The Complete Guide to Option Selling - James Cordier
Written in 2015, I find this book very interesting so far. Some quotes so far:
"If you are serious about making your money work for you, about making real returns in a consistent manner, regardless of what direction markets are moving, you are about to get some good news."
"Professionals are more interested in playing odds."
"Using strategies such as spreads, swaps, and arbitrage, pros can increase odds of success without betting on outright market direction."
"If you sell an option, the market can move in your favor, it can remain stationary, it can even move moderately against your position. In any of these scenarios, it still expires worthless. You still make money."
I believe the following is true in RobinHood, but I'll confirm as I study the site more: "Even online brokers make it harder to sell options than to buy them, making you qualify for different 'levels,' and charging higher than minimum exchange margins."
"Surprisingly, most of our clients saw selling commodities options as a way to target high returns on their invested capital or to grow their net worth-as opposed to generate income."
"Knowledgeable option sellers bet that the storm will not make a 180-degree turnaround into the wind. That's all. They don't play the game of guessing where the storm will hit. That's a low-odds game. Guessing where it will not hit is much easier."
"When you become more skilled at selling options, you will be able to identify option selling at ridiculous strike prices, in which you will be able to take advantage of traders willing to bet on the market going to these levels. A little fundamental knowledge can go a long way in this regard."
"If your goal is to make consistent 25%, 40%, or even 50% annual returns in a responsible manner, option selling, especially futures option selling, may be for you."
That last one made me laugh. Yeah, that's me alright. So far the book has kept me interested. It's been more anecdotal so far, and I'm more interested in the strategies. The picture is coming together. Speaking of strategies, I found a good book on forex too.
17 Proven Currency Trading Strategies - Mario Singh
This one is from 2013. I just got through the Preface. Anecdotal of course, providing a framework for the chapters to follow. It feels more like a forex introductory textbook so far. After reading Samurai Revolution late last year, I appreciate the author mentioning this in the Preface:
"Kaizen is the Japanese word for improvement. When we embrace kaizen in any endeavor, mastery is bound to be the result. My kaizen approach to forex trading has enabled me to be a consistently profitable trader."
Most books I've read all have these optimistic tones to them. The difficulty is to deeply absorb those things that I can immediately implement. My expectation in this book is to get a clearer picture of the moving parts in forex trading while papertrading. I expect to be much more confident after finishing both these books.
In MetaTrader, I made another $60 with another sell of silver (not gold as I said in my last post). Gold is at $1460ish while silver is at $17, so my portfolio of $3300 is not equipped to take on Au just yet. With that, I'll leave you. Make it happen.