Lesson 9: Trade From Anywhere in the World

If you just got here, you should start at Lesson 1.

Up until recently only market makers and very large traders could do these trades. The reason: commissions. As soon as three to four years ago you would have to pay $30-$40 to buy or sell a single option. Now you can to the same trade for less than $1. Online trading and lower commissions have allowed regular people like you and me the opportunity to trade for a living.

Market makers are the guys or companies that keep stocks liquid. Their job is to buy and sell the stock all day so everyone gets their orders filled. They are the ones that get to keep the spread between the ask and the bid prices.

The current trend is moving more and more to electronic trading. Computers are the new market makers. And this has lowered the cost of trading. Commissions that used to be $30 per option are now $1 or less per option traded. Before, it only made sense for the big boys to do these trades. Now us little guys can do them too.

Not only that, but brokers are now giving away trading tools that used to cost thousands of dollars to buy and use. For example, my broker gives free live quotes and free live charts to every account. Fidelity doesn't even do this yet. And Fidelity is still charging about $10 per option.

If you are serious about option trading, you need to get a broker that specializes in options. I call these options friendly brokers. There are several out there. The ones I recommend are in the members only portion of my website. If you are paying more than $2 per option, you are paying too much.

This concludes our 9 Lessons of Option Selling. I would love to hear your thoughts on this course. What did you like, what did you not like, are there any questions you have, was anything unclear? Just drop me an email.