I noticed in premarket there was a trade or two around 2.15. Also could have closed out those puts yesterday for $.35 but was too slow. Trying to trade from my phone in a meeting and just couldn't do it. But yes, lots of manipulation.

Edit - Well now I cannot even see those low trades....maybe the phone app was screwed up.

oldarmy1 said:

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0708aggie said:

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How would one do this?

Sell to open, Put BBOX Aug 17 2.5 strike?

I've never sold puts before so wanted to follow this trade.

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It's a naked Put. Let's say you sell 10 Puts at $0.70. You get $700 in premium paid and then whoever bought those from you has the option to sell you 1000 shares at $2.50.

If BBOX is under $2.50 and you get assigned the 1000 shares you pay the $2500. But you received $700 in premium so your actual per share holding is now $1.80.

So ask yourself, if I could buy BBOX right now for $1.80 would I think thats a great holding price? There ya go.

Now lets say BBOX is trading at $2.40 at expiration. If that holder is crazy enough to make you buy his shares at $2.50 then you not only own the shares at $1.80 but your shares you now hold are up $600.

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OA, what happens if the price is above 2.50? What are your next steps to take?

tramaro1 said:

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oldarmy1 said:

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0708aggie said:

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How would one do this?

Sell to open, Put BBOX Aug 17 2.5 strike?

I've never sold puts before so wanted to follow this trade.

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It's a naked Put. Let's say you sell 10 Puts at $0.70. You get $700 in premium paid and then whoever bought those from you has the option to sell you 1000 shares at $2.50.

If BBOX is under $2.50 and you get assigned the 1000 shares you pay the $2500. But you received $700 in premium so your actual per share holding is now $1.80.

So ask yourself, if I could buy BBOX right now for $1.80 would I think thats a great holding price? There ya go.

Now lets say BBOX is trading at $2.40 at expiration. If that holder is crazy enough to make you buy his shares at $2.50 then you not only own the shares at $1.80 but your shares you now hold are up $600.

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OA, what happens if the price is above 2.50? What are your next steps to take?

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out of the money options always expire worthless.

Meaning if OA initially sells the puts then the option expires and he collected the premium, correct?

Yes collects the premium and that's it. Has a limited upside scenario although it is a strong scenario in this situation.

RRTS taking a peak at breaking out

AIG appears to be basing. Reverse bullish head and shoulder forms if can hold

Rosenstein PC up in a few. Flash up or down?

it looks like more rusky indictments, flash up would be my guess

Here is my AMZN story for this week......

I bought two weekly AMZN 1750 calls on Monday after I saw sweeper activity. Pretty rare to see in a big name like AMZN so I followed along. Bought 2 contracts for ~5. Sold on Tuesday at ~11. Was happy to more than double my money and chalked up the W.

Today those contracts are worth 60. Would have made an additional 11K. Shouldn't feel bad because I doubled my money which is great, especially for calls that were expiring today. But a lesson here -- trimming and letting winners ride. Maybe the better strategy would have been to sell 1 (half) of my calls to get the money I put in back + a little extra, and let the rest ride for the week. If they go to 0, not big deal as I got my money back by selling that 1 call. If they ran like they did to 60, then I got a nice little gift. I see a lot of traders use this strategy of selling quarters or thirds of their position to take profits along the way and something I need to start practicing and incorporating into my strategy.

I'm with you on needing some more discipline to follow through on some strategies.

First SPX close over 2800 since Feb 1st. Bullish to hold that mark to close out the week.

Now we hope for a quiet news weekend (+quiet Trump) to extend momentum into next week.

All the social media companies testifying on Tuesday about their moderation policies. Hopefully nothing crazy goes on.

Ranger222 said:

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Here is my AMZN story for this week......

I bought two weekly AMZN 1750 calls on Monday after I saw sweeper activity. Pretty rare to see in a big name like AMZN so I followed along. Bought 2 contracts for ~5. Sold on Tuesday at ~11. Was happy to more than double my money and chalked up the W.

Today those contracts are worth 60. Would have made an additional 11K. Shouldn't feel bad because I doubled my money which is great, especially for calls that were expiring today. But a lesson here -- trimming and letting winners ride. Maybe the better strategy would have been to sell 1 (half) of my calls to get the money I put in back + a little extra, and let the rest ride for the week. If they go to 0, not big deal as I got my money back by selling that 1 call. If they ran like they did to 60, then I got a nice little gift. I see a lot of traders use this strategy of selling quarters or thirds of their position to take profits along the way and something I need to start practicing and incorporating into my strategy.

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Me and a buddy talked about AMZN earlier this week regarding A run up after prime day, so we each went with a tiny gamble buying only 1 contract of the 7/20 1840 for $1.37. I sold mine Thursday (like an idiot) for $6. It hit $11.50 Friday and closed at $9.2 with a week to go. If I had bought 20 contracts it would have tanked haha.

Let's say I have $1000 to play with. Not much but I've never been a stock market guy beyond the 401k I get from work. Can I still do what yall are talking about here?

What should I do with it? I'm a high risk high reward guy

Yes, you can. That is pretty much what I am doing. I use Robinhood because there are no fees like some of the other brokers, which can eat up your gains pretty quick. If you want to, you can use this link HERE and we both get a free stock.

