Podcast – Episode 018 – Interview With Trader Mike Minnick
Podcast Transcript
Allen Sama: Today, I have with me Mike Minnick. He is one of our Blank Check Trading System students. I’m happy to say he is probably one of our more successful students. He’s posted a bunch of trades in the group that had done very well. And so I wanted to get him on the call and just pick his brain a little bit and talk to him. So, Mike how are you doing today?
Mike Minnick: I’m doing great. How about you?
Allen Sama: Awesome. I’m doing well. So, let’s start off, Mike, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Mike Minnick: Okay. Well, as you’ve already said my name is Mike Minnick. I’m 56 years old been married for 35 years, college professor, hoping to retire in about three years. I’ve traded equity options since the late 1980s. But future options only since I did the Blank Check Trading System about 10 months ago I guess it was. So, lot of experience with options but not as much nearly as much with the futures options.
Allen Sama: Okay. So, when you first heard about the course what was it that appealed to you about it?
Mike Minnick: Mostly just diversification. You know, I mean I’ve been doing all the equity options. Matter of fact, I don’t remember exactly when I sent the email to you, but I send an email to you because you had been – I’ve been involved in a program that you had with equity options and I sent you an email asking if you were, you know, we’re going to do something with or had something that you’ve done some kind of program with futures options at that time you said, no you hadn’t but you were just getting ready to start so stay tuned and it was like within a month of that.
But I was ready at the time because I wanted to diversify into something different and basically sticking with the options. And so that’s basically as far as I knew the only other place to go besides the equities was in the futures real stuff not just – futures options obviously do real stuff, stuff like cocoa and gold and oil that you can actually hold and has real value, so.
Allen Sama: Okay. Have you done commodities themselves?
Mike Minnick: Excuse me?
Allen Sama: Have you ever done commodities themselves?
Mike Minnick: No, I’ve never done. I’d never done anything with commodities at all.
Allen Sama: Okay.
Mike Minnick: Well, actually I take that back. I had actually bought silver before, I mean actual silver. I didn’t take delivery but I should bought silver. I don’t know how old you are so I don’t know how far back your memory goes. But there was a time back in the late – it was late ’80s when the Hunt Brothers, I think tried to corner the market in silver.
Allen Sama: Yep.
Mike Minnick: That was a very good time for me because we gained – you know, within a few months we gained like 60 or 70% on the silver, but that was my only experience in commodities. It wasn’t with contract. It’s actually with buying actual silver.
Allen Sama: Okay. All right, so now you are currently teaching, correct?
Mike Minnick: That is correct.
Allen Sama: All right. So, how do you find the time for your trading?
Mike Minnick: Well, there are some times when it’s a little bit inconvenient because I’ll be in class and while I’m in class I’m not watching the market. So, if something dramatic happens in that one or two hours I’m in class then obviously I’m not as quick to respond to it. But unlike, you know, high school teachers who, you know, they go in at 7:30, eight o’clock whatever and they’re pretty well busy except they’ll have maybe one period off for lunch or something like that or study period. You know, they’re going until two, three o’clock in the afternoon.
You know, I have generally two or three hours a day that I’ll be teaching classes and other than that I’m in my office that doesn’t mean I can be on the computer watching oil options at entire time because I’ve got preparation work, students will come by to get help. But it means I can have my platform up for options trading and so periodically I’m doing other things. I can take a look and see, oh, wow, you know, it’s making a move up here it may move down, I better look at what I want to do. Do I have all the time I have if I were sitting at home and have it, you know, and having the platform up in front of me all day long, no. But it’s not as time restrictive as somebody who say has a job that they have to be doing something away from computer for eight hours a day. I’m not [indiscernible] [00:05:00]
Allen Sama: Okay. So, now I did notice that you are more active in the trading than I am. And so by that I mean that you enter and exit more often than I do, and you’re the one that really said that you use the stop loss or the stop limits or, you know, the orders to get out and you’ve used that very well. So, could you tell us about how long does it take you per day or during the week, how much time do you actually put into your trading?
