theory, this will also help to minimize price slippage during live trading by avoiding popular candle sizes (e.g., 1h candles) when many traders attempt to open and close positions at the same bar close time. A small adjustment in candle size can make a big difference when using various indicators. Sometimes standard candle sizes also result in less obvious trends, making it harder to find the best buy and sell points. If your target candle size is 1h candles, we recommend comparing all candle sizes from 40m through 100m in 1m increments (40m, 41m, 42m... ...98m, 99m, 100m, etc.). The small amount of time required often pays off with significantly better, more profitable results. Ninja Signals V4 (Script) Ninja Signals V4 (Strategy)
Education
by Bitcoin_Ninjas
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.“
TVC:NDQEducation
by rockwelltrading
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.
TVC:NDQEducation
by rockwelltrading
3
Optimized strategy is here + Midweek outlook! part 1 Hello, in this video I go over the optimized strategy and explain my thought process when entering a trade with this smooth like butter method of trading haha. If you're planning on trading with my strategy, feel free to ask for help and listen closely. There are key details in this video, take notes if you have to, I note in the video what is important and what is minor knowledge! thank you for watching.. please refer to part 2!
TVC:DXYEducation
by offgridtradess
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.
NASDAQ:PLAYEducation
by rockwelltrading
1
Best moving averages strategyhere you will the best trading strategy based on exponentional moving averages you will 3 moving averages EMA : 50 EMA : 25 EMA : 10 when EMA 10 cross both EMA 25 AND 50 you will open a trade Take profit 90 pips stop loss : below last low for buy trade above last high for sell trade exit trade also on opposite cross recommended to use trailing stop to secure profits This strategy have up to 90% success rate use it on demo to become familiar with it for at least 2 weeks if you like my strategy you can like and share and if you find it profitable and help you to make profits you can offer me some coins cheers best regards follow me www.tradingview.com
Education
by rabihfx
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.
TVC:NDQEducation
by rockwelltrading
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.
TVC:NDQEducation
by rockwelltrading
Order box trading This is educational :) You can see that the price is a bit "blurry" at the first order box. Why is this? Financial institutes never invest their whole money at the same time to get "stopped out" or "margin called". They do this to check how the price is reacting to their orders. For example, if they want to invest 100 million euros in a long position; firstly 20m, then 30, and then 50. This "blurr" will form what we call the order box. Now, what happens? All of the orders will not go to reality. maybe only 70% will. Then, when the price touches this order box area, the price will bump again as a consequence of all the underlying orders. This is what you see at the "support order box". Same thing at the top. Steps to spot these: 1, find the "blurr" 2, watch for confirmation (aka = second time it touches) 3, trade the 3rd, or 2nd if u are brave, it touches this box. 4, place stop loss just above the box But what for take profit? Place it in either the other side of the box, or eventually, at 0,618 of Fibonacci. I use this to trade with the trend and not against it. Questions? Ask them in the comment area :D
Education
by Spketss
4
How amateurs design a strategy versus how masters do itThe amateur gets this really no brain system where an indicator or chart pattern or robot or telegram sends them a signal then it's just a matter of placing a limit order with target and stop loss. And walk away to avoid messing with it because of "emotions". And it is the same process for every strategy no matter what any instrument etc you name it. Well to be fair 100% of the amateur strategies are the same: Reversal. Buy if price go down, Sell if price go up. They found the holy grail of my. They actually even pat themselves on the back for having something this simple. And it does not even end there. Adding insult to injury, they actually try to simplify it. Reminds me of these day traders that made sure their emotions would not get in the way and "just left the computer and when I come back it will all be better", and when they came back they had lost everything. On the opposite the master first of all has a different process for every strategy, he will not trade a pullback the same way he does a breakout. The setup that he can get anywhere he wants it does not matter, this is just the 1rst step of here I mentionned 14. I cannot make it simpler than this, al these steps are necessary. Once the setup is here and correlations, quality, and the stop is checked, you need some conditions to enter, you can't just "simplify" and remove this step, nor the stop, nor the quality of the setup one does not simply pick any piece of junk that presents itself. Not only for each strategy there is a different process. But for each instrument too, now now in Forex majors they all behave in a similar manner so we don't have to completely re-invent the wheel each time. But if one looked at stocks the time frame is different, breakouts do not act the same way, pullbacks are smaller maybe, trends obviously are much stronger and one can keep adding, if you keep adding in FX well good luck! They don't go very far. Also for 1 instrument and strategy the 14 steps are not the same each time: Depending on step "quality" or "entry conditions" for example, what follows will vary, if you entered a breakout early on and answered to the question "Where can I hope target is?" with "far" then the trailing will be a different sub-process supported by experience + excel statistics + intuition + current conditions. Usually Forex at around 5R I stop adding and I get a tighter stop, but if the target is far and China said they are selling then I will hold on get a wider not tighter stop and add more and aim for the moon. It's such a lack of respect that novices expect it to be simple and try even to simplify it, "all you have to do is control your emotions". Same thing as a clown that learns chess moves by heart then expects he can play against GM. Same thing as a clown that thinks he does not need a lawyer all he needs is "the book of laws" and defends himself. Same thing as all the clowns and conspiracy theorists that self diagnose, in 5 minutes and call it a day too. And ignore counterproof. You can't even write it down, not even code a program, each if leads to 10 new if, one would have to spend a lifetime or writing IFs and GOTOs, and it would still miss intuition and current news/conditions/ the current paradigm. It is a long road and there is not a big magical wormhole shortcut. Jesse Livermoore ended up having to sell trading courses, but I don't think he ever said it was simple and you should "not overcomplicate it", did he? In the case of gold: Since 80% think in terms of winrate they see that often the robot thing works, or the exiting winner early thing also has a high winrate. But their brain basically has a bug, a manufacturing error, and this is a bad method, which is why over time they lose money. I'm not the one saying it, scientists are saying the brain of most people has a built-in error, not adapted to the modern world or to reality. Not 1 in 5 new traders will bother calculating the stats for the entry. And not 1 in 5 of those will bother calculating the stats for trailing stop and adding. Either by going with excel enter the numbers to get the stats, or spending enough time to gain experience. They'd love to buy these stats somewhere with a clic I am sure. 1 in 5 times 1 in 5 here you're about at 5% left already. This is the hardest game in the world, not the easiest. My eyes hurt when I see certain claims I swear...
TVC:GOLDEducation
by MrRenev
4
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
TVC:NDQEducation
by rockwelltrading
Trendline Trading Strategy📉Basic rules for trading according to the Trendline Trading Strategy RULES 1. Always trade with trend, because Trend is your FRIEND. 2. Find trendline that has at least 2 touches. 3. Clear breakout of structure Chart 3. shows clear breakout of the zone Mostly you should rely on Volumes, that has to increase a lot. Moreover body part of the candlestick should close on the other side of a line. 4. High confluence areas Chart 4. explains that there should be a zone that all type of traders can open their trade and it is suitable for each of them. 1) MA traders 2) S&R traders 3) Pattern traders 4) Price action traders 5) Confluence traders 5. Wait for the Intermediate trend Breakout After huge impulse price goes to retest the level mostly. At this stage any formations can be formed here (trendline on smaller frame, flag, wedge and etc.) 6. Candlestick confirmation 1) List of Bull candles 2) List of Bear candles You should pay attention on a type of candlestick and what kind of movement does it signal. 7. Multi Timeframe observation _____________________________________________________ If you enjoy my FREE Technical Analysis , support the idea with a big LIKE👍 and don't forget to SUBSCRIBE my channel, you won't miss anything! Feel free to leave comments✉️ And always remember: "we don't predict, we react".
