RSS Feed
Twitter
Autotrading
May 31st, 2010 
Genius We are happy to be introducing several enhancements to the OptionGenius.com service this month. As the days go on, we will announce 3 major improvements that should make membership much more valuable.
The first of these enhancements is Autotrading.
We are pleased to announce that starting today, we will be autotrading with Eoption.com ( a registered broker/dealer). Update: we are autotrading with Optionsxpress.com as well.
Autotrading is a great concept where members have the ability to have their broker execute the OptionGenius.com trades for them in their account.
Best of all, there is no extra charge for this service.
What this means for members:
Once we send out an email trade alert, your broker will automatically enter that order for you in your account. Chances are your order will be filled faster than you could do it yourself. Eoption.com has an autotrade desk where they have people who just sit and wait for these alerts all day. Once it comes in, they enter the order for you at the price listed in the email alert.
This is great for those who can’t get to the computer as soon as I send out a trade alert. If you have ever missed a trade because the market moved too fast, this service should help solve that problem.
- You will always have full control of your account.
- You can cancel the autotrading at any time.
- OptionGenius.com has no access to your account or your money. We actually have nothing to do with this – it is an agreement between you and your broker.
- If there is a trade that is entered for you that you do not like, you can exit the trade.
- Eoption.com has the lowest commissions we have seen.
- We are not affiliated with Eoption.com in any way. After researching several brokers, they were the easiest to work with.
The only requirement is that you have an account at Eoption.com and an active membership with OptionGenius.com. Currently Eoption.com is the only broker we are autotrading with. If you use another broker and would like us to autotrade with them, please email them and let them know of your desire.
Here’s how it works:
Once you have an account with Eoption.com, you fill out and sign an Autotrade Agreement. You get to choose how you want OptionGenius trades executed. You can use a percentage of your account for each trade, or you can choose a number of contracts for each trade. What we recommend is that you tell them to use a percentage of recommendation. So for example, since I use $10,000 as my account size and base all the trades on this amount, if you are also trading a $10,000 account and want your account to match mine 100%, then you would instruct them to use 100% of recommendation. If I send out a trade using 10% of the account, it will be the same in your account. If you have an account with $20,000 you can tell them to use 200% of recommendation. That way if I use $2,000 for a trade, you will be using $4,000 for the same trade.
Many of you have been asking for autotrading for a while. I want you to know that I have thoroughly tested Eoption.com and their order fulfillment capabilities. I opened a real money account with them and for two months had them autotrade that account. They did a wonderful job getting the trades executed. I do not forsee any problems, but if there are we will quickly address them.
Keep in mind that this is between you and the broker and things can go wrong. It is your money and you should be watching it like a hawk. Just because this service makes it easier to follow OptionGenius does not mean you have any less responsibility in managing your money. Also, there is no guarantee that all trades will be executed.
Am interested in the autotrading, but wondering how much needs to be put into the eption account,.
In reading your materials I see that your goal is aprox 10-12% per month, on your stated 10k account size that would be $1000 to $1200 per month. While that is nothing to sneeze @ obviously you cannot live off of that alone.
If I need 4-5k per month, I then need to fund a 50k eoption account and use a 500% recommendation ?
That would make sense. But I advise everyone to start small with less money. My style of trading is considered “advanced option trading” and it takes some time getting used to. Even though autotrading sounds like the best thing since sliced bread, I would still want you to understand the trades and how they work instead of just blindly following along
even $1200.00 month is not guaranteed and you should know that.
No, nothing is guaranteed expect death. Just to be clear, I am not gauranteeing anything. That would be dishonest.
Does anyone know if Eoption charges more for autotrade or is the pricing the same as self-trading.
Thanks,
They mention a $1.50 fee:
An Auto Trade Order Handling Fee in the amount of $1.50 per execution applies to orders entered and filled by eOption’s Auto Trade Desk and does not apply to orders entered on your own.