Mike Minnick: I didn’t really give a lot of thought to that. But I’m going to guess that on a big day when I spent a lot of time it would be no more than an hour, an hour and a half. I mean and some days hardly anything happens and so you may spend 15 minutes on actively.
Allen Sama: Right.
Mike Minnick: And the rest with by having the platform just up on the computer and so that throughout the day when between other things you just glance I didn’t see – still nothing’s happening much so I just go back to. But I can’t think that there’s been any day that I’ve spent more than about an hour and a half.
Allen Sama: Okay, okay. Well, yeah I do remember you telling me that you do not have a cell phone and so that’s one of the things about my cell phone, I have this little widget on my phone that I could just look at the phone and it tells me how oil is doing so I don’t need the platform up all the time. There might be one reason you want to get a phone, but that’s cool. Okay. So, all right, so when you did join the course what was the biggest hurdle or the obstacle that you came across?
Mike Minnick: Well, the biggest problem that I – it didn’t turn out to be a problem but the biggest problem that I wondered would happen would be whether you were going to offer the course at a time that I can take it. A couple of different things were involved in that. One, I not only am a college professor. I also am a PA announcer for our college’s basketball team so that means generally speaking during basketball season a way couple or severally evenings a week might be taken up doing that.
And during the spring – of course this was during the spring I’m also a high school softball empire. And then that was one thing which is my schedule because I used to have a lot of things going on other than just my work. And then the other thing is I knew you had people that were not only all over the United States but all over the world and all kinds of different time zones and I’m sure you were sitting there trying to juggle, okay, what would be the best time that everybody get in. I assumed you were trying as best you could maybe you couldn’t do it for everybody, but you’re doing the best you could to try and not have it where, well these five people are going to be on it three in the morning. I assume you didn’t want that.
And trying your best to please many as you could but I wondered, you know, well is he going to have this at a time, you know – as I said, you know, I have more time probably during the day than most people who have to just got to be there and doing things with their job eight hours a day. But on the other hand, my times what I have to be doing something or inflexible if class meets from 9:00 to 9:50 then I’m in class 9:00 to 9:50.
Allen Sama: Exactly, right.
Mike Minnick: I can’t say, oh well I’ll just put that off and do that later on the day and have this Alan knows.
Allen Sama: Yeah. You just send in your teacher’s assistant that day.Mike Minnick: That’s right. You know, that was the main thing I wondered about was whether that course is going to be offered at a time that I can take it and thankfully it was. So, really because of that it really didn’t turn out to be any hurdles at all.
Allen Sama: Okay. Because you were part of the original, the original class, you know, I called you guys the guinea pigs because we did the classes live, since then we’ve had a recorded and so now the recordings are up so anybody can just watch them anytime. So, you know, that’s one of the things that people coming in after you now they don’t have to worry about that about when it’s going to happen. But was there anything about the material itself or the trade itself or the way it was laid out that caused you any kind of trepidation?
Mike Minnick: Well, the only thing I think I’ve asked you a couple of questions about this and I still need more help with this, it’s some of the technical analysis in other words analyzing the charts and seeing. For example this last month and I’ll go over some of my results if you want me too a little bit later on. But after six or seven months in a row of positive this month in other words the September month that I just closed out my last position yesterday, I was minus 6%.
And the biggest reason was if you remember I think a couple of weeks ago you said something on the Facebook page that you felt like oil was going to keep going down and I was saying well I hope not, because I’ve got puts, well you were right, it did. So, I ended up taking, you know, several big losses there but I was able to recover, you know, I would have had maybe 15% or more loss by making some more trades toward the end like use to loss only 6% which is tolerable. So, I can’t remember. What was your original question there again I forgot?
Allen Sama: So, about the trade itself, you know, the methodology of going about, it getting involved in futures was there a major hurdle or something that stopped you from going forward?