Education
by Berzerk_invest
5
Trendline Trading Strategy📉Basic rules for trading according to the Trendline Trading Strategy RULES 1. Always trade with trend, because Trend is your FRIEND. 2. Find trendline that has at least 2 touches. 3. Clear breakout of structure Chart 3. shows clear breakout of the zone Mostly you should rely on Volumes, that has to increase a lot. Moreover body part of the candlestick should close on the other side of a line. 4. High confluence areas Chart 4. explains that there should be a zone that all type of traders can open their trade and it is suitable for each of them. 1) MA traders 2) S&R traders 3) Pattern traders 4) Price action traders 5) Confluence traders 5. Wait for the Intermediate trend Breakout After huge impulse price goes to retest the level mostly. At this stage any formations can be formed here (trendline on smaller frame, flag, wedge and etc.) 6. Candlestick confirmation 1) List of Bull candles 2) List of Bear candles You should pay attention on a type of candlestick and what kind of movement does it signal. 7. Multi Timeframe observation
Education
by Berzerk_invest
2
Why Options Are DangerousIn today’s article, I want to answer a few questions about why options can be dangerous. What are the risks of trading options? Are puts or calls riskier? Why is option selling risky? We’ll also talk about the safest options trading strategy. So let’s get started and let’s jump right in. Buying Calls & Puts First of all, you need to understand that there are different types of options. There are call options and put options. So calls versus puts, which one is riskier? Some people think that trading puts are riskier, while some people might think that trading calls are riskier, but this is not the case at all. The key question is that you should ask yourself is, are you BUYING options or are you SELLING options? There’s a huge difference between buying and selling, as well as different levels of risk involved between the two. So when you’re buying options, the maximum amount you can lose is the premium you paid. So let talk about a very specific example. Let’s look at a trade I took with TSLA and let’s say that we want to trade a call. So let’s maybe say a 700 call and right now the price is $700. What is the maximum that you can lose? Let’s say that we are bullish on Tesla and we believe that Tesla might go above $750, and we want to buy a call with a strike price of 750. So a 750 strike call expiring next week costs around $1.70 (at the time of writing this article on March 19th, 2021). Now options come in 100 packs, so this means that you’re paying $170 for this option. So in this case, if TSLA does not go above 170 by next Friday, you would lose the $170. So this is very easy, the maximum amount that you can lose is the premium that you paid. On the other hand, you are bearish on Tesla. You believe that it might actually go down to $560 so you’re thinking about a put option with a strike price of 560 that expires next week. A put with a 560 strike price expiring next week is $4.50 so a little bit more, pricier here. Again, since options come in 100 packs, this means that your total risk here is $450 per option traded. It’s the same risk here because it doesn’t really matter whether you’re buying calls or you’re buying puts. The maximum amount that you can lose is the premium. Now, on the other hand, there are SELLING options, and when you’re selling options, this is when your risk is almost unlimited. When you’re buying options, and let’s just say you want to buy a call, this means that you want the stock to go up. So going back to our TSLA example, if we would buy a call 750, that it is expiring next week for $170, if Tesla goes above 750, we make money. If Tesla goes below 750 or stays at 750, we lose the premium or $170. So not really a big deal. Now, how much money could we make on this one? Well, if we buy a call for 750, we have the right to buy 100 shares of Tesla for $750. So let’s say that Tesla closes at $800. So in this case, our profit is $800, minus the $750 that we bought Tesla for, which is $50 per share. Since options come in 100 packs, this means that we would make $5,000 in profits. This is why people love trading options. Because if you think about it, we’re risking $170 and can potentially make $5,000 if Tesla would go up to $800. Now, let’s quickly do an example here for buying a put. So buying a put and in this case, you want the stock to go down. Using our example for TSLA again, we will buy a put with the strike price of 560 for $4.50. So our total risk here is $450. So now if Tesla goes below $560, the strike price here, we make money. Now, if Tesla stays above 560, we lose the premium. But that is the maximum that we can lose. So even if Tesla rallies right now to 800, we would only lose $450. So that is pretty cool, right? Let’s say Tesla goes to $500. So we were able to sell the shares for $560, now we can buy it back for 500. So this would be $60 per share. Since one option equals 100 shares, it means that we would make $6,000 in profits. So as you can see, with options, you can benefit from a stock going up, as well as a stock going down, and the really cool thing is that you can risk a little to make a whole lot. Now, here’s the challenge with this. If you buy a call, you only make money if TSLA is really going above $750. So if it stays below, that’s not enough for the buyer of an option to make money. If Tesla goes sideways well, same here, right? Then you not only won’t benefit from it, but you also lose the premium. If Tesla goes down, you also lose the premium. So if you think about it, there are actually three ways how you can lose money and only one way how you can make money, and this is if Tesla really shoots up. This is why many people, including myself, are interested in SELLING options. Selling Calls & Puts What are the pros of selling options? The first pro is that you don’t need to be right about the direction of a stock to make money. Here is an example I’m in right now (at the time of this writing on March 19th, 2021) with LL Lumber Liquidators. So right here, Lumber Liquidators, I actually sold a put with a strike price of 22. When does the buyer of a put make money? Well, the buyer of a put makes money if it goes below $22. For me, the seller of a put, I make money if Lumber Liquidators goes up, it goes sideways, or it goes down. It can go down all the way to 22. This is a drop of a little over 10%. So if you think about it, if LL can go down by 10% and I am still making money and this is why again, this is why selling options is so fascinating. So you don’t need to be right about the direction and you can keep the premium. So here’s the deal, the premium that you receive is exactly what the buyer is giving you. So the premium is rather small, right? So the cons are the premium is rather small, and this is where your risk is almost unlimited. So back to our example here with Lumber Liquidators. I sold a 45 of the 22 puts, and I received $0.20 per share, so $20 per put option. $20 multiplied by the 45 options means that I’m making $900. So this is the premium that I receive. However, here’s the deal. The buyer of a put has the right to sell 100 shares at the strike price. So what does it mean for me? So the seller, which is me, has to buy LL at $22, and again, this is where one option means 100 shares. So for me here, since I’m having 45 options, this means that I would have to buy 4,500 shares. Because this is where we get to the risks of this strategy here. Now, again, Lumber Liquidators can drop more than 10% and I will be just fine. But what happens if it drops below, let’s say to $20 from $22. OK? So I would have to buy Lumber Liquidators at $22, and therefore I would lose $2 per share. Here, in this case, I have 4,500 shares times $2, this means that I would lose $9,000. Now you get the idea of why selling options is fairly risky, because I’m receiving $900, but if it only goes down by $2, I’m already losing $9,000. But what if it gets worse? What if LL drops to, let’s say, $15, right? Again, I have to buy LL at 22, so I would lose $22 minus $15, $7 per share. Since I have 4,500 shares, time $7, this is where I would lose $31,500. OK. So as you can see, it is super risky if you don’t know what you’re doing. Now, I have been doing this for a long time here, selling premium, and I’ve been doing really, really well. Analyzing Risk With RIDE Let talk about a particular trade that I made with RIDE . I sold the 21.50 put and RIDE dropped. I sold 47 contracts, 47 contracts, which means that I own 4,700 shares at a price of 21.50. RIDE right now (March 19th, 2021) is trading at $13.50. So right now, RIDE is at 13.50. So this means that I lose (21.50, minus 13.50) $8. So I’m losing $8 per share and I’m having 4,700 shares, bringing me down to a total of $37,600. Now, let’s talk about it. How much money did I make selling premium on RIDE? Just on RIDE here. I sold the puts initially, then I sold calls, I sold calls, and I just sold a few more puts. In total on RIDE, thus far, I collected $4,935 in premium, but I also have an unrealized loss of $37,600. So it’s super important that you understand that there is risk involved. Now I know my way out of this. I know how I can trade my way out of this if needed. So I collected $4,900, but right now I’m down that amount. However, this means that my net loss is if I would close it right now, which I’m not intending to do, would be $37,000 minus the $4,935, let’s just say $5,000 to make the math easy, is $32,600. That would be a real loss. This is why it’s super important that you understand the risks when you’re trading options. Safest Options Trading Strategy Now, one of the questions that I receive all the time is, “what is the safest options trading strategy?” The safest options trading strategy is covered calls, and here’s why. When you are trading covered calls, it means you own the stock, and now you are selling calls against it. So what does it mean when you are selling calls? When you are selling calls, it means you have to sell the stock at a certain price. Back to my example with RIDE I own 4,700 shares, and I own those at $21.50. So this is where if I sell calls at 22.50, so this means that I have to sell RIDE shares at $22.50. So how much money do I make? So I bought at $21.50, and I sell at $22.50, so this means that I’m making a dollar profit, $1 profit per share. And since I have 4,700 shares I would make $4,700 plus the premium I receive for selling the call. OK. So this is in addition, and therefore, covered calls are by far the safest options trading strategy. The only way how you can lose with this strategy is when the stock goes down. This is where you already own the stock, and therefore, if you want to sell calls against it, it is the safest option trading strategy, at least based on my experience and my opinion.