So I guess they do
Rob,
You are right, there is an extra charge. I emailed their autotrade desk to make sure and they charge $1.50 extra per leg. So on a 4 legged iron condor, if I do 2 contracts the normal commission would be $12.80 and the autotraded commission would be $18.80
It looks like theirs a $1.50 charge per execution for auto-trade. Still good deal though.
http://www.eoption.com/auto_trading.html
If anything we should be rewarded for opening a auto trade account. Not charged extra! Many brokers offer auto trade at no extra charge. Any chance on expanding the auto trade choices? I am very interested in your auto trading but I prefer TOS. I was able to get a good rate of 1.50/contract for being a member of another service a while back. They also don’t charge for auto trading. That would be $12.00 dollars for the trade mentioned above instead of $18.80. Maybe you can negotiate better commissions for Genius members. I did open the a account with eOption but this was before I realized the extra charges. So I haven’t funded it yet. Not trying to split hairs but commissions add up quickly.
I agree, there should not be an extra charge. I talked to their vice-president about it and about maybe a group commission lower than their normal rate but their policy is that their rates are already very low. And if you do any volume, then their rate comes out much cheaper than the $1.50 an option at thinkorswim. Perhaps as more and more people sign up, i will have some more negotiating power.
I have observed SPX and RUT trades by OG for a while.I found out that more than 50% of times that we can’t get the wonderful and exact prices OG has got (even after 10 minutes).So OG will first email eoption the trade (limited credit or debit),then he trade,or he trades first,then emails the order.Then,the possibility of not filling the desired prices will be greater.Is it also the case that OG sets a range of acceptable prices so that fillings are ok for everybody?But that will be quite a work for OG.
By the way,EOPTION does not have “gain and loss”.Then,we will have quite a bit of record keepings to do to report tax,if we trade 100 trades a year,unless we are from Hong Kong where no capital gains are taxed.
If that were the case, that no one could get the same prices i get, then eoption would not be able to do it either. But that is not the case. For all the trades since we have started autotrading until now, they have either matched my price or gotten a better price than I did. On 70% of the trades, they got better prices than i did. And they get the same email at the same time as everyone else. In fact, one of their criteria is that they should be notified of a trade along with the rest of the members, not before and not after.
Regarding Rob’s june 10 comment. I too have a funded TOS
account @ $1.50 a leg. Since they were bought out by another recently,that may have opened an opportunity to approach them for auto trades on Think or Swim with OP genius. Your Thoughts? Michael
I am established with TOS. Auto Trade with them would be a good thing for me. They have been good to work with.
Thinkorswim at this time seems to be more interested in pushing their own services than in doing autotrading with anyone they are not already working with. since they got bought out, it seems a lot of their policies have changed. If enough people contact them and tell them to autotrade with us they might listen. so my suggestion would be to email them.
I just got funded after opening an account with TOS. guess i am with them for the long run. i will e mail or call them to request autotrading.
If you go with TOS, I would consider autotrading.
Who is telling you to leave TOS?
Why do people get so attached to their broker?
I have accounts at four brokers – that way I get to use the features of all four.
Can we get a P/L summary of say your last month or two of real trades?
I post the past few month’s trades on the members portion of the site.
I have set up a auto trade with eoption.com last week. They should be contacting you soon. Robert
You recently began autotrading with OptionsExpress. Just wondering how they are comparing with Eoptions.
So far so good. No problems with either broker. Fills have been great too.
i CANCILLED MY ACCOUNT WITH EOPTION TODAY AS THEY WOULD NOT OK ME FOR TRADING SPREADS. WHAT OTHER BROKERS DO YOU DEAL WITH FOR AUTO TRADING. rOBERT
I have my IRA which I trade options in with optionsxpress. I believe they auto trade for other services and if you have any volume possibly they would deal. I started with them in 2004 or 2005 and at first it was 14.95 for 1-10 contracts and then 1.50 per. After about a year i asked for a better rate and got 12.95 for 10 or fewer and 1.25 per contract over that. But those were minimums per leg. Now I have an even better rate and it is not per leg but it is .90 per contract minimum 9.00 but not for each leg, strictly per contract. So they do deal but I have used them for 6-7 years now and so perhaps after a little more volume through option genius they may also give deals but i do not know whether individuals would get the same low rate for trades they execute on their own.