Mike Minnick: Nothing stop me but like I say, I think I would be a better trader if I had better understood how to analyze the charts and be able to – I mean I realized nobody has a crystal ball and nobody can predict what oil is going to do in the next few hours or the next couple of weeks. But some of you who are on the Facebook page they’re Blank Check Trading page a group or whatever, you seem to have a better handle, you in particular but some of the others even, even some of our newer members, they look at it and they can kind of, oh this is doing a double this or whatever this, and I’m like, oh.
So, if I understood some of that better, I think you’ve had some coaching sessions lately that had been recorded on technical analysis and I haven’t been able to attend live and I plan to get on the site and look at those I just haven’t done that yet.
Allen Sama: Okay.
Mike Minnick: That’s my main thing that I would say that I need to do better on but I mean on the up side the Blank Check Trading System gave certain rules. You get in it this Delta, you get out of this Delta, you get out of this price to take your profits. You know if it moves by this percentage, you look to do this. you know, to me that was very nice if I could just say, okay I can look. Did I do this, is doing this, whatever, and if so then make the trade.
Allen Sama: Okay, cool.
Mike Minnick: And so I really like that but there were very specific rules that it took you several years to learn but…
Allen Sama: Right.
Mike Minnick: …I could learn them and learn to apply them within weeks or months.
Allen Sama: Right. Have you been on any of the group coaching calls?
Mike Minnick: I have been on one or maybe two. I know for sure one and I can’t remember if I’ve been on a second one.
Allen Sama: Okay. Because I know that at least the last couple ones we are spending more and more time on the technical part of it.
Mike Minnick: Yes. And I need to go back. Those are all recorded, right?
Allen Sama: Yes. Yes, sir.
Mike Minnick: I need to go look at those. When I saw on my Facebook page I just said, well that’s something I need to make time to do and I will.
Allen Sama: And the technical analysis training is also completed and it’s also in the member’s area so you can check that out as well.
Mike Minnick: Right.
Allen Sama: Cool. So, what did you find as a result of actually taking the course?
Mike Minnick: Well, as I mentioned before they were fairly simple techniques it wasn’t like you had to go through all these convolutions of figuring out well it’s this, go this way, you know, it’s not like one of these flowcharts that you got to follow up, it’s just this and know this and maybe this. You know, it was like here’s where you get in, here’s where you get out to limit your loss and here’s what you get out to take your profit. And all those statistics are very readily available on by option trading platform and so just made it very straightforward to me…
Allen Sama: Okay.
Mike Minnick: …to do it. I appreciate straightforward simple trading rules.
Allen Sama: Yes.
Mike Minnick: I know you modified them and I have modified them a little bit too as we go along. For example, you say getting it Delta 10, but I know sometimes you’ve gotten in a little bit higher Delta 10. I feel very comfortable getting at Delta 11, a little bit less comfortable getting at 12, and I’ve even stretched it almost 13, maybe 12.8 or 12.6. I’m very uncomfortable going about 13, so I don’t do that.
Allen Sama: Right.
Mike Minnick: But I can even gone a little bit higher but nonetheless having the rule allows you to, you know, and that allows a person, let’s say a person a little bit more conservative than I am. They could say, well I know Allan said Delta 10, but I feel more comfortable. I want to go to Delta 8 or Delta 9, that’s great. But you’ve given us the basis to start from and then we can adjust from there as we need or as we feel like we’re comfortable with.
Allen Sama: Yeah, exactly.
Mike Minnick: I appreciate that.
Allen Sama: Exactly. Yeah, I mean I went through, you know, all the trades in the past and like you said sometimes it’s 10, sometimes 11, sometimes it’s eight, you know. But I took a look at everything and then when I was coming up with the rules it was basically, okay you know what, I think I have the most success or when I was at 10 doesn’t mean that you can’t win when you come in at 12 or 13, it just means that, you know, for somebody new to it. And I mean obviously you have several months under your belt now so you have that understanding of what happens, you know, what’s the risk when I go to 12 versus 10 or versus 8.