REducation
by rockwelltrading
1
Why 90 Percent Of Traders Lose MoneyYou might have heard this, “90% of traders lose 90% of their money in the first 90 days of trading.” This is known as the 90/90/90 rule. I don’t even know if this is true, but it seems that a lot of traders are losing money. So this is why today, we’re going to talk about what causes most traders to lose money. Then I’ll give you practical tips on how to avoid it so that you can be part of the few that actually make money with trading. What Do You Need To Become A Successful Trader? There are three things that you need to really become a successful trader. If you’re missing even one of these things, you already have a big problem. So let’s start, with the first thing you need. This is the most important thing that a trader needs and this is a trading strategy. Now, there are traders out there who are trading without a strategy, and the number one reason that I see traders fail is they don’t have a trading strategy. A trading strategy tells you what to trade, when to enter, and when to exit. So as you can see, a trading strategy doesn’t have to be super complicated, but you need to know what to trade. Here is what I see many traders doing since they don’t have a trading strategy. They are going for the flavor of the day, and the flavor of the day might be something that Jim Cramer is saying, something that Cathie Wood, the famous, or infamous hedge fund manager of Ark Investments is saying, or maybe something that they read in the news. This is the worst thing you can do. I’ve been talking a lot to traders, or not really traders, but people who are getting started in the market, and I ask them, “what are you trading right now?” They usually just name the most popular stocks that are being traded. These are stocks like TSLA , AAPL , AMZN , and NFLX . Then recently, as you know, with the GME hype, the GameStop hype, a lot came up there. But you see, if you’re not trading with a strategy, you are not a trader, you are a gambler. Now the second important piece that you need as a trader is that you need to have the right tools, and I can’t stress this enough. Here’s the deal, if you want to compete in what they call the game of games, if you want to really make it as a trader, you need to have professional tools. Think about it this way, if you only have a strategy without a tool, it’s like trying to win NASCAR riding on a lama, right? I mean, it doesn’t work this way. So it is super important that you have the right tools. You can’t win a car race on a lama or on a donkey, you get the idea, right? The third thing you need to be a successful trader is having the mindset. So you see, you can have the best strategy, you can have the best tools, but if you don’t have the right mindset, you will lose money. You see, in fact, I see it all over. Sometimes people think all they need is the right tool, and they will be successful traders. Or they think all they need is a trading strategy and they will be a successful trader, but that’s not the case. The reason why traders fail is not having the right mindset is because they let emotions get the best of them. The two main emotions that we have as traders are greed and fear. I mean, obviously, we are greedy. We want to make money this is why we get into this game of trading in the first place, at least that’s why I started trading. But then there’s also the fear, the fear of losing money, but you got to be able to control these emotions. We will talk about losses in a moment, but one of the challenges, because of greed, traders will often trade too often, meaning that they are overtrading. Have you ever been guilting overtrading? It happened to me at the beginning of my trading career. I remember when I was still a young trader and new to the whole trading game somebody told me, “if you want to make it as a trader, you have to take at least 100 trades a day.” This person was probably a broker because I tried this, and it is impossible. I traded on a one-minute chart, tried to make 100 trades a day, and I found it just didn’t work this way. Then there is revenge trading. Revenge trading is something that I did in the beginning because I thought, after I took a loss was the time for me to make back the money that I lost. Something important that you need to understand is that the market doesn’t owe you anything. Sometimes the markets give, and sometimes the markets take away. So this is why revenge trading is something that you need to avoid at all costs. The good news is in the long run, usually, the market likes to give, at least to those who are serious. You must understand that losses are part of our business as traders, and it is sometimes really easy to become overconfident. However, whenever you think that you have the markets figured out, is when the market is going to throw you a curveball. There will be always surprises and situations that you have never encountered. Some call these black swan events. Often what I see is that many traders who are new to trading simply focus on the wrong things. Most young or new traders focus mostly on the entry. They think if they can just time the entry, this is when they’ve figured it all out. Well news flash, money is made and lost when you exit a trade. So timing the exits is almost more important than timing the entries. Sometimes traders focus on just having a strategy with a high winning percentage, but this is another mistake. You don’t need a high winning percentage. In fact, you can make money with trading even if you’re wrong half of the time. The magic happens actually when all three things are coming together. So how can you do this? I want to share a little bit with you about what I am doing. Well, first of all, let’s talk about trading strategies. The Trading Strategies First of all, what you need to understand is that there is no “best” trading strategy. It amuses me actually when people argue with me about this. People will ask me what will you do if this or that happens. Well, you see this is where I’m not saying that you should trade my trading strategies. I show you what I personally do, and how I’m making enough money to trade for income to trade for a living, and let you make the decision if it’s right for you. I can’t tell you if my strategies are right for you or not, but I can tell you there is no “best” trading strategy. Either a trading strategy is making money or it doesn’t, right? So if a strategy is making someone money, I would never, ever criticize anybody who is making money with that strategy. Who am I to say you’re doing it wrong? When it comes to the strategies I use, sometimes people ask me, “why do you do it this way? Why don’t you do it the other way?” and I’ll be happy to explain to you why I do certain things. It’s always interesting to see that some people feel that I need to become a better trader, and I appreciate your concern for me, but I’m actually doing pretty good. A trading strategy must fit YOU. It must fit you in terms of capital requirements. There are some trading strategies that you can start with as little as $5,000. There are other trading strategies that require more money. So you need to make sure do you have enough money for this particular trading strategy. The other thing might be time requirements. Some trading strategies require you to sit in front of the computer all day long. Now, this is not for me. I personally like to watch the markets for 10 or 15 minutes before they open, and then for 30 minutes after they open. So personally my own trading is usually just 45 minutes in the morning. Now, fortunately, I don’t have a job, I have nothing else to do but watching the markets, this is why I do it. However, some of the trading strategies that I trade, actually don’t require you to watch the markets at all. So there are time requirements to consider, there are capital requirements to consider, but then also possible drawdowns you need to keep in mind. Without risk, there’s no return. No risk, no reward. See, if you don’t want to take any risks at all, and make sure that you never, ever lose any money, then you should put your money into a savings account. In a savings account your money will be safe, right? But it also earns only about a quarter percent right now. So if you want to make more money with trading, then you have to risk some money. So there’s a fine line regarding the risk and rewards ratio. So you need to be aware of the risk, and the more risks you’re willing to take, the higher the rewards will be. But keep this in mind when you’re looking at a trading strategy, there are a few things where it might make sense for you to trade the strategy or it might not make sense for you to trade the strategy. The PowerX Strategy There are two