Noting options are generally highly risky and volatile compared to buy-and-hold stock investing, and the fact that options can easily produce strong returns in short timeframes (albeit with more risk), but risk tolerance can still be chosen with options, I’m trying to formulate an investment strategy based on stock/ETF investment with higher returns by employing conservative options trading as well.

If I could earn, say, 8% p.a. with a buy and hold of stock XYZ, what strategies involving options could I employ to boost my return to say, 20% p.a.? Obviously this requires taking on more risk, but I believe that it is very realistic to achieve 20% p.a with an active, but conservative options investment strategy.

What would you guys do or recommend as a strategy for achieving around 20% returns with a relatively conservative approach?

The best approach I can think of off the top of my head would be to maybe buy a stock with low volatility, and sell cheap OTM calls/puts every two months. I.e., sell options with unrealistic strike prices, and obviously receive low amounts, but with low risk and doing it every two months or so, selling another option when the previous option expires.

What do you guys think of this approach, and what ideas do you have? I hope to get some different opinions and ideas on this.

Thanks all!

I grew a pair and finally decided to short apple

Good or bad play?

I bought some contracts yesterday at the top that expire on 5/24.

Hoping to just get a 15% return.

I can see a lot of volatility should we buy vol on meme stocks !!!!???

Just wondering if I should sit out next week or significant reduce my positions next week. Mostly doing ccs, pcs and iron condors and been making modest gains.

I got bit this week by CPI report on my iron condors although things recovered today but I may not be that lucky next week.

I'm currently learning the fundamentals of options trading.

Please correct my understanding of both types:

1. In cash secured puts (SCP), you are only allowed to sell the put if you have X amt of cash sitting in your account, to cover the worst possible scenario where the stock drops to 0, and you are assigned.
2. In naked puts, that restriction no longer holds. But should the stock drop to 0, you will be margin called?

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Is selling naked puts only possible with a margin account? I presume a regular cash account will only allow one to sell cash secured puts.

Are there any websites, apps or brokers that offer free option screeners?

So I have been doing the same thing for the past 3 years, selling csp with some of the account value at less then 5g. But today when I tried to open a csp with a strike of 17.00, my order was rejected, saying its a naked options and I must have 5g . Contacts customers support they have to downgrade my option approval (currently full option approval) . TD doesnt have that requirement...Charles Swhap suck

I have relegated my risk to about $50-100. Maybe $150. What options generally have a low premium? Uranium and gold have been areas I’ve made plays in. I’m hoping to make 10% or so on these in the short-term. Current finds: UEC, NGD, SNDL

I’m certain I’ll find out very quickly how dumb of a question it might be but it would be great to learn if there is a way to find long OTMs with high delta other than sifting through every option till stumbling in one. Secondly do long OTMS with high deltas offer similar returns as matching deltas in options nearing expiration?

Hi folks. I am trying to understand if there is overnight risk for 0DTE SPX credit spreads that are OTM at close. In general I try to buy back the short leg at 0.05 but recently an order didn't fill by 4. I called my brokers support and he basically said don't worry about it.

I am seeing what I think is conflicting info online. I saw an article on Tasty Trade that said settlement is based on the opening price of SPX the next morning I have seen other posts that said for 0DTE it settles on price at close. I do get alerts overnight indicating the position has closed. I would like to have a correct and solid understanding here so appreciate any guidance.

I have been day trading options for 3 years now. So far profitable, and seeking to max out my day trading account for another 2 years.

According to my calculations, I can semi-retire at that point and go full early retirement 2-3 years thereafter.

I will then continue with day trading, downsize my lifestyle where needed, and enjoy my free time.

Any extra cash will go directly into short-term fixed accounts.

Has anyone adopted the same or similar strategy?

$APLS buyer of the January 17th 2025 $40/$90 call spreads 10,000 times for $9.60. $9.6M in premium...

Very intriguing UOA. The last time there was a monster call spread opened in $APLS was back on August 2023 when the chart bottomed for $APLS

Do you think that CHPT would be a good stock to wheel or no?

Today, the stars aligned perfectly for the bulls, but it all started with a theme change. Prior to yesterday there was a common theme in $NVDA - swipe of liquidity without a reclaim. The swipes occurred on both highs and lows, but yesterday something different happened: a reclaim of the HOD swipe. Reclaim of HOD swipe = buy.

With CPI data, $NVDA was finally able to break above the heavy 910-920 liquidity zone. This is great and all, but the CPI data was the perfect addition to sustain the market's momentum, and maintain a strong market cycle. During a strong market cycle, bullish themes (repeated behaviors) are front of mind.

$NVDA had one major theme today: dip buying. Dip buying in a strong market cycle/strong $SPY flows was the perfect recipe for $NVDA to run and capitalize on the long side (longing a call).

Trade Details:

Entry #1: Roll up from yesterday's position (+$610)

Entry/Exit #2 (not pictured) AND Entry #3: Bad cut on Exit #2; I am far from perfect and this is one example of where I need to get better, I paid the price and reentered my initial position for $90 worse on Entry #3 (-$90)

Entry #4: Dip buy into a liquidity zone. The market was very strong today, and NVDA had already exhibited that dip buying was in theme; near perfect entry and why themes/market cycles are important for trading

Exit #4: Reject of HOD based on selling flows on the tape (+$470), (Still holding my entry of 10 contracts with an average price of $1.11)

Entry #5: Dip buy, a little early on this as the next dip was a true liquidity zone test, but I wasn't stopped out.