But somebody coming brand new to it, you know, can I stick with start at 10, do it for a few time and then, you know, you can branch off after that. And really, you know, when we’re looking at either a 10 or 11, it’s not that much of a difference, you know. Probability wise it’s only 1% off but that might be an extra .5 in the strike or maybe $1 in the strike. So, that’s a very good point that you brought up.
So, okay next question. Specifically what was the favorite of yours in the course? What was the favorite part of it?
Mike Minnick: Well, this I guess kind of goes along with what I have said before is the very specific advice. I mean I’ve been involved in several different – I mean you can go all the way from obviously if you’re in a program that sends you specific trades. This is the trade I made you make this trade. Okay, that’s on one end. And I’ve done those before in several occasions then you can go all the way to the other end that I really don’t like. And the other end is kind of, well here’s some kind of very nebulous type guidelines and things to look for, you know. And I really don’t want to take the time to have to look for all those things. I want very specific things to look for I can look at one, two. Okay, this is where I want to go, you know.
And with those guidelines within two minutes if I’m ready to trade within two minutes I can figure out what the correct trade is. Once you get familiar with your platform obviously when I first was using an options trading platform it took me longer because I was learning the platform too. But now that I know the platform, you know, knowing the rules I can figure out the correct trade within several minutes. And I appreciate that like I say very specific advice on when to get in and out.
Allen Sama: Okay, cool, awesome. All right, so let’s say you had a friend or a relative or someone that you knew that was thinking of getting involved, what would you tell them, any kind of advice you would share?
Mike Minnick: Well, if they have a tolerance for risk, I mean I talked to some people they won’t even invest in the stock market because the stock market is just too risky. Well, if the stock market is too risky for you then you don’t want to, you know, you probably don’t want to because, you know, the stock market comparatively is not going to go up and down usually, I mean it’s a big crashes obviously, but usually not like– but for people who express that, yeah they’re willing to do that. I’d say go for it. And matter of fact, if it’s a relative, my wife and I can talked about that after we get this down a while and some of our children especially that we have a couple of they’re married and few that are going to be getting married very soon, looks like anyway helping them get started in it you know if they’re interested in doing that.
I would never at least I – just say you’d never do because you say that when you end up doing something you say you never do. But I mean my plan would not be to just say, well I place the trades for, you know, you just swipe the money I’ll do the camper, I don’t want to do that. But if any of my children were willing to saying, you know, yep I’ll take the time that you took to learn the system to figure out how to do it and understand what’s going on and understand what options are all about, what oil is about and so forth then I’d be willing to help them and do it. So, not only encourage them to do it but I’d be willing to get in help them do it too as well because I think it’s a great system.
Allen Sama: I mean I agree with you. I think that would be such an amazing gift for a child, you know, since that you’ve been doing it, you know what to do it, you can take it, and you can be kind of their, you know, their personal mentor right there. And if they can actually pick up something like this it doesn’t even have to be this, it could be anything.
But if they can find a way that, you know, before they get to college or maybe in college where they can take a little bit of money and then they could make it grow on their own without having to get a job, right, what kind of world does that open up for them, right? Because I know a lot of my friends that I went to school with and I’m sure you’re a professor, you see this all the time right, college kids nowadays they don’t know what made you to pick and a lot of the major they pick are based on what job they can get and how much money they can make.
But if you have that some kind of skill like trading that you can make your money on your side and you can go and study whatever you want, go live wherever you want in the world and not be shackled with the debt and the, you know, the Nine-to-Five, the Grind this is what they call it.
Mike Minnick: Right. The rat race.
Allen Sama: The rat race, exactly. Yeah.
Mike Minnick: Matter of fact now that you mentioned students in college students I’d forgotten about this but I actually had a student graduated from our program just this past May and I don’t know how we figured this out got and talking about it, but it turned out he was an options investor as a college student. Now he was an options buyer not an option seller and he probably with his amount of money that he had that he could do he probably – it would be probably been difficult for him to get into what I’m doing.