trading strategies that I like to trade, and the first strategy is the PowerX strategy. Now, for the PowerX strategy, there are a few criteria here according to whether or not it's the “best” strategy. So, first of all, the PowerX strategy is great for a trending market, and it doesn’t really matter if the market is trending up or down as long as it trends. It does not perform well in a sideways or in a choppy market. This is what we are having right now, and this is why right now I am not trading the PowerX strategy as much as I used to last year when we did have trending markets. Now, trading with the PowerX strategy requires a minimum of $5,000. So if you have five to $10,000, that’s actually perfect to get started with the strategy. If you have less than this, I don’t think that this strategy is for you. Honestly, I don’t know a trading strategy that you could trade with less than $5,000. This is where I’m not claiming that I have the best trading strategies. I have trading strategies that I personally have traded for many, many, many years that have stood the test of time and that are proven to make money, at least for me. Now the PowerX Strategy is perfect for growing a small account, and here is why. With the PowerX strategy, you can apply money management, and money management is the turbo boost in your account. It can help you to take your trading to the next level. Now in terms of time requirements, when we talk about this, it takes around 15 minutes per day and you can do this absolutely while the markets are closed. So if you have a demanding daytime job that doesn’t allow you to step away and look at the markets, then actually The PowerX strategy is perfect for you. Again, it does have some limitations so it doesn’t work all the time. So you need to know when to use this strategy. The Wheel Strategy The other trading strategy that I like to trade is The Wheel Strategy. So the Wheel Strategy is perfect for a market that going up, going sideways, even when it is choppy, or when the market is slightly going down. It is not good for a bear market where the market is going down. So you need to know when to apply what strategy. This is where, in the same way as you have multiple tools to fix the home, you need to have multiple trading strategies. So here, when you’re trading The Wheel Strategy, it is an options trading strategy only. Here specifically, you are selling premium. So this is where you could have a large drawdown, which is possible if you’re stuck in a position, as I am right now. I am stuck actually in two positions. So let me show you the two positions that I’m stuck in. One of them is AAPL , I bought it at 133. Right now, it is trading at 120, so I’m losing $13 per share that I own and I own 800 shares. So the question is, are we in a bear market? No, we are not in a bear market right now. Not at all. We are somewhat in correction territory, and correction territory is when a market is going from the top from the recent high to down more than 10%. That is how a correction is defined. According to the Nasdaq, we’re clearly in a choppy market. Since the beginning of the year, we have been grinding higher, coming back, going up, going sideways. In fact, year to date, the Nasdaq is down .37%. So pretty much haven’t moved since the beginning of the year, but we are not in a bear market. So you could have a large drawdown while you’re stuck in a position. Let’s talk about the other position that I’m in. The other position that I’m in is RIDE , and RIDE is not doing well at all. So I’m flying a rescue mission here right now. I bought RIDE at 21.50, and right now it is trading at half of what I bought it for. So obviously that’s not good at all, right? So what I need to do right now, is work my breakeven all the way down by actually doing dollar-cost averaging. Right now, I sold some more puts trying to bring down my cost basis from 21.50 to 18.70, then to 16. What I’m hoping for, and this is part of this strategy, is that I am getting a quick bounce. Now, absolute full disclaimer. What happened here with RIDE, to be honest, why I got into this is because I was getting greedy. This is where trust me, I’ve been trading now for more than 20 years, even after this, I love money. I saw a lot of premium on RIDE and I got blinded by the premium. This could be the one trade out of, I believe, now close to 150 trades where I have to take a loss. So it happens. Losses, as I said, losses are part of the business, and never let greed get into your way. So you could have a large drawdown. So here with this strategy, you need a minimum of, I would say, $10,000 in cash and you have to put it into a margin account so that you get $20,000 in buying power. If you’re trading an IRA, you need at least $20,000 in your IRA because in an IRA you don’t get any buying power. Time requirements for this strategy also require about 15 to 30 minutes per day. I think the best time to trade this strategy is during the open. So this means from 9:30 to 10 a.m. Eastern Time. If you have been following me for a while, then you know, I’m not standing here and telling you, “You have to trade this way. My trading strategies are the best.” I would never do it because they may, or may not fit your style, which is absolutely fine. The Best Trading Tool, The PowerX Optimizer However, if you choose to trade these trading strategies, this is where I believe that I have the best tool in the world for trading the strategies. I’m absolutely biased, but the tool that I have here is the PowerX Optimizer. Here is why I think that this is the absolute best tool for it because this software has been programmed for these two strategies specifically. Now, if you look at any other tools, for example, like TradingView, it is software with which you can do some backtesting and has a bunch of indicators built-in. So first of all, this software, I feel is very complex to learn because you have multiple functions. And it basically allows you to trade any trading strategy whether you use a moving average strategy, you can trade with it, or you’re using a MACD strategy, you can trade with it, or you’re using Bollinger bands, you can trade it with it. But you see, especially with the PowerX Optimizer, it has been designed to support the PowerX and the Wheel Strategies. This is where it shows you exactly the three things that you need to know when you have a strategy. It tells you exactly what to trade, it tells you exactly when to enter, and it tells you exactly when to exit. I’m using this tool every day, and I wouldn’t want to trade without it. I want to be absolutely honest. If you would take PowerX Optimizer away from me, even though I know these two trading strategies inside out, it would be super difficult to find the best stocks to trade. The other super important thing that PowerX Optimizer does is that it actually tells me what would have happened in the past if I had traded this particular stock group on here for example, according to the rules of the PowerX Strategy. This is important to me because it gives me more confidence. The trading report basically tells you if you had followed the rules of the PowerX Strategy, what would have happened over the past year if you had traded a stock. The summary it shows me actually the ROI, it shows me how many winning trades and losing trades I would have had, what is the winning percentage, the profit factor, the average win, and the average loss. This here is based on a $10,000 account. So see if you have a $10,000 account, and your average loss is $122, I mean you’ll be fine, right? You’re not wiping out your account. What is important to me in a tool? So first of all, what I want to have is a powerful scanner, because what the scanner does, a scanner tells me what to trade. Now, the second thing is I want to see what would have happened if I traded this stock with this strategy. This for me is super important. Then, of course, I want to get all the important data for trading. This means I want to know how many stocks or options should I trade, when to enter, and when to exit. So these are the important things. This is, of course, combined with what can I expect from this trade. It’s so important that I also see the risk and reward ratio. So here, for Groupon, I can expect to risk a dollar and trying to make $2.33. Now let me ask you, does this sound good? It sounds pretty good to me. With the PowerX Optimizer, I also have The Wheel Calculator and The Wheel Scanner. The Wheel Scanner shows me what are the best candidates for The Wheel right now. I’m actually super excited because we are about to release version 2.0 of The PowerX Optimizer. Within the software with the new update, we distinguish between the PowerX Strategy and The Wheel Strategy.