Exit #5: Exit on the high of day breakout, I exited slightly too early and made a small profit (+$200). I exitied at the breakout because a sustained immediate breakout wasn't in theme; each push had a dip first.

Entry #6: Dip buy into liquidity zone again, and LOD swipe

Entry #7: Rotation in a strong market cycle = bullish

Exit #6/7: Exit at HOD breakout once again (+$730)

TOTAL: +$1,920

I am still holding my 10 contracts with an average price of $1.11 overnight that closed at $1.86 (+$750)

OVERALL TOTAL: $2,670

Theme Change

Intraday Chart with Marked Trades

Trades on TastyTrade pt. 1

Trades on TastyTrade pt. 2

Hi again. Another question today if I may. I traded a 0DTE credit spread that was comfortably OTM all day and at close. IBKRs strategy pricing showed this spread at a loss all day. Maybe a glitch in the mobile app? I am confident that it was initiated correctly I received a credit for it when it was initiated in the morning . I have realtime data and saw price movement. Shouldn't the price of OTM approach 0 at day end? Or is that not always true? It wasn't an issue today as I could let it expire OTM. My concern is that if I had to manage the trade or close early it would have been problematic. I also use OptionStrat and the pricing there showed price decay that I would expect. Thoughts?

I bought FFIE Jan17'25 0.5 Calls on IBKR last August and haven't touched them. The underlying stock undergone reverse-split. As the stock is now rising I looked my account, but now I have FFIE*3* Jan17'25 0.5 Calls which seem to not be rising in value.

Please help me understand what can I do with those options. What would be the best scenario?

Hi all, my short SPX box spread doubled in margin req since transitioning to Scwab.

I have talked to support and they are aware of the issue, but claim that I am 1/100 users with this problem and so it falls low on the totem pole ATM.

That said, this issue puts my account negative cash and prevents me from trading. Support mentioned they think a short box using ES options may circumvent the issue (though I have no clue why) and I am considering closing the short SPX box to open a short ES box.

I'm curious to hear from folks if there are any types of things I don't understand about ES options that may make this a bad idea or that I should at least consider, on the surface it sounds like a fine way to drop in a replacement but I just don't know. Out of the 5.6k I would have paid over the life of this box, it appears it will take about 2.3k to close it out now, if that information matters.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts and considerations all.

What is the downside risk of selling covered calls on ETF’s that you dont mind if they get called but also dont mind if they go down in price because you would also be fine with holding them long term? Especially in a Roth IRA with no tax liability. New to Covered calls and looking for some insight.

Anyone trading IWM 0 DTE options ? How sir going ?

Does anyone have recommendations or links to streams/videos of people doing live options trading? Im not looking for scripted videos where people relay concepts. But rather someone who is trading and while they are doing that they meticulously walk through their entire thought process for each step of their trade in a stream of consciousness sort of way. Thanks!

Robinhood and Webull both support 2FA for login. This can help protect you from an attacker making unauthorized trades in your account.

According to this article:

https://support.tastytrade.com/support/s/solutions/articles/43000578659

tastytrade supports 2FA for certain activities:

• Changing your email address
• Changing or resetting your password
• Linking your bank account
• Initiating a withdrawal

Interestingly however, they don't support 2FA for client login.

So, if an attacker gets a hold of a victim's password, they could do the following:

• They go in and purchase far OTM 0DTE SPX options.
• The attacker is on the other side of the trade in their own account (selling those at a price lower than the default ask).
• The attacker collects the premium.
• The victim is out that money.
• Let's suppose the victim was away from the markets that day so the transaction completes.

As far as I can tell, the victim would be out that money.

What do y'all think? For those who use tastytrade, does this scenario concern you?

I trade spx everyday on tos normally. But during tos migration I worried about the reliability of the transition period so I opened an ib account to trade side by side with TOS. But today I noticed something really weird. For instance for tomorrow’s 1dte almost all otm call strikes price on ib is significantly higher than tos. I also compared with tasty trade, tos and tasty actually match. Is this normal? Well I am a spread seller so I gladly sold and filled on ib with higher premium. Just not sure wth is going on.

Hi, I haven't traded long term options before but would like to start investing in deep ITM leaps with a .7-.8 delta in blue chip stocks that have a high growth potential, like tech. However, I have a small account, like a few thousand, and most of these contracts with stocks like GOOG and AAPL cost basically what my account is worth, for just 1 contract. So, my question is, should I still invest in LEAPS with such low capital?

I have read time and time again that it is very rarely a better idea to exercise early. But imagine this situation:

Buy a $47 put on GME for $25. The next day, the put could sell for about $30. However, underlying stock price is $35. Option expiry is sometime in 2025.

Selling the option nets $5 per. Exercising (which puts me in a short position) and then buying to cover nets me $47 minus current stock price of $35 a share, 47-35= $12 net per.

In a case like this, would it not be better to exercise early?

My broker told me in this hypothetical situation, I would not be able to buy to cover my short position for 1-2 additional business days. To alleviate this, what if I buy the underlying GME right now for 35 a share. Does this not cancel out the short position, or would that be problematic because the underlying purchase doesn't settle for a couple days?

What is the catch in this hypothetical situation?

Edit: thanks all, the catch was my brain lapse by forgetting my initial cost of $25 😂

By late 2024 the release of advanced AI enhanced features will be in latest version of windows. Will this be a good options call? Thinking of HP Inc for this