But nonetheless, I told him about the issues with option selling and, you know, and why I felt like option selling was a better deal or when I said, you know, you really need to look into that because we haven’t much time to talk about it because I just found out about it shortly before he graduated. But, so I’ve already had an opportunity to encourage one person in college to get involved with that.
Allen Sama: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Yeah, I know a few years ago I had a member of Option Genius, who wrote in and he basically said that he was teaching his 14-year-old daughter how to trade options, sell options. And that she was doing amazingly well and that she did so well that her uncle actually gave her, I think it was $25,000 to play with. And she was doing, you know, phenomenally well month after month and that he wrote in because he was saying, you know, hey thanks for exposing us to this stuff and for teaching us because now, you know, she’s going to be able to pay for college with this $25,000 account which I thought that was incredible, you know, so.
But – okay, I mean we talked a little bit and you mentioned a little bit about the riskiness of the oil and the options on oil. How do you feel about that after you’ve taken the course versus what you thought about it before you took the course?
Mike Minnick: Well, let’s first start off with my fact that both my wife and I have always been quite risk tolerance. We have some money that which we inherited from my dad when he passed away a few years back. And we just kept it where it was with – I won’t say the name of the company, but it’s a well-known financial company and a certified financial planner who communicates with us fairly regularly about the funds there. And he sent us something that we did independently was basically to evaluate your risk how adverse your risk or how tolerance your risked.
And my wife and I both did it separately and then put our scores together. I think we only disagreed on one question all the rest were the same. And our score came out to be like in the low 90s which 100 would mean, you know, your risk of aversely getting zero means you can’t tolerate any risks. So, we were both way up there and so I don’t think the course itself changed our willingness to take the risk of selling oil options. Now the [indiscernible] [00:24:14] say, oh well I wasn’t willing to take the risk and now I am. Now we were willing to take it before really afterwards.
But however what the course did do is it made me feel that selling naked oil options wasn’t as risky as I originally thought. I mean when you mentioned the words sell naked options, I think, wow that’s about as risky as you can get. With the rules you gave and with the performance really if you follow a set of rules and along with, of course, I don’t remember the terminology you’ve– terminology that they don’t allow oil to go up or down over a certain amount each day, they’ll close the trading down. If I’ve looked them on the internet but there’s a name for it, but.
Allen Sama: The lock limit?
Mike Minnick: Lock limit. Thank you. And basically that’s one thing that makes them not as risky. But just the fact of selling options that are way out of the money and just makes it words like I say, I thought coming into the course terribly risky, awfully risky but that’s okay, I like risk. I came out of it. I still like risk but this is as risky as I thought it was. This will be nice I can hopefully earn this money and not be as risky as I thought I was going to be.
Allen Sama: Cool, awesome. Yeah. That was my thinking as well when I first started, you know, I didn’t touch commodities for a long time because of that. You know, I stayed with equity options but then I was just out there trying to find something different, like you said, you know, a little bit diversification, a little bit maybe something that is more controlled than the stock market, you know, with the ups and downs because even with the technical analysis the stock market you really can’t be that accurate.
Technical analysis it worked better with commodities themselves. And so when I moved over at first I thought it was, you know, this is going to be really risky, but I’ll try it with a little bit and I found the same thing you did that it wasn’t as bad as I expected and it might even be a little less risky than then the options of the stock market in my opinion at least.
So, now that you’ve taken the course you’ve been doing the trades for a few months, has it changed anything for you in terms of your outlook on the future or your trading or anything like that?
Mike Minnick: Well, that same certified financial planner I talked about as well as higher education faculty in West Virginia when I came on you had the opportunity to be with the State Teachers Retirement System which my thought of that was, do I want to put the future of my retirement in the hands of politicians. No, I don’t want to do that. Or you could send it out of state to organization called TIAA-CREF which is –CREF stands for College Retirement Equities Fund basically it’s a placement people in education to put the money it’s got mutual fund. And what you do is you invest it instead of what the normal one that a lot of people go into the 401k this instead is like a 401(a), 403(b) something like that but it’s a similar type thing invest off of mutual funds.
