April 2014 Trades

My April 2014 E-mini S&P trades:

Sold:
Jul 2014 1400 put
Jul 2014 1525 put
Jul 2014 1650 put
Jun 2014 1510 call

Bought:
Jul 2014 1700 put

Disclaimer:
This is purely for educational purposes and not trade recommendations.

The beauty of selling put options

Selling put options proves to be a profitable way of trading compared to what I did previously!

The flexibility of this technique coupled with the risk management of it make it a very attractive strategy for someone who has never made any real money in the stock market like myself. 

There are many ETFs available.  Go for those which are high in liquidity and thus low spread between bid and ask prices.  For example,  the SPY, QQQQ, IWM, etc.

In selling put options,  remember,  you just want the underlying ETF to stay above the put strike price which you sold the put option, to make money. Sounds easy?  :) perhaps.

If you know technical analysis,  great!  Sell put options below the support line to give you that added edge.  Else not to worry too much, try aiming for around 10% below the current price.  You may have to sell 2 or 3 months out.

Wild dreams

How the journey began...

I believe many people started out trading with stocks.  Me too! :) looking back,  that should be some time in 1996? Yes, long way back!

I hadn't gotten much success in trading stocks really... or should I even use the term "much success" at all??!! To be precise,  I think I only had a couple of trades which made me just a few hundred bucks while the rest of the trades were bad... and some even nearly wiped out my account! Maybe I was missing out on luck then? Hahaha. .. or rather the most likely reason could be I was just not a stock analyst like some others who really are able to make good money in the stock market buying great stocks!

I stopped trading for a few years because I was literally lost in how exactly should I proceed then.  Rather than throwing good money after bad, I stayed on the side lines... searching hard for a holy grail , if that exists in the first place!

During that few years of research,  I picked up knowledge on technical analysis,  many different types indeed!  Candlestick analysis as well as support resistance studies appealed to me most.  I was really impressed and astonished at the kind of tools available in the market to study and analyse stocks! !

With that new found knowledge,  I put it to test once again. ... it worked at first and I was thrilled thinking that I had found the secret to unlocking wealth in the stock market!   But well, sometimes it failed. .. as expected.  Success wasn't consistent at all and I went back to the drawing board,  in search of the next better option.

Alrite. .. getting a little late now... let me continue the story again another day. . Stay tuned!  ;)

Wd