I have started this site to share stock option trade ideas and information with other traders.  I have traded for about 20 years and have found this last year to be one of the most difficult, interesting, exciting, disappointing, and historical that I have ever seen.  I hope to share my success and failures here.   I have seen my entire account go up 40% in one day.  I have seen accounts go to zero.  There is so much information and so much hype that it is hard to know what to do with your money.  I have traded full time last year and would like to give reviews of top stock option trading sites.  I would like to share some knowledge about option picks and stock picks.  I would like to explain “how to pick stocks” & “how to pick options”.  This site is going to be mainly about options so don’t expect this to be a one stop shopping site for your ballanced portfollio.  I will explain what technical analysis is and how you can use it.  The market today is going through wild girations and is great for well timed speculation.  It is also a time of finacial pain for those people who have not used rules for when to dump a trade and take the lose as a prudent trader must do often.  I have also become victim of breaking my own rules and will share my experiances as I work to reform the bad trading habits.  Just one last thing.  I am a crazy white knuckle rollercoaster option investor who likes to have fun.  My best trade was buying some GOOGLE options on the day of expiration and watching $800 turn into $15,000 dollars in one day. Cashed out!  I hope to get back to those days, So have fun, share your ideas and play safe.  Don’t invest money you can’t afford to loose.  Best Regards and God Bless.

I have gone out with others and tried what they used and it is amazing how they don’t catch fish when you are there.  Just like all those other offers on TV and Internet, when you try them they don’t work (most of them).   However, they all have a nugget of truth and those nuggets if you study and experiment, and experiment will produce success.  Most people get wiped out too early or just give up after a bad experience.  If you have the desire and persistence you will succeed.  Whatcha Think?

I have traded with Ameritrade for over 20 years I think and so I may be a little partial.  I like both for different reasons and some features I didn’t like.  If you love to trade Options and Money is no Option (sorry),  then Optionsexpress is for you.  They have won numerous awards and deserve them.  The option pricing history feature is exceptional.  Also, the tool that compares various types of trades, IE.. covered calls, spreads – long, vertical, etc. is fabulous.  I can’t say enough about this feature.  I have used TOS (think or swim) much too complicated.  Even when I was making trades in my other accounts I would switch back to my old optionsexpress account to look at the various option combinations I could concoct.  Seeing the profit loss in graphic form and seeing the time erosion factors was phenomenal.  I still recommend checking this out.

What i didn’t like about optionsexpress is minor if you are a serious trader is that there per trade cost was slightly more than other programs.  I think an option trade used to cost $9.99 plus $1.75 per contract.  This can be expensive if you are low dollar and just starting out.

The other thing I didn’t like and it may just be my own personality is this.  That the software is so great and cool that it can tempt you into overconfidence and therefor you over trade, over commit and can easily wipe out your account if you don’t have discipline.  This was my own experience, so if you don’t suffer from my personality flaw and you have lots of money to trade this could be a great trading site for you.

Ameritrade, Now TdAmeritrade:

is by far the best trader site for everyone in a general sense.  What I mean is they are great for beginners, very conservative, reasonable cost structure and have vast aray of help and wide selection of services offered.  Again, I’m partial and loyal.  I will keep my Tdameritrade account forever.  I had used them for my first rollover IRA, I learned to trade Mutual Funds first.  Well I have to admit, I let the phone rep suggest a few funds and these turned out to be top performers.  After that I had learned some stock trading on  my own and had the normal experiance of beginners.  Some sucess and some dissasters,  I didn’t know how to interpret the news information that is broadcast, I didn’t know how to read fundimentals, I didn’t know how to read sector trends, I didn’t know how to interpret geo political events, I admit it I didn’t know much if anything.  When I had success I thought I was a genuis.  When I lost I though what eversource I listen to lied and betrayed me.  Sorry I’m rambling ( I talk trading basics another time).

