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Articles by Mark Wolfinger
7 Helpful Tips To Invest Your Money And Time In 2025
Investing your money and time in 2025 is something that you should learn about and do with as much care as possible. Your money is earned with hard work and so where you invest and spend your own personal time, is important to get right. So here are several helpful tips that will ensure you invest your money and time right in 2025 and beyond.
Diversification Dos And Don'ts
There are good ways and bad ways to diversify your portfolio. Yes, you shouldn’t put all your funds into one stock. But the types of other stocks you choose and the amount of stocks in your portfolio matters too. Below are just a few important dos and don’ts to help you diversify efficiently. The Dos of Diversification DO spread your investments across different sectors You’ll find companies from many different industry sectors in the S&P 500.
The 7 Most Popular Cryptocurrencies Right Now
1. Bitcoin (BTC) Bitcoin was the first ever cryptocurrency (established in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto) and it is currently the world's most valuable. It is the coin most people think of when they think of crypto trading. Therefore, it’s no surprise that it’s also the most popularly traded coin. Bitcoin famously went through a boom in the 2010s, which resulted in many early investors getting rich.
Is There Such A Thing As Risk-Management Within Crypto Trading?
As is always the case, though, there is some flipside to that risk. When they go well, crypto trades enjoy benefits including the potential for highly profitable market swings and increasingly relevant inflation protection. For the traders who enjoy crypto success, risk management is key. But, how exactly do you manage risk in one of the highest-risk areas of today’s trading world? Keep on reading to find out.
What Are Covered Calls And How Do They Work?
SteadyOptions is an options trading forum where you can find solutions from top options traders. Join Us! We’ve all been there… researching options strategies and unable to find the answers we’re looking for. SteadyOptions has your solution. Covered calls are popular among investors looking for a conservative way to generate additional income from their stock holdings. However, it's essential to understand both the benefits and risks before implementing this strategy.
SPX Options vs. SPY Options: Which Should I Trade?
What's the Difference Between SPX and SPY Options? Dividends are not normally paid to options holders. However, SPY pays a dividend every quarter. This is vital because if you trade with in-the-money (ITM) call options, you can exercise them to collect the dividend. To do this, you need to exercise your options on SPY before the ex-dividend date or own shares and place a call (called a covered call option).
Buy to Open vs Buy to Close
It’s important to know what these terms mean. In addition, you should know under what circumstances you should buy to open and when you should buy to close. (We have similar post on the opposite trade: Sell To Open vs Sell To Close) What Is Buy to Open? The term “open” comes from the fact that you are opening a position when you enter a trade. Buy to open, therefore, means you are buying an option to open a position.
Sell to Open vs Sell to Close
(We have similar post on the opposite trade: Buy To Open vs Buy To Close) What Is Sell to Open In Options Trading? An open position means that you’re entering a trade when you place an order. Selling to open means you are selling an options contract to open a position. You need to use a sell-to-open order whenever you want to open a new short call or short put. Let’s put this into real terms.
The Sell Put And Buy Call Strategy | A Synthetic Long Stock
In this case, what is being mimicked is a long position on a stock by selling a put and buying a call at the same strike price and expiry (usually at the money). Here’s how it works in more detail: Long Stock A Long Stock, purchased at $50 has the following payoff diagram: As you would expect if the stock rises above $50 the ‘position’ is profitable and gets more profitable as the stock rises further.
The Synthetic Covered Call Options Strategy Explained
The answer is the Synthetic Covered Call. What Is A Synthetic Option Strategy? A synthetic covered call is an options position equivalent to the covered call strategy (sold call options over an owned stock). It consists of a sold put option. Synthetic options strategies use bought and sold call and put options to mirror the payoff, risks, and rewards of another strategy, often to reduce complexity or capital requirements. For example, suppose a stock, ABC, is trading at $100.
Options Vega Explained: Price Sensitivity To Volatility
This article was written by Chris Young and was first published on Epsilon Options (now part of SteadyOptions). The Options: Greek Vega Explained Investing in options is always challenging because you need to predict with the greatest degree of accuracy possible what is likely to happen to the price of a potential option. To complicate matters further, the price of the option may be distinct to the price of the underlying asset.
Call Option Payoff
All Activity Home Trading Blog Call Option Payoff SteadyOptions is an options trading forum where you can find solutions from top options traders. Join Us! We’ve all been there… researching options strategies and unable to find the answers we’re looking for. SteadyOptions has your solution. This article was written by Chris Young and was first published on Epsilon Options(now part of SteadyOptions).
Volatility Skewness | IV Skew In Options
Here’s our guide to this phenomenon and its uses in options trading… Implied Volatility Skewness Background Implied volatility (IV) describes the market’s expected volatility ‘implied’ by its price.
Avoid Market Crash Drawdowns with Options
Why to prevent drawdowns? Here are some of the key reasons: Preserving Capital: When a portfolio experiences a drawdown, the value of the portfolio decreases. This can be especially problematic for investors who are relying on the portfolio for income or who have a short-term investment horizon. Preventing drawdowns can help preserve capital and avoid losses that could be difficult to recover from. Reducing Emotional Stress: Drawdowns can be emotionally challenging for investors.
Best Options Strategies for Trading Earnings
We’ll also provide some tips on how to pick the right strategy for your trading goals and risk tolerance. So whether you’re looking to make a quick profit or hedge your portfolio against downside risk, read on for the best options strategies to trade during earnings season! This article was written by Chris Young and was first published in Epsilon Options (now part of SteadyOptions).
American Options vs. European Options: The Differences
All Activity Home Trading Blog American Options vs. European Options: The Differences SteadyOptions is an options trading forum where you can find solutions from top options traders. Join Us! We’ve all been there… researching options strategies and unable to find the answers we’re looking for. SteadyOptions has your solution. In this article, we'll discuss these differences and how they affect you, so you can discover how to avoid potentially costly problems.
Option Trading and Slippage: The Bid-Ask Spread Explained
All Activity Home Trading Blog Option Trading and Slippage: The Bid-Ask Spread Explained SteadyOptions is an options trading forum where you can find solutions from top options traders. Join Us! We’ve all been there… researching options strategies and unable to find the answers we’re looking for. SteadyOptions has your solution. For example: You see a credit spread with a market of $1.00 bid and $1.60 ask.
Options and Stop-Loss Orders
Limiting losses is one of the two major elements of successful risk management (the other is correctly sizing a trade). When trading stock, the most popular method is to establish a stop-loss order. Let’s say you own 200 shares of a speculative stock. You believe its future is bright, but over the short-term, there is less certainty. You paid $19 per share and are willing to risk $300 on your belief in this company.
Trading OEX Options: The Risk of Early Exercise
A popular strategy among options investors is covered call writing: the investor buys 100 shares of stock and sells one call option, granting someone else the right to buy that stock at a specific price, known as the strike price, for a limited time. Often, the option expires worthless and the investor keeps both the stock and the option premium. However, sometimes the option owner exercises the option. That means the investor is assigned an exercise notice and is obligated to sell the stock.
The Iron Condor
You may have heard about iron condors, a popular option strategy used by professional money managers and individual investors. Let's begin by discussing what an iron condor is, and then how you can benefit from learning how to trade them. What Is an Iron Condor?
Trade Smarter With Equivalent Positions
How can two trades have the same risk and reward when they look so very different? That's the frequent response when investors first learn that every option position is equivalent to a different option position. For clarification, "equivalent" refers to the fact that the positions will earn/lose the same amount at any price (when expiration arrives) for the underlying stock. It does not mean the positions are identical.
The Philosophy Behind Writing Covered Calls
Covered call writing is a popular option strategy for individual investors and is sufficiently successful that it has also attracted the attention of mutual fund and ETF managers. A number of funds adopt covered call writing as their major investment strategy.
The Low-Risk Options Strategy
In a recent Striking Price column, Steve Sears and Michael Schwartz, chief options strategist at Oppenheimer & Co., came up with five rules to help investors better navigate the option markets. "The key is knowing when to take a profit and when to take a loss," said Schwartz. The advice is sound. The rules, however, were geared to investors who buy options.
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