TVC:NDQEducation
by rockwelltrading
1
When To Take Profits on Options I’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. Options trading is really fascinating, and it’s a great way to make money, and I think it is very important to know when to take profits, especially if you like trading The Wheel as I do. So the question is, when should you take profits when trading options? How exactly do you figure this out, is there a formula for it? In this article, I’ll share some guidelines for how and when you should take profits on an option trade. We will answer the question of whether you should let options expire or take profits early. I will show you some very specific examples of two trades that I have going on right now (at the time of this writing on March 17th, 2021). One of them, I took profits today, and the other one I’m still holding on and I will show you exactly why. ]How To Calculate Profits On Options Firstly, let’s talk about how to calculate profits on options. In order to address this, there are two types of options traders. One type of options trader are ones that are buying options, and the other, which I feel is very lucrative, and this is what I’ve been doing for a long time, is selling options and collecting premium. I want to actually talk about selling options and receiving premium, because this is, as I said, what I’ve been focusing on recently with trading The Wheel Strategy. My year-to-date profits on this account so far are more than $54,000 selling premium on options, and I’ll show you exactly how to do this. So when selling options, you’re receiving premium, and for me, the most important metric here is the so-called premium per day or PPD. MARA Example The first example that I want to give you is my position with MARA. Looking over my transactions with MARA over the last 30 days. I sold puts at a strike price of 20, and for this, I received $0.28 in premium per option that I sold. Now options come in 100 packs, so this means that per option I made $28. Now, in this specific example, I sold 50 options total, so this means that I’m receiving a premium of $1,400. I put this trade on March 10th, and these options expired on 3/19. This is $1,400 in premium in 9 days. This comes to $155.55 in premium per day, or PPD. Now this includes weekends. My rule is I’m buying back the option when I can get 90% of the maximum profits, but there’s an exception to this rule. First, let me tell you what that means. So again, I sold each contract for $28, for $0.28. The idea is to buy back the option at $0.03, and this is exactly what I did today (March 17th). So we have another two days to expiration. So today, I bought back a total of 50 contracts at $0.03, and by doing so I made $0.25 in profits on MARA. Now, this is where again, we’re looking at 50 contracts, times $25, so this is $1,250. I was in this position for 7 days. So $1,250, divided by 7 days, means that I made $178.57 a day. Let’s just round to $179 per day. As you can see, $179 is more than the $155.55 that I planned per day. Now let’s think about it. If I would keep MARA right now, if I would keep this option until expiration, but what would happen? I would make an additional $150 in three days. This means that now my premium per day is only $50 per day. This doesn’t make sense to me because this here is actually bad, because my plan was to make $156 per day, and I was able to make $179 per day by buying the options back. If I would hold on to this trade and let it expires worthless. So this is where here, and let it expire worthless, right? This is what would happen. I would make an additional $150 in three days and the premium per day would only be $50. That does not make sense to me at all. This is why here in MARA, it made sense to buy back the put option because by doing so, it frees up buying power meaning that now I can sell more puts. So the idea here is that I’m selling more puts and making more money on the new puts than I would make holding on to MARA. DKS Example Let’s go over another example with a position I have right now with DKS . I sold the 66 strike on March 10th. I sold 15 of them and I received $75 in premium. 15 contracts times $75 comes to $1,125. So let’s do the math right now and see if it makes sense to close this trade today (March 17th) or if we should keep it, and we’re using very similar logic here. So we sold the 66 put expiring March 19th, and we received $75 per contract for it, $1,125 total. We then divide this by 9 days to get to our premium per day, which is $125. So right now, on March 17th, let’s see how much DKS is still worth. Right now, the bid/ask for DKS is $0. 05 over $0.10, and that’s really interesting because I want to buy it back at $0.07. Let’s say right now, if I would place an order right now, I could buy it back at $0.10. Should I do it? If I did this, I would make $75, minus $0.10 ($10 per contract), which is $65 per contract. For all 15 contracts, I would make $975. We find our PPD by dividing $975 by 7 days, which comes to $139. So if I really wanted to, and if I needed to free up some buying power, I could do this. But let’s see what happens if we hold this for a few more days. So if we hold DKS until expiration, we can make an additional $150. It might actually make sense to close it out because $150 over the next three days does not make a lot of sense. When I looked at the option earlier, DKS suddenly jumped from 78 to almost 79. This is a 10% jump in 30 to 45 minutes. When we opened this morning, first, we went down, and then we went a little bit up, and then we were hovering right around where we opened. Earlier this morning, the DKS put was trading at $0.25. So the question is earlier this morning, would it have made sense to close it? Earlier today on March 17th, I could have bought it back for $0.25. So that wouldn’t have made sense, right? Because then if I’m buying it back for $0.25, I would only make $0.50. So this here, $0.50, this is then $750 in seven days, and if we divide $750 by 7 days, this is $107 premium per day. As you can see, the $107 premium per day is less than what I expected. If I would hold DKS to expiration, we can make an additional $0.25, $25 times 15 contracts is $375. Now, if you take the $375 in 3 days, that would be $125 premium per day. So when I’m getting $125 premium per day, this is when it does not make sense to sell it just yet. Should You Take Profits Early? So this is the important thing because the question always is, do you take profits early, or hold until expiration? Well here’s my formula for this. So I want to give you a very specific formula that you can use if you want to. If the current realized premium is a premium per day, PPD, is larger than the planned PPD, this means close it out early. If the remaining premium per day is smaller than the planned premium per day, close it. Only if the current realized premium per day is smaller than the planned premium per day, in this case, hold it. If the remaining premium per day is larger than the planned PPD in this case, you want to hold it. Summary This is why today I wanted to show you my formula for when to take profits on options, especially when you are an options seller. You see, selling options and receiving premium is what we do with The Wheel Strategy, and the most important metric here is the premium per day (PPD). This where using the PPD, you can actually get down to a formula of when exactly you should buy or sell. This is where it’s just a good rule of thumb if you don’t want to do all these calculations. So the rule of thumb is I close a trade when I can realize 90% of the maximum profits.
NASDAQ:MARAEducation
by rockwelltrading
3
Options Trading For A Living In this article, I’m going to show you how I made $52,138 in 8 weeks by trading options (at the time of writing this article March 12, 2021). The key question that I’m always asked is, “Is trading for a living possible?” For me, this is a resounding YES! I’ll break down all the steps from how to trade like a pro, where and how to find great trades, how patience is extremely important when making money, and more. What Do You Need? You might be thinking, “How the heck does anyone make that much money doing something so risky?” The answer is simple. You need: Number One a solid trading strategy, which we will discuss in this article. We will talk about the trading strategy that I personally used to make more than $50,000 in the past two months, and I’ll show you how to do this step by step. Number Two you need the right tools. You will see why that is so important, and I’ll show you the tools that I’m using. Number Three you need the right mindset. I know that mindset is probably the most boring thing to talk about it, so I will not spend a lot of time on this, but having the right mindset is important if you want to trade for a living. Now, there’s one more thing that you need, and this is money. I hate to break the news to you, but if you don’t have any money you can’t put money into your account, and you won’t be able to make money. And yes, I made more than $52,000. Before we talk about the trading strategy, let me just add a very, very important disclaimer. No, these results are not typical. Yes, I am very good at this, and I’ve been doing it for over 20 years. If you start trading this strategy, do not expect the same results. I will talk about this later, but it is super important that you start paper trading on a simulator first. How Much Money Do You Need To Trade Options? The key question that you might be wondering is, how much money did I need to put into this trading account to make this much? For this account, I deposited $250,000 in cash. This is a margin account, so this gives me $500,000 in buying power. Let’s dive in. The Wheel Strategy If you have been following me for a while, you know that I like to trade using The Wheel Options Trading Strategy. There are three steps to this strategy. Step Number One , what we are trying to do here is sell puts and collect premium. When selling options, I typically like to go with expiration dates 1 to 2 weeks out. The idea here is to collect a “weekly paycheck.” I’m putting this in quotation marks because this is where some people say you can collect weekly paychecks with no risk, and that is simply not true. When trading there IS risk. You want to make sure that you trade only the best stocks. What do I mean by this? Well, currently