So for beginners the trading site is very, very, very USER FREINDLY.  I liked thier phone support.  They have great help.  It is easy to see your trades when they are up or down.  You can see your entire portfolio.  You can get great market information.  Don’t let me forget… I remember know they were the first site I used that had great quote information.  NEWBEES pay attention, when you learn to trade you have to absolutely must have good qoutes.  Otherwise you might as well send your buys and sell orders through the mail (a little exaturation), so you get the point. 

They are still my favorite site because they do so many things right.  You can have possible any type of an account and it is very easy.  EASY, I guess that is the one word that sums up TdAmeritrade is that they are the best for part time traders, retiree’s, begineers, and every one in general.

SPECIAL FEATURES AT TDAMERITRADE

What you may not know is that they have some very good free professional tools, Stockscreener, they have a charting service and program trading.  I can’t think of the name right now, darn… Lets see its on my other computer – STRATEGY DESK.  I can’t believe they give this out free, its very good stuff.  I learned a few programming tricks.  Most of all I lean on the technical analysis side of things, I liked reviewing the charts manually on my favorite charts.  If you like to trade premarket and want to trade gaps this could be a good source for you.  A great site to use Power Trading.

Ok what I didn’t like about TdAmeritrade.

I started to trade options heavily.  I was trading 100 or 400 option contracts at a time.  That gets kind of expensive if you pay a fee per option.  So found a few new sites, OptionHouse, ThinkorSwim (tos), and Terra Nova.  OptionHouse is the place to go trade hundreds of option contracts because they don’t charge per option, but be warned they are not user freindly or not nearly as proffessional as the other sites.  One of my favorites for heavy traders is TerraNova tell them I sent ya.  TOS is really a great site, I just think its too complicated.  TOS is more for the person who was a protrader and has odles of computers and monitors. It was not easy to learn.  Well another time I explain all the sites pros and cons.  I hope this is helpfull.  If you have something you want to add please fell free to add in the comment field.

This is not perfectly correct, but very funny expressions.  In general this might help somone who has no idea about what options are.

CLICK HERE  for funny explaination of options

Click HERE to SEE VIDEO – Options in IRAs? Good!

I generally don’t like Suze Orman, but see does a good example of explaining how options can be used in IRA accounts to boost returns.  I think in stable times this can be used conservatively to boost IRA returns 5% a month.  How do I learn to trade covered calls?  I’ve learned from Wade Cook – “Stock Market Miracles” and some other books.  Ask and I can give some examples how to do this conservatively.  Another great book for more advanced traders is by Bill Johnson -”An Investors Guide to Understanding and Mastering Options Trading”

STOCK PICKS AND OPTION PICKS
date: Monday, February 09, 2009
http://aandbpropertymanagement.com/wordpress

DISCLAIMER: this is my personal opinion and for information only. 
Do not invest without counsuting a professional!
You may loose all your money! Information is not guaranteed to be acurate.

STOCKS:
 Long term – I like amazon and google, these have growing business. Both are inovative and

leaders.
 wild cat stock pic:  I like sandisk (taking over hard drives with flash drives, also

a leader)
sybol   open      target  stop loss
amzn  66.56  82.00  58.00
goog  371.28  417.00  328.80  
sndk  11.07  24.00  8.00

OPTIONS:
crazy option – wells fargo (wfc) Feb,call, $25 strike for $0.15 (this play may go to zero

quick or could triple quick also)

Wild option- wells fargo (wfc) Feb,call, $23 strike for $0.50 (this play may go down quick

or could double quick also)

coverd call-na

spread – long calls: Ford (F) Buy the Jan 10, $2.50 call and sell the $5.00 call, net debit

$0.29 (29 cents)
the 2.50 is wfoax buy at 0.66
the 5.00 is wfoaa sell at 0.37
net debit is 0.29
{over the coarse of 12 months the stock should spike and increase the value of the 2.50 more

than the 5.00 call}
{this should increase the value of the position, my sell target conservatively would be at

0.50 (72% gain),
my dream return would be at around 1.00 (244% return)

