An All Star Options community member recently sent me an email asking about the Average True Range (ATR) indicator and whether or not it is helpful in ascertaining if options premiums are elevated or depressed in the underlying instrument.
One of the great things about options trading is the flexibility afforded to traders to combine multiple contracts, of the same or differing expirations, long or short, to express unique ways to participate in whatever thesis we might have about the...
We've currently only got one delta-neutral "income" trade on the books right now, but that one will be coming off sometime this week as it is comprised of December options which expire this Friday.
No matter what the market, geopolitics, weather, congress, The President, retail demand, the news cycle, or even the price of the commodity itself throws at oil stocks, they just... keep... winning.
After we got past sharing each others' Thanksgiving dinner menus, wine pairings, and recipe swaps, the All Star Charts gang got back to business this morning hunting for trade ideas.
While bargain clothes shoppers seem to be driving profits in a way Wall Street likes, it takes a certain kind of trader to buy stock in the company when it's making new All-Time Highs.
Well, I just happen to be that type of trader! In fact,...
After some pretty significant broad market moves in both directions in recent weeks, it's starting to feel like market participants are a bit tired. And can we blame them?
While volatility is often beneficial to active traders who have a good...
So we were talking about a guy who's apparently subsisting only on McDonald's patties for the next 30 days. Just the patty --- no bun, no condiments, no lettuce. He's trying to prove some kind of point that it's not McDonald's burgers that are...
We've got an oil stock on the doorstep of multi-year highs, a recent shakeout that probably rinsed out the hot-money crowd that came into the stock following their latest earnings report, and implied volatility plumbing new yearly depths.
Yesterday we were treated to the latest interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve and a speech and Q&A with Fed Chairman Powell that apparently wasn't well received by the market as stocks slid furiously into the...
"Old Economy" stocks are drawing our attention again.
Our Head Technical Analyst Steve Strazza says: "these old economy stocks are all beating earnings and taking leadership roles" and he cites companies like Caterpillar $CAT, Deere $DE, as...
We continue to be handcuffed by earnings season. Some of the best setups we like right now are in stocks slated to announce earnings over the next week or two. As an options trader, I don't like to position ahead of imminent earnings announcements....
I was talking with a relatively new day trader last night at my twice-monthly trader meetups here in Colorado. We were chatting about stop losses. Or more specifically, his inability to stick to his “mental stop loss levels.”
I dunno why, but thinking about train tracks and rail stocks got me thinking of Blue Steel. There is absolutely no connection between today's trade and the pose made famous by the Zoolander film. But, you're welcome.
It's that time of the quarter where we options swing traders need to be extra mindful of pending earnings releases. The last thing we want to do is place a directional bet in a stock or it's options heading into a binary event that could decapitate us...
While this certainly is not the market environment to be taking aggressive long bets in, there are some stocks that are displaying tremendous relative strength that we can play with strictly defined-risk positions to protect ourselves.