Looks like NFLX is in a flag now...with earnings announced this week, think that could be a way to break out?

clobby said:

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Yes, you can. That is pretty much what I am doing. I use Robinhood because there are no fees like some of the other brokers, which can eat up your gains pretty quick. If you want to, you can use this link HERE and we both get a free stock.

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I'll look into this!

So setting up an account is one thing, knowing and implementing a strategy is another. It's the latter I am clueless about

Talon2DSO said:

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clobby said:

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Yes, you can. That is pretty much what I am doing. I use Robinhood because there are no fees like some of the other brokers, which can eat up your gains pretty quick. If you want to, you can use this link HERE and we both get a free stock.

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I'll look into this!

So setting up an account is one thing, knowing and implementing a strategy is another. It's the latter I am clueless about

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whAt are your goals? If you want to trade options forget robin hood and open a tasty works account. Contracts are $1 to open and free to close. The platform is infinitely better.

Watch this entire series.

https://www.tastytrade.com/tt/shows/step-up-to-options

Find more money.

Goals.....

1. Learn how to make money in the market
2. Watch a small pile get bigger
3. Blow it in Vegas.

With $1,000 your ability to implement strategies will be limited.

1) buy cheap stocks and hope they multiply, luck.
2) buy calls and hope they multiply, luck.
3) open a margin account
4) find more money to trade with and use probability on your side.

It takes 2k to open a margin account on tastyworks

This is what I did. It was pretty slow going at first. I had to break a lot of traditional rules to get it going. Namely limiting a position to no more than 3 percent of your total capital in any one underlying.

I did try to adhere to the rule of not deploying more than 50 percent of my capitol at any one time. This has saved me more than once. In rolling positions i have gone as far as 85 percent deployed, all my positions eventually corrected in time and i closed most trades at 50 percent profit or higher.

Youll be limited to just a few trades at first. Youll need to learn the mechanics of getting in, out, and rolling. Youll need to to learn to use(deploy, roll, close) a couple different strategies and know when and how to deploy each. On a small account i would stay away from naked options for a bit, wait till youve doubled your purse a couple times.

Do some paper trading for a month and analyze your work.

YOU WILL BE WRONG AT TIMES!!!

Even if its temporary, these are great times to learn about adjusting your position and rolling.

Ask questions.

Do any of y'all know a good online simulation to practice some of these concepts y'all discuss?

I only used the tastyworks platform

Set the trade parameters and saved it for later

Entered the info on an excell sheet and updated it everday with the changes

Kinda cumbersome

Oa and a few others have mentioned other platforms they use for analysis and back testing but i cant recall all their names

I dont know if there is a "paper trading" platform

CDub06 said:

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Do any of y'all know a good online simulation to practice some of these concepts y'all discuss?

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i use tastyworks too. I will fake set up a trade and see what the probability of profit is.

Option Alpha has an extensive back testing platform with a built in trade optimizer which helps identify strategy, position size, delta, duration, etc that gives the absolute best result.

Investopedia.com allows for paper trading. The platform itself is not up to par for a normal investing broker obviously.

Think or swim is a great platform and let's you do paper trading.

Ragoo - does options alpha "lite" let you do backtesting or is it only their more expensive tier?

JDCAG (NOT Colin) said:

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Think or swim is a great platform and let's you do paper trading.

Ragoo - does options alpha "lite" let you do backtesting or is it only their more expensive tier?

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believe the more expensive. He has a single payment lifetime access option.

I listen to his podcast. He is very forthcoming in his giving of information.

CDub06 said:

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Do any of y'all know a good online simulation to practice some of these concepts y'all discuss?

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Put everything in an excel spreadsheet and model your trades before you make them.

Ragoo said:

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JDCAG (NOT Colin) said:

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Think or swim is a great platform and let's you do paper trading.

Ragoo - does options alpha "lite" let you do backtesting or is it only their more expensive tier?

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believe the more expensive. He has a single payment lifetime access option.

I listen to his podcast. He is very forthcoming in his giving of information.

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Yeah, I've really liked his youtube videos.

90% of the other ones I see are basically 30+ minutes of guys giving you bullet points about important things (entry timing, pricing, when to manage winners, when to manage losers, adjusting, etc.) and absolutely no actual teaching....then at the end they try and sell you their course that will show you this stuff.

Also a surprising number of them that seem to - from the comments - have bogus trade data (i.e. I sold this spread for $0.95 credit and then bought it back for $0.50 here when folks have checked back and the prices were nowhere near that range at that time)....

As expected BBOX earnings $194m. Obviously not reflecting any new business deals. Traded as low as $1.80 so far premarket bouncing to high of $2.13 post-earnings.

Sitting at $2.01 currently. Now to see earnings call impact, and how much CEO is willing to comment on deal.

Update: Now $2.11 investor call not underway until 9am central. You can listen in on link below when close to time.

http://investor.blackbox.com/events-presentations

Chk getting hit

SN also down 6%+

Yep. OA and everyone I read love CHK, so not worried. But I wish I got in at this price...