PUTS:

straight na
wild put spread.
tD AMERITRAD PUT SPREAD, BUY THE AUG09 15PUT SELL THE AUG09 12.50PUT
NET DEBIT $1.03 ( MY TARGET WOULD BE 1.50, STOP AT 0.45,I think its 70% cance of getting to

1.50 first.)
12.50 TQATV.X 2.25 0.00 1.75 1.90 50 77
15.00 TQATC.X 3.28  0.09 3.00 3.30 300 240
To see blog site and other Crazy Stock Option Picks:

http://aandbpropertymanagement.com/wordpress

DISCLAIMER: this is my personal opinion and for information only. 
Do not invest without counsuting a professional!
You may loose all your money! Information is not guaranteed to be acurate.

Citibank ( C ) and Bank of America (BAC ) will not fail, not any time soon.

  I have watched the new president and his new team avoid words of nationalization and use more acceptable words like stress test and case by case basis.  There are Three obvious reasons the president does not want to take over the banks.

#1)  Our new president is popular, and nationalization appears to be an aggressive act by government.  What about all the widow and families that have stock or bonds in these banks.  Whats safer than a bank? (don’t answer)

#2)  If the government dismantels a bank sells everthing at a loss – how is that better than what the bank is doing.  At least over time the bank may recover.   ITS THE APPERANCE STUPID, the goverment does’t want to appear as they failed!  Remember Lehman and all the out cry of the far reaching affects that no one thought of.  So if the president wants an instant failure on his record he should nationalize all the insolvant banks now.  He will have instant popularity with all the purist economist, but will soon lose all majority of his new hope feelings that come with a presidency.  When the Economy lunges faster into peril by mortgage dislocation, more home price depreciation, more foreclosures, and more job losses.  All of the new slides linked to our new president taking the reigns, I THINK NOT!

#3) C and BAC have loan loss guarantees from uncle Sam into hundreds of Billions.  Do you want the newspapers publishing these instant Billion DOLLAR LOSSES to Obama?  I think not.

So for the Short term no big banks will fail, we will look the other way and talk some political bumble that none knows how to interpret.

THIS BLOG HAS MOVED to

http://crazystockoptions.com/wordpress/

Click here

crazystockoptions.com/wordpress/

Obama, now your going to ask people who really know how to create jobs.  Great!  I think it was Winston Churchill who said, “You can always count on the govt. to make the right decision, after every other possibility has been tried”.  Its like Edison, trial and error way to success.  Keep failing to learn what doesn’t work.  Well I do give president Obama some credit, we could be a lot worse off, but I see this as humility.  The current plans aren’t working fast enough.  Talk to leaders who may have some good ideas.

What about public works?  What about a chicken in every pot?  Things aren’t that bad, yet they could be if we don’t create jobs. 

The corporate world has always help the private sector, but there is always a price from corruption.  Lets keep an eye on the pigs when looking into new ideas.

Also, lets put the private sector to work.  The sector that has lost the most.  Put some work in states like Michigan.  Build something, harvest something, lets do something.  No more time, to keep talking!

From FT article, 12/2/09 in italics

“…economic crisis returned to the top of President Barack Obama’s priority list on Thursday”"  he asked chief executives of companies like Google and Boeing”   “ HELP him come up ways to put American companies to put people to work” 

Mr Obama said  that job growth was lagging.

“We can’t just hang back and hope for the best when we have seen the kind of job losses we have seen over the last year,” he said.

NO KIDDING

“How do we get businesses hiring again? How do we get ourselves to the point where more people are working and more people are spending and we start a virtuous cycle where the recovery starts to feed on itself,”

“ top companies including Google, Disney and FedEx and small business leaders, as well as economists Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs, and the mayors of Des Monies, San Antonio and Allentown.”

Tomorrows job losses, will they be over 100,000?

Stop paying people to stay home!  Pay people to WORK!  Produce Something Anything – REALLY!