in my account I have positions with companies like AAPL, AMD, DBX, DKS, GDXJ, HAL, HAS, IBM, and JWN. These are all super solid stocks. These are not fly-by-night stocks. You will not see any GME, AMC, BB, BBBY, or any of these meme stocks in my account. We’re talking about super solid stocks, stocks that you have to be okay with owning if you’re assigned the shares. So let’s look at DKS , which is Dick’s Sporting Goods. They are a solid retailer. The idea here is that we are selling puts at a strike price that is at support. Here I looked at short-term support. You want to see at what price level did prices touch several times and then bounce back. They were at the 66 level, so I sold a 66 strike. If DKS closes above then I keep the premium, if it closes below, we would get assigned. Now, another stock that I am trading right now is SNAP , Snapchat. Here we are looking at a strike price of 49. Again, this is where you want to pick super solid companies. I don’t know about you, but do you have kids? My kids live on Snapchat. They’re not on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, but they’re on Snapchat. I believe SNAP it is a super solid company. We see that we had support four, almost five times. So this is where I sold a strike price at 49. You want to make sure that you’re only trading the best stocks and that you always look for support. The support that I like to see is a support level that held at least over the past 8 weeks. So, again, step number one is where we’re selling puts and collecting premium. The basic idea here is that we are buying stocks at a discount, or as many people would say right now, “buying the dip.” This is something that has been working really, really well. It’s a tactic that Warren Buffett has been using for many, many years to scoop up stocks at a discount. Step Number Two is where you may or may not get assigned. This means that if the price at expiration of the stock is below the strike price that you sold, then you have to buy the stock at the strike price you sold it. In this case, if this is happening, then you would go to step number three, which I will share with you in just a moment. Now, if the price is above the strike price at expiration, then you don’t get assigned. You just keep the whole premium and you would go back to step number one. This is why it’s called “The Wheel,” because we keep doing this, right? Step Number Three is when we are assigned, we will sell covered calls and collect more premium. This is the strategy in a nutshell. As you can see, it is not really complicated. The trick is to trade only the best stocks with solid support levels in case you are assigned. Using The Right Tools The second thing that you need is powerful tools. Let’s talk about the tools that I personally use. If you have been following me for a while, you already know that the tool that I use is the PowerX Optimizer. Now, here are the two things for me personally that are super important when we are picking the right tools. First of all, I want to have a scanner built-in. A good scanner not only finds the best stocks to trade, but also tells me what strike price to trade, and at what expiration. When it comes to expiration, I already told you in broad strokes, I’m only trading one to two weeks out. But should I trade this week’s expiration or next week’s expiration? This is super important, and this is where a tool helps me. The second thing, which for me is super important, is that the tool has a calculator. With this calculator, it tells me exactly how much premium I should get, how much risk is involved in this trade, right? These are the important things you need to know. Then, of course, a calculator should tell you how many contracts should I trade based on my account size. When trading options, you know the important things are, that you know what is the underlying stock, what is the strike price, what expiration, what is the minimum premium you want, and of course you want to know the risk. So let me show you exactly how I am finding these stocks. So here we see the PowerX Optimizer. The scanner actually gives us a bunch of symbols that are candidates to consider right now. Now, one of the things that we need to do is we need to make sure that we only pick the strong stocks, and that we only pick those that have a good support level. So one of the examples of a stock that I’ve traded recently is NIO . The scanner actually shows me in the data window what strike prices I should consider right now. It also shows me what premium I can get, and how much this would be annualized. What PowerX Optimizer told me is that right now I could sell at a strike price of 36. And I would get some decent premium for this. Now, we always want to go back over the past few weeks, and if we look over the past 6 to 8 weeks, we see the support see, it touched the level three times. So it looked like there was strong support at 36. Now, the next thing is, and this is where PowerX Optimizer helps you, that you see exactly here how much premium you can get, especially if we are looking at it annualized, right? For me, the minimum option premium that I should get to get at least 30% annualized. For me, that’s what I want to do. This is how I was able to make more than $50,000 thus far this year, and it is only March 12th, and I started on January 11th. Now I also want to know how many options should I trade based on my account. How much in premium would I collect, and what is the premium per day that I would make? So how much money per day do I make when trading this? This is where we go back to why it is so important to have a tool that shows me all this because let me ask you, how else would you find all this out? I mean, if you tried to do this manually, I don’t know, I mean, for me, this is almost impossible to do it. So and believe me, no professional trader does this with only a calculator or a cell phone in his hand. You must know your numbers. Trading is a numbers game, and if you don’t know your numbers, it will be really, really difficult for you to make money. Another key question is, if you don’t have a tool, how else would you find these trades? I mean, every single trade that I did in this account here, that you see over the past eight weeks, that have yielded $52,000, has been taken from this scanner. I mean, if you would force me right now to trade without this tool, I couldn’t do it. This is where I believe that having powerful tools like the PowerX Optimizer is giving you an unfair advantage. Think about it, when trading you are trading against other traders, but you don’t have to be the best trader in the world, you just have to be better than the other trader. You just need to have an edge, and this is where I must say this tool is actually giving me an edge. If you want, you can even say that it is not only an edge, you could call this if you want to, an unfair advantage, but when it comes to trading, you need to play every ace. You don’t want to show up with a knife to a gunfight, you’re trading against the smartest traders in the world. Traders Mindset Now, this brings me to the last point here of how to trade for a living, and this is having the right mindset. This is something that many traders underestimate because they think, “Hh, you know what, that’s fine, I just need a strategy and I need a tool and I will just be fine.” Having the right mindset is important, especially if you want to trade for a living. You must be focused on what I call SRC profits. This stands for systematically, repeatable, and consistent. So this is what SRC stands for, and this is why this so important. You see, as a trader, for me, at the end of the month, I’m wiring money out of my account, out of my trading account into my personal account. I mean, it's great when you have windfall profits. If recently you participated in the GME hype, and you double, triple, quadruple many maybe 10x your account, then good for you. Congratulations, and I really mean this. However, can you do this again this month? What is the next stock that is going crazy like this? Or if you were able to capture the Tesla ride all the way up, good for you, but what happened when Tesla went from 800 to 500? Did you take a hit in your account? See, this where it is super important to have these SRC profits. When it comes to trading for a living it is also important that you have patience, and here’s what I mean. You’ve got to grow your account systematically. So, and how do you grow your accounts systematically? If you don’t have a trading strategy, this is why it’s so important to have a trading strategy that produces these SRC profits, the systematically, repeatable, and consistent profits. So you see how it all comes together. I mean, this is why there’s these three pillars, the trading strategy, the tools that are supporting your trading strategy, and the mindset. Now, the other thing is that when you are trading, patience means that you can’t panic. You see this is where recently, people started talking about these diamond hands, but I think the way how some people talk about diamond hands is just holding on to a losing trade. No, this is not the case. It basically means you let the trade play out. How do you let the trade play out? You follow your plan, but to follow your plan, you must have a plan. So this is where it goes back again to having a trading strategy. Summary To sum things up, first of all, is it, is it possible to trade for a living? The answer for me is yes because that’s what I’m doing. Now, does it mean that you can do it? Again, this is why it’s so important that you practice on a paper trading account first. So you’ve got to have the right trading psychology. For the trading psychology here is that you are aiming for SRC profits and not the YOLO-windfall every now and then profits. To start trading for a living, what are the things that you need? You need to have a strategy, you need to have the right tools, you need to have the right mindset. Now, if you are looking for a strategy, today I presented to you The Wheel Strategy, which I think is a great trading strategy because it’s simple to understand and it gives you an edge, right? You also want to have the right tools, and for the right tools, I might be biased, but I think PowerX Optimizer is the best tool not only for trading this strategy but also for trading the PowerX Strategy here.
