Up Tank

[NinjaAssassin]

I just hope I'm able to help some folks out. I know what you mean about it being confusing, though. I read every article, how-to, and tutorial I could find on trading options. It literally blew my mind. It wasn't until I started paper trading that any of it began to make sense. There are a ton of different strategies that you can use to make money in options...I just haven't figured them out. Every time I try to learn about Iron Condors, Bull Put Spreads, etc, I walk away trying to figure out why my eyes are bleeding. I'm certainly not one of the smarter ones because I haven't made any money yet. Well, I made money, then I lost some through being impatient or just plain bad picks. It's also hard getting out of the stock trading mindset. With stocks, you can buy and, if it doesn't pan out immediately, you can hold until you decide to sell. With options, you have to time these things much better, otherwise your options evaporate on expiration (which is why I'm at a net loss in this adventure...maybe I can change that tomorrow...or continue the trend lol). You're right that many options traders are smart, though. I hang out on the Options Millionaires board and some of the folks on there talk about the trades they're making, legging in, buying spreads, blah blah blah. I don't know what the hell they're talking about half the time. Some of the strategies just can't be understood by watching someone else play them.

Also, not directly related to options, but I've found that freestockcharts.com is pretty awesome for heavily traded stocks. They get their real time info from the BATS exchange, so popular stocks like GOOG, AAPL, etc. are very accurate in terms of price action compared to the major exchanges. Less popular stocks aren't and I'm not sure if it would be useful for pennies at all. Anyway, you can set up tabs with charts of different time periods. For instance, I have a daily, 15 min, and 2 minute set up with all the indicators I'm used to using. I've started using freestockcharts.com, stockfetcher.com, and google finance (among other things) to make trading decisions since options house is pretty sparse on the tools. They have a scanner and a few other things but I haven't tried them out. Just thought I'd share this in case anyone was interested.