About Options Trading Strategies

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Essentially, you make a guess on what the price of a share will be some time in the future and you place a bet on it.
Leave it alone. It is sheer gambling and you will be playing against experienced professionals with the best computer programs etc. They will eat you alive.

Futures and options are derivative items of any stock market.
Although i found good softwares for options trading in foreign market, i am unable to find a good software for options trading in NSE (National stock exchange of India).
The software must be comprehensive with analysis tools like premium, discount, Simple Moving Average and particularly with strategies like butterfly, straddle, strangle etc.
It must download real data and give us strategies mentioned.

(Note: I have real money experience with options going back to 2000, first covered calls in my IRA and then long calls in my cash account though no day trading experience with real money. I have the 25K to park in an account to satisfy the pattern day trader rules and another 10K to make the actual contract purchases.)
I have a job that allows me to keep an eye on the real time stock market. Starting in January I started playing with the Virtual Trading engine at OptionXpress, daytrading options on SPY. My strategy is rather modest; I buy 5-10 ITM contracts, either put or call depending on market direction, and sell when I see the trend reverse. I chose 10 contracts because I believe that with an order size that small, if I submit a sell order at the bid it should fill immediately unless the market is moving very fast allowing me to lock in a profit if the trend reverses. I open one position at a time, I never leave my desk with an open position and I am 100% cash at market close every day. I use SPY because being a basket of 500 stocks it is buffered from sudden drastic moves in price giving me time to get out of a position with minimal loss if the price goes the wrong way on me. My immediate goal is $100 after commissions per round trip, a target that requires only a $0.15 move in option price. I don’t always guess right on direction, 4 out of 5 is typical, and I am netting between $400 and $500 a day on 6-7 round trips. My $5000 initial play money stake has grown to about $15,000 since 1/19 when I started doing this seriously. I won’t get rich doing this but over the course of a year that is an extra person’s worth of income for my family. If it lets me do nothing more than pay off my house and fund future college for my 3 kids it is worth it.
Now that I have proven to myself that this seems to be a reasonable strategy I am trying to understand what I can do better and am now in the area of “I don’t know what I don’t know.” I know about Level 2 quotes but if these are something that can help me I am not clear how to use them. I know that there are all sorts of indicators that technical traders use but I don’t know if these scale down to the day trading level. I know about the existence of the Greeks, and while I understand roughly what the numbers and equations mean, I don’t know if these will help me on positions lasting 15 minutes or less.
My main interest in posting this question is to find out if there are tools I can use to help me make better choices about getting in or out of a position or tell me more about what the market is doing. This strategy seems to be working okay and if I can translate this to real money I will consider myself successful. I don’t want to be greedy but I certainly would like to know if I can do what I am already doing more effectively.
I spent time on 888options and optionetics.com but it seems much of the content out there deals with strategies like spreads, butterflies and condors, things that simply don’t apply to what I am doing. I know there are options day traders, even some specializing in SPY, who read these questions, and I’d be appreciative if I even had a list of books or even just some things to go research and learn about that you have found helpful in your experience.
Thanks for reading this far and any help y’all provide.

I have been looking into various ways to play the stock market to make big money out of it. I have been looking into two investment vehicles primarily, and they are CFDs (contracts for differences) and options trading. Now, I think personally that trading just options, i.e. puts & calls is wasting assets as most of them expire worthless and it is a common fact that people who trade this way have a 95%+ failure ratio. Thats why I wouldn’t trade this way to make a fortune as my chances are quite slim. I have however, traded CFDs on a practice account and I made 25% return on my first trade. I still think, though, that again this might be wasting assets doing it this way like writing options. The best way to make the big money in the stock market I believe, how the pros do it is by short selling and long selling stocks.
What I’d like to know in your opinion is what investment vehicle out of CFDs or options would I be best to use that is recommended to use to short sell and long sell stocks to make massive money and become a millionaire out of? Which investment vehicle is safer to use for short selling and long selling out of using options or CFDs? Good, reasoanble answers would be much appreciated. Thanks.

there are good books to understand the market and then equities trading and the for options and futures.
After the trade is made, Securities operations are some of the good books. Do a google and u would find information.
Thx

I don’t know nothing about stock option, but i’m really interesting in this. I’ve found a lot of seminar that offer how to gain high profit from stock option & the testimonial the success people from stock option. Could you share what is the risk & benefit entering stock option market? How to analysis?How to manage the risk?& what is the strategies? How to trade & the step to enter this market? What’s the tools? What’s the different between the usual stock market? Thanks a lot

CHICKEN TRADE OR CHANNELING!

I am 18 years old and I want to choose one investment instrument out of spread betting or options trading to trade stocks with. I know about both spread betting and options trading and some of their ossociated strategies. I have had practice spread betting and I am up 116% since I first started 4-5 weeks ago. I read a book called “how to make money trading” by the guy who did the million dollar traders TV programme; Lex Van-Dam or something, and in the book he suggested that you should leave options to someone else as their is only a few people who actually make money with options trading. What I would like to know is what out of options trading or spread betting would be best suited to a UK resident, and which out of the two is safer to trade and best recommended for a UK resident? Please give me a resonable answer as it would be very much appreciated. Thanks.
P.S. sorry its so long.

I am not greedy. I would be perfectly happy with 3%/ month.

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That’s like asking what is real estate investing? What are the tools? You have to be more specific.
You do the work first, learn a few terms, then ask a specific question. Read a book. McMillan is the options guru, but you probably want a more introductory book.
You can trade options real-time for free on a simulator here:http://www.investopedia.com/