Anyway both the person with TIAA-CREF and my certified financial planner both analyzed and said well, if you want to retire when you want to retire and you live to win the actuarial table say you’re going to live, you’re just a little bit short right now. You’re just a little bit short with putting Social Security together with the TIAA-CREF money, with the money that, you know, the inherited money. You’re just a little bit short.
Allen Sama: Wow. That sounds scary.
Mike Minnick: It was a little bit short. So, I looked at this – you know, so I could say well, I could work a couple of more years and that would take care of it, you know. But basically as far as an outlook on the future from doing this trading, if my future performance continues to match the past results which, of course, there’s no guarantee of that there should be no question. I should not only be able to last as long as they predict I’m going to live, but I should be able to replace my entire working income by the time I retirement.
I shouldn’t even have to touch any of the IRA the 401, the social security, whatever. Obviously when I get eligible Social Security I’m not going to turn it down. But nonetheless, what I’m saying is that, you know, if the performance continues then within a few years I should be able to easily and more replace my entire income.
Allen Sama: That is amazing. Congratulations. I didn’t know that. That’s wonderful.
Mike Minnick: We’ll see whether that work on to be in a couple of years and we’ll see whether that worked out, you know.
Allen Sama: Yeah, right. But you’re on the track, right. So, even if it doesn’t work out you still have that confidence that you can do it, kind of, right?
Mike Minnick: Yeah, I mean right now through 10 months my overall gain is 63% through 10 months. So, when you’re doing that you’re getting close to – you know, my first few months I didn’t trade nearly as much and I lost money in three of the first four months. So, basically it’s getting close to doubling your money every year. It’s not there yet but it’s close to that.
Allen Sama: Right.
Mike Minnick: You can double your money every year. It doesn’t take you very long.
Allen Sama: No. No it doesn’t.
Mike Minnick: Place in you unless you’re Bill Gates. And I’m not even in that conversation, so.
Allen Sama: No, but that’s awesome. I love that that whole, you know, it goes back the freedom part, right. If you’re not worried about it because I get emails every day from people that are in a boat where, you know, something has gone wrong and they’re close to retirement or they’re in retirement and their biggest concern is, you know, I don’t have enough money to survive and it’s a very scary proposition.
Luckily you did take action, you got into options and then you got into this course early enough before retirement so that you can learn it and do it so that when you get close to retirement you won’t have as much worried just because you have more skills than the average person. So kudos to you for that. I’m very happy to hear that. Wonderful.
Mike Minnick: A consequence and, of course, one of the things I’ve been looking into is if this continues to be more and more successful looking into tax consequences, but that’s a totally if issue and there’s all kinds and possible answers to that but I’ve…
Allen Sama: Yeah, there are different things we can do. I mean already the futures options they already get the benefit tax. I don’t know what it’s called. I forgot the number. It’s 1256 or something like that where they get…
Mike Minnick: It’s something I forget.
Allen Sama: Yeah. I don’t remember the number of it, but 60% percent is taxed at long-term rates and then 40% at short term. But, you know, going further you could do even a little bit more you could maybe start a company and then trade out of the company and then you can take deductions out of that and whatnot.
Mike Minnick: I’m looking into limit if this continues well to do something like with a limited liability partnership, I think yeah.
Allen Sama: Yeah. It’s awesome, cool.
Mike Minnick: Yeah.
Allen Sama: So, final question I have is, is there anything that you want to share with our listeners, anything that you want anybody to know about, you know, people that are watching this or probably perspective students or maybe somebody who has just joined anything you want to share with them that you haven’t already?
Mike Minnick: Well, I don’t know how much this would be for a person who’s considering joining the course but maybe for person who started doing it. If they follow you gave a couple of different patterns on your course at least, when I took the course originally I don’t know how you may be modified it since then. But one way was just you got in at around 40 days until expiration and then you got out when it met to certain conditions. But then you also said or you can do this if you want to do more in and out trading and, you know, for more possible profits.
