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Last week I introduced some perceptions people tend to have about aspects of the market and then revealed the truth or reality of those incorrect perceptions. Here are a few more I’d like to share with you:

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“Futures trading is high risk”“Commission free Spot Forex trading”“I am brand new to trading, I should start by trading stock options”As I said last week, understanding how the markets REALLY work is essential to being able to profit in the markets. If you’ve been struggling to make consistent profits using the “common” strategies found in trading books and promoted by those on Wall Street, maybe it is because those strategies are based off of false perceptions of how the market works. You can learn more about how the market really works and OTA’s simple, rule based supply and demand strategy in our free Power Trading Workshop.Hope this was helpful, have a good day.


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eurusd and terrorism (bruxelles airport and metro today)

Last week I described a way to use options as a way to trade high-priced stocks, like Google or Priceline, with much less cost and risk than trading the stocks themselves. Below is the chart of Priceline as of our starting point on March 9, 2016.

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I compared two alternative trades to implement a bearish outlook:Sell the stock short at the price at the time around $1292, with a target around $1100 and a stop-loss price at around $1310.Buying a July put option at the $1300 strike, with orders in place to close out the trade if PCLN hit either our $1310 stop or $1100 target.

That article calculated that of the two trades, the put purchase had a potential to make 62% of the profit that the short stock sale would make if the stock reached the $1100 target; while tying up only 15% as much cash, for a much better cash-on-cash return. Today let’s look at using an additional option to improve the risk-reward possibilities even further.At the time that we could have bought the $1300 put described before for $90.70 per share, we could have simultaneously sold a put near our $1100 target and received about $20.00 per share.

Changing this trade from a simple long option into a vertical spread would do several things:It would reduce the net cash out of pocket required to enter the trade, from $90.70 to $70.70 per share, since we would be collecting $20 per share for the short 1100-strike put.If PCLN rallied to the $1310 stop-loss point, the loss would be less by about two dollars per share – about $14 per share instead of about $16 per share with the long put alone. This is because the short put would lose value in that case (good for us), and this would partially offset the loss in value of our long $1300-strike put.If PCLN did drop down to the $1100 target, the profit on the trade would be about the same with or without the short put, if the decline took a long time. If it took a short time, the spread would not do quite as well as the long put alone.Options at any moment in time may be cheap or expensive, in terms of the amount that traders are willing to pay per unit of time. This factor is dynamic – when expectations change, the option value per unit of time changes too.

We call this factor implied volatility. When we simply own an option, we are fully exposed to those changes in expectations. When we are both short and long options at the same time, then our exposure to these changing expectations is diminished. In this case, options were a little on the cheap side, but not by much. Since they were not extremely cheap they could still get cheaper; so we would want to reduce our exposure to that possibility. Adding the short option to the long option offsets some of our exposure to a change in implied volatility.

Creating this vertical spread was one of a number of ways we could have matched our outlook on the stock’s price to an option strategy. Options can be put together like Lego blocks to create different types of positions for different situations. We can finely tune these positions in ways that are not possible with any other instrument. And, using options can give us entrée to trading in stocks that might otherwise be beyond our reach.The selection of the right strategy is key to option profits. In our classes, we lay out a simple two-step process for selecting a strategy in any given situation. When you know how the pieces fit together, the puzzle becomes a picture.

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New Zealand posted a merchandise trade surplus of NZ$339 million in February, Statistics New Zealand said on Thursday.

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In this column we cover many aspects of options trading, from very basic options strategies to some pretty advanced topics. Many people are drawn to options precisely because there is so much to know about them. It’s an intellectual challenge and a source of fascination. If you are interested in solving puzzles, they can provide an endless supply.

There are many ways to make a profit and have fun at it. If you are an engineer, accountant, programmer, mathematician or would like to be any one of those, you have the type of mind that likes options and can make them work.

But for all their cool attributes – leverage, low cost, multiple strategies – options don’t perform magic. They work really well only when you have a clear idea about what the underlying stock price is most likely to do.The simplest option strategies – buying calls when you’re bullish or puts when you’re bearish – are designed to make large profits on a small risk when you pick the right direction.

They are straightforwardly directional trades. We expect to make money with them only when the stock goes in the direction that we anticipate, and in fact we can do just that.We can enhance the results of these simple directional options strategies by taking into account time decay and stock price volatility. These are the two additional dimensions that only options have. Those dimensions are the secret sauce that makes option trading different.

Still, no amount of finesse in analyzing time or volatility can make up for picking the wrong direction.Some people hear things about options that have a grain of truth but are misleading. For example, they may have been told that selling options (short) is far more likely to be profitable than buying them. That is sort of true, in a way, but with several caveats.

The sellers of options can make a little money even if they are a little bit wrong about the direction of the stock, it is true. But the flip side is that those sellers can also lose a lot of money, many times more than they could have made if they are very wrong instead of just a little bit wrong.

Selling options typically produces mostly modest winning trades, punctuated by occasional large losses. In this way it is like the insurance business. An insurance company takes in many small premiums and occasionally has to pay to rebuild a house that burns down. As long as they take in more in premiums in the long run than they pay out in claims, they will be profitable. Their edge is in knowing the probabilities of houses burning down. Or looked at the other way, of their not burning down (in which case the insurance company makes a profit).

Our edge as option traders comes most importantly from being able to determine with a high degree of accuracy, in advance, at what level a stock’s price is likely to change direction. Being skilled at that is just as important when trading options as it is when trading the stock itself.


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With imports rising at a faster rate than exports, the Commerce Department released a report on Tuesday showing that the U.S. trade deficit widened more than expected in the month of February. The Commerce Department said the trade deficit widened to $47.1 billion in February.

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The expression “Black Swan” existed as a description of something that couldn’t possibly exist, at least as far back as ancient Roman times. It was used in that way until black swans were actually found in Australia in 1697. Since then it has described things that were only thought to be impossible, until they occurred. The world of finance has had many black swans. The market crashes of 1929, 1987 and 2008 are obvious examples.

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The global economy is set to continue expanding at a slower pace as financial and geopolitical uncertainties increase and the prolonged weak growth pose greater risks to the outlook, the International Monetary Fund said Tuesday. In its latest World Economic Outlook, the Washington-based lender cut the global economic growth forecast for this year to 3.2 percent from 3.4 percent.

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The unemployment rate in Australia sank to a seasonally adjusted 5.7 percent in March, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said on Thursday.

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Consumer prices in New Zealand climbed 0.2 percent on quarter in the first quarter of 2016, Statistics New Zealand said on Monday.

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