Finding investing education advice for stock options trading can be a frustrating endeavor at times. New traders often share with me that it feels like the options trading community is a very tight-lipped community with a high price of admission. I’ve been through that process so I’d like to offer you some advice.

Learning to invest your own money is a journey, not a destination. It takes time, patience, and education. It’s a proactive journey for those who no longer desire to be a victim of the so called experts.

Over the years I’ve made enough mistakes and have had enough successes to know that the ability to master your money is not something that just happens. It takes a bit of work on your part.

Increasing your investment IQ is a key part, especially when you’re dealing with stock options. You have to find a qualified and trustworthy source for investing education. There’s quite a bit of hype out there so you have to filter out all the "noise".

You may have already searched online for information on stock options, or read a few books. Most people are drawn to options trading by the potential to create large sums of money in a short period of time.  Here is my forewarning; having a great deal of head knowledge about stock options doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be a great trader. It’s going to take some real world practice.

Most of what I’ve learned about investing did not come from a classroom or a book; it came from real world experiences. I found people who were willing to give me unbiased investing education and I applied the knowledge through practice and a bit of trial and error.

Investing Education is your Financial Road Map

Investing education has a purpose in our lives like a map has a purpose to a traveler. A map can take you from point "A" to point "B" when you’re traveling. Investing education can take you from school loans, credit card debt, and no budget to debt-free with money to burn. It’s your financial map so to speak.

You could try to figure out options trading on your own, but if you’re smart and value your time you’ll find a map that can get you to your destination quicker.  It’s extremely rare for me to meet someone who doesn’t want to provide additional income for their family, position themselves to retire early,…

Wheee, what a great way to end the week!

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, we had gone into the day flipping our short firepower to BG $60 puts at $1.30 and TOT $55 puts at $1.20 as well as our remaining DIA $84 puts at .84.  We went back to cash for the weekend but consider that the DIA $84 puts finished at $2.04 (up 142%), BG $60 puts finished at $2.10 (up 61%) and TOT $55 puts finished at $2.83 (135%) and you can see how even small allocations out of cash yield very nice one-day returns on put options.  You do not have to take big risks to make big rewards, playing put options allows us to stay flexible and mainly in cash without "missing" too many market market moves.

We blew right through the upper targets I set in the morning and the Dow flew right down near enough our 8,250 (June lows) target that it looked bounceable, as the other indexes were holding up better than the Dow we felt we could play it for a small recovery over the weekend.  We picked up some DIA $85 calls for .76 but elected not to DD at our scale-in target of .64 into the close as we already had bullish plays on ZION as well as Dow components AA, BA, GE and PFE, all longer-term plays that we are looking forward to adding to cheaper if they keep heading down.  VLO and SNY were added in the afternoon as well as a UNG spread since they decided to just give it away at $13 again. 

While we are just dipping our toes into some long posItions, it is the first time in a month we’ve been happy enough with the pricing to even take a chance.  Of course we maintain our long put covers (just in case) but what’s the point of having protection if you have nothing to protect?  On the whole, the volume simply wasn’t that impressive and we attribute much of this drop to people who were "shocked" that the economy isn’t as good as they thought it was (cough, Cramer fans, cough, cough) but it’s EXACTLY as weak as we thought it was and that means there are certain price points we are willing to hit long-term.  Kudos to all who patiently waited with us for pretty much the whole month of June - now comes…

MOT – A large-volume bullish reversal initiated in the October contract on MOT today suggests some investors are positioning for a rally. Currently shares are off by more than 3% to stand to $6.25. Perhaps traders are anticipating that Motorola’s new lineup of phones, based on Google’s Android operating system, will boost sales for the firm. It appears that approximately 15,000 puts were sold at the October 5.0 strike price for 14 cents apiece in order to partially fund the purchase of 15,000 calls at the October 7.0 strike for 34 cents per contract. The net cost of the bullish stance amounts to 20 cents. Thus, shares of MOT would need to rev upward by 15% from the current price to $7.20 in order for investors to profit by expiration. Interestingly, it appears that today’s reversal has been added to similar bullish positioning as seen in the open interest at each of the strike prices described. Today’s activity could be the work of an investor who is merely adding to a position. Or, perhaps we are seeing traders hopping on the bull-bandwagon. – Motorola, Inc.

AXP – The global payments and travel company edged onto our ‘most active by options volume’ market scanner after one bearish trader dug his claws into the August contract. AXP shares are down 1% to $22.75. It appears that the investor has sold 5,000 puts at the deep in-the-money July 25 strike price for 2.54 apiece in order to get long of 7,500 puts at the closer-to-the-money August 23 strike price for 2.03 each. The trader likely took profits on the sale of the near-term put options and proceeded to reestablish a position in protective put options at a lower strike with more time to expiration. – American Express Company

JOSB – The designer of men’s clothing and accessories has surrendered more than 6.5% to stand at $32.44 today. Traders expecting further declines initiated interesting trades involving put options. It appears that about 3,000 puts were sold short at the deep in-the-money July 35 strike price for a premium of 2.19 apiece and spread against the purchase of some 3,000 puts at the more bearish August 30 strike price for 1.39 per contract. The net credit received from the transaction amounts to 80 cents. Writing puts in the near-term July contract leaves traders exposed to having shares of the underlying put to them…

Now it’s one thing to see something happen and quite another to do something about it.  One of the reasons we like to be in cash is we get to wait for the market to do something silly so we can bet against it.  Yesterday was a gift as the Dow climbed all the way to 8,577 at 10:30 and we gave it a few minutes for the Crude Inventories, which were a disappointment for the oil bulls and our first Trade Alert of the day went out to Members at 10:35 saying: "OIH $95 puts are a good deal at $1.58."  These trades don’t happen in a vacuum - we had been watching OIH all week and decided it was a safer short than USO, which also sold off nicely but the OIH was no slouch with the $95 puts finishing the day at $2.30 (up 45%).

Just a few minutes later, at 10:43, we were able to take advantage of the DIA $84 puts at .84, which finished the day at $1.08 (up 28%) and we were able to get back to cash while speculating on TOT $55 puts at $1.20 and BG $60 puts for $1.30 into today as we expected some downside follow-through to grip Europe, who were overly complacent yesterday.  I wanted to mention this as I hear from many traders who are getting hit hard because they feel the need to stay "invested" for fear of missing something and the only thing you are missing in this market by not having a cash position is a good night’s sleep.  Having cash allows us to pick our spots, make money and get back out to cash.  We’re not day-traders but we sure as hell take our profits if we hit our goals in a day! 

We’re still waiting for the market to pick a real direction but there are some things we do know and one of them is that oil is massively over-priced.  AAA just released a report stating that the peak for gasoline prices has already passed and estimates that auto trips will be down 2.6% this summer.  As I keep saying, people simply CAN’T afford to pay these pumped-up prices, no matter how much speculators wish it to be otherwise.  Clearly the dumb money is following Goldman et al into the commodity game - just like last year and…