I have been on leave from tradingstocks.  I see the overall trend is up for tech stocks.  Altera is now up 6 months trend, I want to pick up a few tech names to research and buy. 

Looks like Dow has steadied at 10,400.

Please leave your top picks in the comments section.  Tech Stock Rally, help me pick a good one!

How can the market go up and jobs still not rebound.  Is this a case of the market gurus seeing 6to 18 months in the future and everything is OK. 

Is it Value?… stock PE ratios are now finally good and will continue to be good? 

I’m in Michigan, it is hard to see past all the foreclosures and job losses.  It looks like a big smoke screen on the news, they don’t show the continued distress.  Can the rest of the economy survive when so many are still in financial disaster.

IF YOU LOOK TO THE MARKETS, the answer seems to be yes.

Let me know your thoughts.

Tiger Woods, Prenup 2 million.  55 Million if stay married for 2 more years.  How much is that a day?

 2,000,000 /(365X2)=  2,739 per day.  That’s only $114 per hr.

Its a shame that we focus on others misery.  Its a shame that we put a price on marriage.  I am Glad I poor relatively.  I know my wife married for love not money.  I know she stays because of love not money…

Leave your comment, I want to know what the public thinks!

Ford (F) is a stock I recommended to friends at $1.70,  I also recommended taking PROFITS at $5.  If you had used the “take out your initial investment and let the rest ride” (Playing with the House’s Money).  Now is a good time to secure many of those extremely insane profits.

I say this because I have a close friend who is famous for getting in at the bottom.  And just like the majority of the public he is often guilty of holding on too long.  We don’t fall in love with stocks!  We Trade Them!  Its just a few letters and a Number,  when the number is big enough we take some!  If we are wrong we get OUT!  IF YOU, will follow this simple premise, You will be better than 90% of all traders.

If you disagree , I would love to hear your reasons.

According to the speakers I’ve watched over the weekend, and this mornings stock opening.  Every thing is acting safe.  The first expert on business news, expected very little pull back, 2% to 5% pull back at most.  Confirmation of that new was the market on the first real day of trading opened lower then around 10 am the market picked its true direction up.  I don’t know if the day will end up, but the market is not panicking.  Please trade carefully.  These are shaky times.

Peter Schiff Said “Ben Bernanke Has Never Gotten Anything Right,” , and then embarrassingly continued to grand stand and make a make a mockery of our Government. 

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/379864/%22Ben-Bernanke-Has-Never-Gotten-Anything-Right%22-Peter-Schiff-Says-Fed-Officials-Respond?tickers=%5EDJI,%5EGSPC,SPY,TBT,TIP,GLD,FXI

 I Agree, Ben has gotten ALOT of things wrong.  I Disagree for Officals in a meeting to air the governments missteps and cause distress.  We already have enough contention in the political arena.  We should not have public speaking engagements turn into a school house brawl and name calling.

Maybe he just had a fight with his wife and was taken it out on Ben,  but sounds like he is trying to make him self feel better because his investments didn’t do so good either.  I guess he didn’t see the crisis as well as he points his finger.

Do You think Ben has done every thing wrong?  Tell Me.  I don’t like him.  He han’ts  gotten every thing right either.  Do you think Peter Schiff is better than Ben? I don’t think so, at least his table manners aren’t so embarrassing!

Apple will be

Teaching Poor People "how to make Money"

benefiting from a new accounting rule that allows them to take the full sale of a smart phone and count that as a sale.  Yes, how ingenious.  Really!  Before Apple had two count the sale slowly over 2 years.  The rule change took place yesterday.  If you had taken my advice or been enrolled in my notifications, you would have had the opportunity to buy when the stock was in the $175 range, we are at $187 this morning and I, believe we will have a rather quick climb over $200 and then on to $260 slowly and choppily.

Happy Trading.

Market Rally is back!

I told you we would hit DOW 10,00o soon!  Now we are going to go there in a matter of  weeks or days if the market keeps this pace.