Thanks for the info Charles. We do autotrade with OX now an dhave quite a few members using them. Perhaps it is time to approach them again about reducing our commissions.
I am interested in auto-trading too.
I have a $45,000 IRA account with OptionsXpress, and would consider putting more money with them
But their fees concern me. I also have an account with Trade Station, which charges much lower fees.
Have you considered approaching them. I know of other auto-trading programs there too.
Thank you – Susan
Susan,
I guess there is a tradeoff between fees and service. The better the service the more the fees. I know OX is more expensive than others but from what I have seen they do have the best customer service. I have not dealt with Tradestation and we do not have an autotrade agreement with them. We already have 4 brokers on the roster and are leary to add any more. Because with every broker we add, we have to monitor their fills and executions to make sure everyone gets filled.
on auto trade do you do limit order or market ? how you calculate performance on auto trade? worse come worse what is the downside risk ? Thanks.
Autotrade orders are limit orders. The performance numbers for autotrade are very similar to the reported numbers. They usually get the same prices I do or even better. The risk is the same as normal trading except that they might miss an adjustment or not get a fill because they are trying to place a large order. A individual member might get a better fill with a small order.
OG–What are your fees for autotrading?
We don’t charge anything extra for autotrading.
just the monthly membership?? I do have to be a member, right?
Yes, you would have to be a paying member of our service.
Looking to join your site as a new member, do autotrade the optionsHouse platform?
Robert,
At this time OptionsHouse is not an autotrade partner.
i am so sad there’s no autotrading in Canada
i tried interactive brokers but they charge too much 70.00 canadian dollars a month plus the commission. can i just give you my account number and will u do it for me? ^__^
I don’t what to pin you down – but I’m just starting and want to do it right; so what it the very best broker to use and how much should I fund my account with? also, I would be transferring the funds out of my IRA into the new account, so would it make sense to keep it as an IRA or pay the tax penalty and have an open and free account without restrictions?
There are many good brokers.
You can keep your money in an IRA since the strategies we use can be done in an IRA
Hello,
I have subscribed to several gurus and only to find my money has been exhausted. You have mentioned that it would be better if open an account with 10,000.can’t we start of with a smaller amount lets say 1000 .
I did see optionshouse does not have autotrade facility. do we need to open an account with Eoptions.
Thanks
You could start with $1,000 but you wont be able to follow me too closely because each trade uses at least $1,000. But if you are learning, then start by papertrading and you don’t need any money at all.
We do not autotrade with optionshouse right now. Sorry.
Thanks for the update. I would like to do papertrade for a while till i get comfortable and pool up some money to do autotrade. can you do that .
Thanks
Of course! I recommend everyone start by papertrading for a few months and then start with a small amount of money. That way you get to see the trades in action and can tell for yourself if this style of trading is for you, and more importantly if it actually works (which it does hehe).
I enjoy reading your issues and hoped you would autotrade.
What is your monthly fee for your services? Are you con-
sidering using ThinkorSwim in the future?
Regards
We are currently autotrading with some great option friendly brokers. thinkorswim is not one of them. They told us they are not adding any more newsletters. But if you email them asking for it, they might agree.
Our fees are listed on the main site, http://www.optiongenius.com
thanks
I have a 401k at work with fidelity. Can I autotrade this account and if so what do I need to do to get started?
No. A 401k at work will have too many restrictions on how you can invest your money. And Fidelity is not an option friendly broker anyway.