Posts

Strategy Post - 3/18/2024 - The Greeks of Options: What are they? (1/5 in the Greeks Series)

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Hi readers, I hope you are all doing well! In this post, I will be giving you a small piece of exposure to the Greeks of options. Understanding what the Greeks are will definitely help an options trader make great adjustments to positions, and understanding how the Greeks work together will result in an options trader being very fundamentally sound and very profitable. This is the first post in a 5-post series, where each post will cover one of the 5 Greeks of Options. Today's post will cover what Delta is, I hope you enjoy! First, here is some background on what Greeks are in Options trading. Greeks are simply types of risk measures that options have. Greeks also measure changes in options price, time value, volatility, and more in result of any change in the underlying stock.  The Greek we will cover today is called Delta. What is Delta? Delta measures how much the price of an option will change due to a $1 change in the underlying stock. The deltas for long call options and shor...
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3/10/2024 - Weekly Recap + Market Predictions

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Hi Readers, I hope you are doing well! In this post, I will be covering what my account has been looking like over the past week. Since my positions did not change much over this past week, I will also include the market predictions for the next week in this post as well. I hope you enjoy! WEEKLY RECAP: Monday and Tuesday: I did not trade or make any adjustments on my account Wednesday: I entered a Long QQQ ATM Straddle 10 times in the April 5 expiration date. At the time of purchasing the spread, QQ was near $441, so I purchased the straddle at a $441 strike price. On Wednesday, QQQ was at its high for the day when I purchased the straddles, and for the rest of the day (after I purchased the straddles), QQQ proceeded to go down all the way to around $438, where it ended the day. So, the puts were most likely in the money then. Thursday: I did not trade or make any adjustments on my account. However, on this day, QQQ made a huge spike up, and ended the day at around $446.  Friday: ...
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Strategy Post - 3/9/2024 - What are Short Options and how do they work?

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Hi Readers! This is the strategy post for this week, and in this post we will discuss short options. This is a heavy concept, so reviewing this post multiple times would be very beneficial. I hope you enjoy! Before you read this post, I recommend you briefly go over last week's post to re-familiarize yourself with how long options work. Understanding that will help you understand short options with ease. All long options are bought, so that means that someone is selling them. Just like we can buy options, we can also sell them, and that is called shorting options. When you short an option, you are selling it to someone who bought the exact same option. Remember how you pay a premium when you buy an option? Well, that premium goes to the person who sold the option, for both calls and puts. So, in this case, when you short an option, you are the one receiving the premium from whoever bought that option. So you actually get money up front when shorting options. But how do short option...
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Strategy Talk Post - 3/1/2024 - What are Long Calls and Long Puts and how do they work?

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Hi readers! This is the Strategy post for this week! Today, I will be going more in-depth and explaining the difference between a call option and a put option. This post will cover just long calls and long puts, however, I will also talk about how options are low risk. I hope you enjoy learning about them! I highly suggest reading last week's strategy post to get familiar with the options trading lingo that traders use, so you can better understand the language in this week's post. A call option is an option that enables the holder to purchase the underlying stock at a pre-determined price, which is what we call the strike price. A call option is In the money (ITM) when the underlying stock is above the strike price. For example, if I bought a NKE call option at a strike price of $300, and if Nike goes to $320, then the call would be in the money, since 320>300. This would also make you a profit, because even though Nike is trading at $320, you have the right to buy it at $3...
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Market Analysis - 2/25/2024

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 tbf
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Trade Talk Post (Weekly Recap) - 2/24/2024

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Hi Readers! In this Trade Talk post, I will be talking about what changes, such as new positions and adjustments, have happened in the past week in my options trading portfolio. Here is the update: Tuesday (2/20/2024):  Before I talk about the updates, I will just briefly recap my existing positions. I had a QQQ Long time spread, and a SPY long straddle, both spreads being ATM at the time of purchase. These spreads have gone many adjustments throughout the week before this week, so please keep that in mind.  Now I will get into the actual adjustments I made on Tuesday. First off, I had noticed that the SPY Long straddle was not doing so well, as it was at a loss of around $1000. However, SPY had made some movement, within the breakeven points unfortunately. I was also incurring daily decay (theta) since it was purely a net long options position. So, to cover that loss, I decided to short an SPY Straddle at a closer expiration date. The short straddle was in the Feb 26 expirati...
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Strategy Talk Post - 2/23/2024

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Hi readers! This is the Strategy post, where I will be explaining options trading to those who are uneducated on trading options. In this week's post, I will be going over some important options trading terms. Here they are: 1) Call Option : We already went over this in the previous post, so I will briefly re-explain the term. Call options give the holder to buy the underlying stock at a certain predetermined price. Remember, call options are profitable only if the underlying stock moves above the pre-determined price at expiration. 2) Put Options: They are similar to call options, except holders have the right to sell the underlying stock at the pre-determined price. Put options are only profitable when the underlying stock moves below the pre-determined stock at expiration. 3) Long vs. Short: Long simply means you own something, and short means you are selling something. Thus, a long position means you own options and a short position means you owe options. 4) Underlying Stock: S...
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