TVC:NDQEducation
by rockwelltrading
1
The Wheel Options Strategy: 29 Things You MUST KnowI’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. Those of you who have been following me know I love trading The Wheel Strategy, in fact, with my $500,000 trading account that I’ve been trading on since mid-January, I just $50,000 in REALIZED profits for the year. The Wheel Options Trading Strategy is a powerful trading strategy that can be fairly low risk IF you know what you’re doing. This is why, in this article, I wanted to give you a complete squad of trading tactics for trading The Wheel Strategy. I look through all of the comments on my YouTube videos & the questions that I get in my live streams, and I have compiled a list of the questions I get most often. So today we’re going to talk about the 29 things you must know when trading the Wheel Options Strategy. The Wheel Strategy Overview So let’s briefly talk about the basics, and the basics of the Wheel Strategy, are actually pretty simple. So let me just tell you the three steps that we need to do when trading this strategy. Step Number One: We want to sell put options and collect premium. Step Number Two: Here, we may or may not get assigned. Step Number Three: If we are getting assigned we will sell covered call options and collect more premium. If we are not assigned, then we will just stay at Step Number One, and keep selling put options to collect more premium. So as you can see, it’s really not that complicated. I mean, wouldn’t you agree? Now I divided this into 3 sections: The Basics, then Picking The Right Stock, because there’s a lot of questions about this topic, and then we will also talk about Selling Calls After Getting Assigned, as well as What To Do When a Trade is in Trouble. The Basics 1.) I have around $30,000 in my Interactive Brokers account. Is it enough to start trading the Wheel? Here is my recommendation. You should have at least $10,000 in cash so that you can get $20,000 in margin. I highly recommend that you are trading a margin account. If you have less than $10,000 in cash, I do not recommend that you trade with the Wheel Strategy. Now, if you have a smaller account, I recommend that you do a maximum of three positions in your account. As your account grows, you can go up to five positions in the account. 2.) What is the best expiration date when selling options? What I personally like to do is go 1 to 2 weeks out, so this also means that I like to trade weekly options. So I’m looking for a really short fuze here because I believe that this is where you have the most control over the prices here. The idea is actually to collect so-called “weekly paychecks,” and I put this in quotation marks because it always sounds so glamorous, right? However, it’s really important that you know what you’re doing here. Now, the next question that I receive all the time. 3.) Should I use margin to increase my buying power? My answer to this is yes, absolutely. I highly recommend this, however, keep in mind that margin is a double-edged sword, which can work for you as well as against you. 4.) How do I know if I have enough capital if I get assigned? It’s easy. So let’s say that you are selling a 100 put, which means a put with the strike price of 100. This means that when you’re getting assigned you have to buy 100 shares at $100 each totaling $10,000, so this is how much capital you would need. So all you need to do is basically just take the strike price that you are selling of the put, times 100 because options come in 100 packs, and multiply this number by the number of options that you’re selling. Let me give you an example. I recently sold 8 put options of Apple at a 133 strike price. So how do you know whether you have enough money in your account? Well, this is where we are taking the strike price, 133 times 100, times 8. This means you would need to have $106,400 in your account. So please make sure that you are sizing your account appropriately. The good news is, if you do have the PowerX Optimizer, which is the tool that I’m using, it will show you exactly how many shares you can trade. So what you need to do here is that you are actually filling in your buying power, and again, your buying power might be different. How many positions you want to take, and this is where I said if you have a smaller account fill in three, if you have a larger account you want to fill in four or five. Then based on the strike price that you are selling here, it will tell you exactly how many options you should trade, and based on how many options it also tells you how much money you need, and how much margin is required if you were to get assigned. I highly, highly, highly recommend that you do use a tool, because you see, if you do all the math in your head, it can go horribly wrong. The tool that I personally use is the PowerX Optimizer. Many of you already have the tool, many of you are familiar with it. 5.) Is there a certain percentage you buy to close at? Some people say 50% profit is best statistically to close. I like to close a position at 90% of the max profits. So as an example, this morning (March 10, 2021) I sold puts on DKS, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and I sold them for $0.75. So this is where right now I have a working order in there to buy this back at $0.07, which is 90% of $0.75. So, yes, if I can get 90% of the max profit here, this is when I want to exit. 6.) So is there a rule of thumb of what percentage this account is tied up with the strategy? It really depends on how many trading strategies you use, right? So right now I trade two strategies. I trade the PowerX Strategy and The Wheel Strategy. The PowerX Strategy is perfect for a trending market, but the markets right now, are far from trending. They are super choppy going up and down, so, therefore, right now I’m dedicating all of my money in the account to the Wheel Strategy. Once I start trading the PowerX Strategy again, this is where I would just decrease the buying power here and say instead of using the $500,000, I might just use, let’s say 400K, and use 100k for the Wheel Strategy. 7.) What screening criteria does the PowerX Optimizer use for the Wheel Strategy? The PowerX Optimizer has a built-in scanner to find the best candidates for the Wheel Strategy, and there’s a conservative scanner as well as an aggressive scanner. For my criteria, we are looking for stocks between $5 and $300 here. We are also looking for stocks that have a down day because when you’re selling put to collect premium, you want to make sure that you’re selling when the market is going down. We are also looking at the implied volatility because want to make sure that there’s enough premium there. Then most importantly, we want to make sure that the annualized premium is actually at least above 30%. There are a few other minor criteria. First of all, we only look for stocks that have weekly options. This is what I explained briefly a little bit earlier, I’m not interested in trading stocks that only have monthly options. 8.) What can I expect? 30% yearly annualized based on what capital? The capital here this would be based on is the buying power. So in my account, I have a $500,000 buying power. This means if I’m looking for 30% based on the buying power, so this would yield into 60% based on the cash that I put in the account because the cash that I put in the account was $250,000. So when I’m talking about the 30% yearly annualized, it’s based on the buying power. If you don’t trade with margin, then this would be based on your cash. Picking The Right Stock: 9.) Do you have a defined universe of stocks that are your “good list?” Well, first of all, I want to make sure that I’m trading the stocks from the PowerX Optimizer Scanner, and then I just look for stocks that I like overall. These are some of the stocks I've traded thus far this year: There's been DBX, DKS, GDXJ, HAL, HAS, IBM, JWM, LL, MARA, MNST, NIO, RIDE, RIOT, SNAP, and many more others. These are stocks that I really like to trade, and as you see, most of them are very well-known names so I’m not trading any exotic stocks. You also will not find meme stocks like GME or AMC on this list here. 10.) Is there a certain level of IV, implied volatility, on a stock that you won’t go to? I’ve traded some 200% plus of IV is that too high? Just as a rule of thumb, the higher the IV the higher the risk. This means that now stock can really swing back and forth. So for me, what I feel is a sweet spot, I like to see at least 40% IV, but no more than 100%. Sometimes I do take trades that are higher than 100 but honestly, for me, the sweet spot where you find most trades that are fairly safe is anywhere between 60% to 80% implied volatility. This is where I don’t have hard rules here, but I need to like the stock. 11.) Markus, have you changed from your “When I started I just wanted to know the symbol. I did not want to know anything about the company, as it might cloud my view. Trade what you see, not what you think” mentality? My answer is NO, for the PowerX Strategy. I absolutely do not want to know anything about the symbol. However, for the Wheel Strategy, the answer is YES because when trading The Wheel Strategy I only want to trade super solid stocks. 12.) So I noticed that some of the stocks on your list for the Wheel have very illiquid weekly options. Do you watch for options liquidity or just the credit limit and hope to get filled? For me, I don’t care about open interest and volume, and here’s why. I am selling premium and I’m fine letting the option expire worthless, so I don’t need to buy it back. If I can buy it back I will, otherwise no. So this is where here I don’t care about the open interest. But again, it really depends on the strategy. I mean, if you’re trading a different strategy, open interest and volume might be very important to you. For me, it is not. 13.) Besides technical support/resistance levels, how do you objectively decide which are the best stocks? Do you take into account any fundamental analysis to filter out which underlying to trade? No. So here is what I do, and this is it’s pretty subjective, so I don’t have objective criteria here. I must like the company, because the point is, you must be OK owning this company, and I must like the story of the company. Yeah. This is where I always use Peleton as an example because I know that many are trading Peleton and it has lots of premium in there. But you see for me, Peleton, it’s a company that I believe can easily be ripped off, and at some point, a major competitor might swoop in. So I must like the company and the story of the company. This is fairly subjective here because the key is that you must be OK owning that stock at the strike price. 