And obviously as you will know I chose the in and out. And just to give you an idea this is starting with April future contracts these are my monthly percentage gains. And I posted mostly these on Facebook. 19.0 that was the best, 5.1, 13.2, 16.3, 17.0, that was five months or six months in a row. But those worked real well when oil would maybe climb up a dollar or two one day then stay approximately where it was or just bounce right around for a few more days and then go back down a dollar or two and bounce, you know, and it did that for most of that time.
But when it went straight down for a long time like it did this past month, that’s where I got hurt and that’s where I say lost 6% this month. Because the normal is of course when the market goes down a dollar or two on a day, a couple of percent, you say, okay it’s time to sell some puts now – it’s going down sell some puts. On the theory, you know, sell low and buy high, right.
Allen Sama: Right.
Mike Minnick: So, sell high and buy low.
Allen Sama: Yeah, it happens.
Mike Minnick: You want to sell high and that should be the hot, you know, when it’s gone down you should but when the markets continually going down that kind of flip flops. And so that’s why I mentioned earlier I need to, you know, learn more about the technical analysis to be able to better predict. I mean nobody’s going to be perfect in it but better predict whether this is just a bounce down for one or two days or if it’s going to, you know, keep on going down for several weeks.
Like I say that’s not necessarily something for somebody who’s just thinking about whether they’re going to get in this course, maybe somebody has been in it a month or two and is trying to do the in-and-out type strategy. I recognize that about three months ago. I recognize that I said, well my strategy is working very well as long as the market keeps doing like it’s doing bouncing up and down, up and down, up and down but not really going a whole lot. But I’m wondering what’s going to happen when it just continues to go one direction for a while. No I found out this now.
Allen Sama: For me…
Mike Minnick: I’ve got to learn more.
Allen Sama: For me it’s the opposite. You know, when it’s moving in one direction, I do much better because I’m not as active. You know, I’m not jumping in and out as much. And so, if I see hey it’s going down then I’ll be like, all right I’m going to be selling some calls because I don’t want to be in front of that train.
Mike Minnick: Right.
Allen Sama: And so, you know, I just sit back and relax and, you know, eventually we get — obviously your returns lately have been much better than mine. You know, I aim for 10% level and then I back off because I’m a little bit more conservative. I guess on that risk scale I’d probably be, you know, somewhere on the 50% margin rate.
But yeah, so it’s – okay, so there’s, you know, when you have oil or anything, when it’s trending, right and if it’s going one direction let’s say if it’s just going sideways you can play it on both sides, you can play at the top and the bottom puts and calls. The danger part is when it shifts.
Mike Minnick: Right.
Allen Sama: So, it gets out of that sideways pattern and starts moving up or starts moving down, that’s when you have to adjust your mentality or your trading style so that it reflects the new one, or if it’s going down and then it pivots and jumps back up then, you know, that’s another time when us option sellers get in trouble whenever there’s a big shift.
So, that is something that obviously the technical analysis could help you with that a little bit. So, yeah take a look at that, what is it the training that we put into the members area and I think that’s another reason the Facebook group can help out because everybody’s putting their thoughts in. So, if you have any questions, you know, put them up there and you get different opinions obviously but it’s cool that other people are also posting stuff up there from other resources as well, so.
Mike Minnick: Right, right. That’s been helpful.
Allen Sama: Cool. All right, Mike, so that’s all I had. I appreciate you taking the time to answer these questions for us. I’m very happy with the, you know, that I can count on you as a successful student. I was very happy to hear about the retirement story that you shared. And again, Mike has done a great job, I’m very proud of him. And so I appreciate you taking the time and sharing some thoughts with us.
Mike Minnick: Thanks for calling and having me on.
Allen Sama: All right.
Useful Links and Resources
Download the Free Option Trader’s Treasure Map:
Join Our Free Facebook Group called The Option Trader’s Alliance: