Here is another email from a member that I thought you could learn from:

I just found out in my IRA account at Schwab, I can not trade any option spreads or Iron Condors on any Index.

My response:

It is not that you cannot trade these in your IRA. It is that Schwab will not let you. Big difference. I trade these in my IRA all day long and twice on Sundays. (joke).
 
If you are willing to switch brokers you can as well.

Big name brokers like Schwab like to protect themselves. They know that the general public is not sophisticated enough to be able to trade options much less sell options so in order to “protect” their customers they limit what types of trades you can do in your IRA account.

If it’s my money, I should be able to do whatever I want with it.

I used to have an IRA account at [...]

I recently released a new trade where the credit for the trade was 1.75 per option spread. I then got the following email from a member and I thought I would share it and my response to help others that may have the same question

“Hi Allen,

Just going thro. this new RUT trade. The credit  on this trade (0.55) is far less than want u wrote(1.75). If this is not a typo from ur end, will it be still profitable to go for it at. 0.55.?

Thanks”

Here was my response:

NO.
 
It was not a typo. I placed this trade 50 days from expiration which is a lot of time, plus there are two sides, the calls and the puts. .55 might be acceptable if you were doing only one side – either call or put but not both.
 
You are not getting good prices.  Even if I do the trade right now, I still get [...]

We hear a lot about how important portfolio diversification and asset allocation are to our investments. The financial planners tell us how diversification is the best way to invest. We should “Never put all our eggs in one basket,” they tell us.

Makes sense. If all our money was in one stock and the company went out of business, we would lose everything. Just ask the people who worked at Enron.

Search online and you will find millions of articles about how to diversify. Gold bugs will tell you to buy gold stocks and gold bullion. Conservative financial planners will tell you to buy bonds. Stock brokers will tell you to put your money into stocks but in different industries. Others will tell you to buy commodities [...]

For OptionGenius.com members:

I just entered a new trade. I have also made an adjustment to a current trade.  Our SPX trade has given us the opportunity to exit one side of the trade. The other side is still doing well.

http://www.optiongenius.com/amember/login.php

So far this month, all three trades are doing very well. And this fourth trade which I added today also looks to be very profitable. This trade is on WMT. Wal-Mart just had earnings last week and the stock is in a well defined range. The volatility of this stock has also been declining meaning that the chances of huge wild fluctuations is declining.

Here’s I trade that looks interesting to me. I might just put this on in my personal account. This will not be an OptionGenius trade because there is too much risk, but it is something I would consider for my personal account.

I’ve been thinking about getting into F, Ford. It seems they are in the clear in terms of not going into bankruptcy. And with Chrysler already in Bankruptcy and GM going that way soon, there is going to be only 1 US car manufacturer left. That means those that will only buy American don’t have any option other than buying a Ford.

Ford also has  large short interest so any good news will cause a short squeeze shooting the price up. At today’s price I would not mind buying some F and holding on to it long term.  And of course selling calls against it every month for income.

So the trade [...]

Had a good month in April.

Total return was a gain of 11.87%. I put on four trades and all four were winners. We had an Iron Condor on the RUT, a Credit Spread on POT, a not so naked Put on C, and a butterfly on USO.

I expect May will also be a good month. I’ve got three trades on already for May and two are already near the point where I am going to take them off for double digit returns.

My goal is to have a 10% return every month. So far I have come very close. But in the stock market things don’t always go your way. We cannot control the market, we can only adjust to what it does. This month I was fortunate that the market calmed down a bit. The last few months have been insane. As things settle and the VIX (Volatility) continues to [...]

This is the first of what I hope will be a very many posts in which I share my thoughts, ideas, and trades with those of you who want to learn how to make money selling options.

Subscribe to my RSS feed, send me a comment and do whatever else people are supposed to do when reading a blog.

This is all new to me so as I get better at it there will be more interaction and hopefully a blog that you will enjoy to read an visit. Or… I just might crash the software and these pages will dissapear forever. I guess we will just wait and see.