14.) Since you are suggesting not to sell puts on leveraged ETFs, why are they then included in the Wheel Scanner? You know what? This is a great question and we actually might exclude them in version PXO 2.0. So right now I thought you’re all adults, and as adults, you can do whatever you want. I did not want to restrict you, so but we might exclude it or, we might add an asterisk as a warning sign. It’s a good suggestion, and I know that some get blinded by premium on leveraged ETFs. So I do not trade leveraged ETFs, anything that has 2x or 3x in the description I stay away from this. 15.) Why do you select growth stocks only instead of a mix of value and growth stocks? Seems that growth is in trouble due to interest rates. Growth stocks offer attractive premiums, but value stocks rarely do. I want to give you a very specific example here, and let’s actually go to IBM, because IBM is one of the value stocks that I have traded. I traded IBM after a massive drop where I sold the 117 strike. Usually in IBM, you won’t find enough premium in there. The implied volatility lately, is usually around 34 or 29. So this is the very simple reason why I’m going for growth stocks because I’m looking for a minimum of 30% annualized in premium. Selling Calls After Getting Assigned 16.) If you sell a call lower than your original put strike price can you still make money? This is actually super dangerous, and here’s why. So when you sold a put you got assigned, and you had to buy stocks at the strike price. I’m using an example of AAPL, and I was assigned Apple at $133 per share. Now, if I’m now selling a call, it means that I have to sell stocks at the strike price, so if I’m selling, let’s say a 125 call, it means that I have to sell the shares for $125. Now here’s the challenge with this. I bought them for $133 and now I’m selling them right now for $125. This means that I’m losing $8 per share. Now when you’re trading options, they come in 100 packs. So this means that you would lose $800 per option. So this is where you need to be careful when you’re selling a call lower than your original strike price. If you do this, make sure that it is above your cost basis, and we’ll talk about the cost basis here in just a moment. 17.) Why are covered calls more profitable in your experience than cash-secured puts? Are you targeting a different percentage return? No, I do not. Here’s a rule of thumb for what I do. Let’s jump to PowerX Optimizer and go to the Wheel Income Calculator. Here is something that I did today (March 10, 2021) where I sold calls on RIDE. Yes, and let me, let me quickly double-check before I do this, what did I sell on RIDE? So on RIDE I sold calls that expire March 19th, and I sold them for $0.35, and the calls that I sold were at 23. So by doing this, this actually gave me an annualized return. By default, I am not going as many strikes out, because all I need here right now is a rise in 7%. So if you are rising seven percent here, then I will be able to make money not only on the premium that I collected, the 16.45, but also an additional $7,000 on the stock, right? So this will be a total of $8,500. It’s just the nature of the beast because when you are selling calls you’re usually closer to the strike price, and therefore, usually higher premium for a higher ROI. This is why I keep telling you, I’m always looking forward to getting assigned because selling calls is actually more profitable. 18.) When you sell calls to reduce the cost basis, do you also include the premium received from selling first the put to reduce the cost basis? Yes, I do include the premium. 19.) Is there a risk of the portfolio becoming nothing but stocks and not being able to sell covered calls out of the money (OTM) to hit your targets? The answer to this is absolutely yes. When trading there’s risk, and there is a possibility that you own a bunch of stocks and you cannot sell calls against. So you have to hold on to these, and so for a few weeks, it could absolutely happen that you’re not making any money. I was recently assigned shares of AAPL, and have not been making any money with them because I have not been able to sell calls. But you see, even though I have one dud in my account, it’s only one of my positions, and I still have been able to make almost $51,000 in about 8 or 9 weeks. So, therefore, it’ll even out. So is there a risk? Absolutely. When trading there is always risk. If you are not willing to accept the risk when trading, do not trade, because there’s always the risk of losing money. 20.) Markus, if you haven’t sold a call against the Apple 103 strike price haven’t you been missing out on money? Not really, and here’s why. Right now, if I would try to sell a 133 call on Apple, that is, for example, expiring this week, I would get $0.01. I’m not missing out on any money, right? $0.01 translates into $1. So, no, I’m not missing out. Even if I would go out next week and I’m looking at the 133, I would only get $0.14. That’s $14. For me, it’s not worth it, and again, everybody’s different, so you might have different rules. For me, however, it’s not really worth it. 21.) When running a rescue mission on margin, how does one sell a covered call? My broker requires cash for any call that I sell. If this is true, change the broker immediately, and here’s why. So I own Apple shares, and if right now I want to sell calls against these Apple shares, let’s say 8 calls, it would not have any effect on my buying power. It’s the opposite So here I highly recommend you change the broker if this is true. Your margin requirements should be reduced when selling a covered call, this is how it works. 22.) Why not still sell calls at your cost basis after the stock drops? Because sometimes there’s not enough premium. If there is enough premium, I will do it, but sometimes there is simply not enough premium and then you are sitting on your hands. This is why I said I have this, the one dud in my account, AAPL, is not making me any money, but everything else IS making me money. I was able to sell calls against GDXJ and RIDE. With DKS, MARA, and SNAP, I sold puts. So everything else is making me money. I mean can’t change the wind, I can only adjust my sails and this is what I’m doing here. What To Do When A Trade Is In Trouble 23.) What do you mean by “rescue mission” for those who have not heard it before? But a “rescue mission” is where you have been assigned shares, and now the trade is going against you. You sell more put options below the assigned strike price. By doing this you collect more premium. If you are assigned, you lower your cost basis, making it easier to get out of that trade. You only should consider flying a “rescue mission” if the stock is down at least 30% from your assigned price. 24.) Why not still sell calls after your stock drops? Because there might not be enough premium in there. So very simple, right? If there is, we will do it, if not like with AAPL for me right now, then it is what it is. 25.) What happens when you run out of buying power and can’t sell calls at your target? So first of all, you can always sell covered calls, because you will not run out of buying power for selling covered calls. What they probably meant is what about not being able to sell puts, and there are two things that you can do. Number one, you can either wire more money into your account, which is probably not always feasible. Number two, you can simply close some positions to free up some buying power. 26.) Is it possible to buy options rather than sell options because selling options is supposed to be very dangerous? Well, of course, and that would be the PowerX Strategy. So with the PowerX Strategy, you are buying options if this is what you prefer to do, and if you’re trading the Wheel Strategy, this is where you’re selling options. So pick your poison. I mean, you got to do one thing, either you’re buying options or you’re selling options. So I have a strategy for each of these. 27.) Any point in waiting to make sure that the market has stopped dropping before flying a rescue mission? Yes! You don’t want to try to catch a falling knife. Wait until you see that the market or the stock is stabilizing here. 28.) I understand starting the rescue mission when the stock drops 30%, how do you determine the new put strike price to enter? The next support level? Yes, absolutely. This would be the next support level that you’re looking at. I got assigned at 21.50, and the next possible support level is right around 12,13, so this here it would be a strike price of 12–13, so this is where I would do it. If we go to Apple, which is another stock that I have, I did get assigned here at 133 and the next support level is around 108, right? So I would probably be most interested in selling the 108 strike price. 29.) It’s hard to make money on a small account unless you get assigned. Yes, it is hard to make money on a small account, period. I know that many want to start with a smaller account, like $500 or $1,000, but honestly, it is super, super, super difficult to make money on such a small account. In order to do this, you would have to trade this account way more aggressively, which means that you are basically risking a whole lot. So if you want to try to double a $500 account, you basically have to risk the full $500. This is what many Robinhood traders and these YOLO’ers do. It’s all-in and maybe it doubles or you lose all of the money. So, yes, it is absolutely difficult. So this is why the capital requirements, I highly recommend that for the PowerX Strategy if you want to trade it, that you have at least $5,000, and if you want to trade the Wheel Strategy, that you should have at least $10,000 in cash, which gives you $20,000 in buying power we talked about this at the beginning of the show here. So this is super important. If you do have smaller accounts, there might be trading strategies for you. I want to be honest with you though if there are, I don’t know them. When I started trading, I started with an $8,000 account and I saved until I had $8,000. Now, I shredded that account into pieces, down to $1,600 and then I saved money up again. Then the second account that I was trading was $16,000. Now that one, I also lost more than half. So I lost, I traded this down to $8,000 and this is when I put some more money in, brought this up to $12,000, and this is when it finally clicked. So again, if right now you have a smaller account, good luck, there might be strategies out there. I wish I had some for you. I promise, if I knew how to grow a $500 account I would tell you. If right now, if all I had to trade was with $500 to trade, I wouldn’t do it. I would probably find a way to save money or make extra money with Door Dash, Insta Cart, or something like this until I have at least $5,000. I wish that I could tell you something different, and unfortunately, I can’t. I’m not saying that it is impossible. All I’m saying is that I’m not the right person to teach you these strategies because I don’t know them. Summary If I didn’t cover a question here in this article that you may have, I promise I’m reading through all of the questions that you have, and I will answer them in one of the upcoming Coffee with Markus episodes. I hope that you enjoyed this article because I love talking about trading. Anyhow. Have a fantastic rest of your day and I’ll see you on the next one.
TVC:NDQEducation
by rockwelltrading