I finished the MT4 book, realizing that some things are a little different on the more recent, MT5 version. I also started another book, Visual Guide to Options, by Jared Levy (2013). Meanwhile, I'll be studying MT5 using the Help menu, which is quite comprehensive. I just finished the first 2 of 11 tabs in the "Trading Platform: User Manual" in the Help menu, which is a book worth of info in itself.
Tonight or tomorrow morning, I'll be opening another position. The last one I did reached it's stop loss and I earned -$4.75 or something like that. I was trying to risk 4%, and thankfully I under-calculated. I'm still working on understanding pips and calculating my position size correctly. Forget your losses, work the strategy consistently, make adjustments after reviewing a few months of trade data.
Options (as of 2013)
8 exchanges currently trading options:
- AMEX - American Stock Exchange
- BOX - Boston Stock Exchange
- CBOE - Chicago Board of Options Exchange
- ISE - International Stock Exchange
- BATS - BATS Exchange, electronic communication network (ECN)
- PCST - Pacific Coast Stock Exchange
- PHLX - Philadelphia Stock Exchange
- NASDAQ - Nasdaq Options
Brokers can route orders to cheapest exchange, or the exchange will match the lowest prices.
Avoid stocks less than or equal to $50, Volume or 750,000, and spread greater than $1.
Option prices comes from:
- Stock Price
- Strike Price
- Interest rate
- Dividend
- Implied Volatility
Average options spread is $.10. High volume, low volatility, low price = tight spread. Low volume, high volatility, high price = wide spread.
"Mark" is the midpoint between bid and ask prices.
I'm still on the basics with options, looking for ways to immediately apply information to a trade. Still, there are fundamentals I have to get a handle on, so that's where I am. Laterz.