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BookingAlpha Option Trading Advisory

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Forex Cash Cow. Review and Expert Advisor

This is another let's say popular system that Forex retail traders read about at least once in their lifes. I had the chance to know it and being a programmer myself, of course I went ahead and implemented it to see what it really gave before risking a dime of my real money account.

The idea of the system is to ride price momentum right after a price "explosion" has occurred in one direction. This puts the strategy in the group of "Break out" strategies if you will. And it is best suited for the GBPUSD pair.

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Weekend Thoughts (12-23-2011)

Not too much to talk about this week. Very low levels of activity and the markets moving up little by little. The 100 SMA served as support to the S&P500 and the VIX broke support on its way down, signaling lack of panic.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

January QQQ Bull Put Spread closed

Demo Trading:

The "Bull Put Spread on the QQQs" initially described here had been opened for a 0.29 credit and was closed minutes ago for a 0.18 debit, yielding a quick 0.11 profit in 10 days in views that the Nasdaq has looked weaker than normal and with little upside movement during the recent rally in all major indexes, which are getting closer to important resistance areas. This particular position is the one that could screw the month, a.k.a the closest to be in danger.

The closing trade was as follows:

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

The Media and Markets' noise

As you know, I follow some popular sites with financial information to get a feeling for the market every day in the morning and late in the evenings. I tend to read more on Marketwatch, Bloomberg, Cnbc. These sites have some other useful tools and features that are nice, but, what I want to focus on today is the news and market analysis posted on these sites every day.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Weekend Thoughts

It was a fairly quite week with low activity (volume) overall. The three positions currently open for the January expiration cycle are not threatened by now. To recap, here they are: January QQQ Bear Call Spread, January QQQ Bull Put Spread, January IWM Bull Put Spread. Basically two bullish positions and a bearish one (QQQ 63/61) which seems pretty solid to me. Let's take a look at the S&P500.

Friday, December 16, 2011

January IWM Bull Put Spread

Demo-trading:
SELL 12 IWM January 65 Put (@0.86)
BUY 12 IWM January 63 Put (@0.58)

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Automated stock trading with Prodigio RTS

Last weekend, during my usual web surfing thirsty for market analysis I came across Prodigio RTS. Prodigio is a tool that allows you to trade stocks based on technical rules. It has many technical studies and strategies already built in but you can design your own.

Monday, December 12, 2011

January QQQ Bull Put Spread

Demo-trading:
SELL 12 QQQ January 52 Put (@0.75)
BUY 12 QQQ January 50 Put (@0.46)

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Weekend thoughts

Hello folks,
Looks like seasonality tendencies are getting their way. Fundamental analysis, specially for daily forecasts is basically useless these days with a market too sensitive to any news. I mean, amidst Europe's issues and positive signs for the US economy, who the hell can figure out anything in this market? Now, throw some unexpected announcements from any random leader to the mix and I dare you to forecast something. Who the fuck knows where this market is headed on a daily basis? NOBODY.

Monday, December 5, 2011

January QQQ Bear Call Spread

Demo-trading:
SELL 12 QQQ January 61 Call (@0.44)
BUY 12 QQQ January 63 Call (@0.14)

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Weekend Thoughts

Hello folks,
No blogging for me in the last two weeks. But really I hadn't seen more opportunities to open positions. In fact the two positions opened in my paper trading account look really nice facing expiration in two weeks. The SPX Bull Put Spread (1105/1100) looks really good with SPX currently at 1244.28. The RUT Bull Put Spread (620/610) is also in really good shape with RUT currently sitting at 735.02

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Market Manipulation by Smart Money. Really? I mean...REALLY?

It's been a while since I came to the conclusion that this crazy game is a negative sum game rather than a zero sum game. So, probabilities are aligned against you right from the beginning. Another common conception out there is that the smart money always wins. Also known as: They manipulate the markets in their favor and get the money of millions of small retail traders. Let me disagree with this statement with some common sense first and then with some numbers.

Friday, November 18, 2011

December RUT Bull Put Spread

Demo-trading:
SELL 3 RUT December 620 Put (@7.20)
BUY 3 RUT December 610 Put (@6.00)

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

December SPX Bull Put Spread

Demo-Trading:
I opened the first position for December expiration as follows:
Sell 5 SPX December 1105 Put (@12.10)
Buy 5 SPX December 1100 Put (@11.50)

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

November QQQ position closed

Demo Trading:

The trade on the QQQs initially described here had been opened for a 0.33 credit and was closed minutes ago for a 0.10 debit, yielding a nice 0.23 profit and in views that the market doesn't seem to want to go down.
The closing trade was as follows:

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

QQQ Pending Order to close Cancelled

Demo trading: Markets expected to open significantly lower. The bulls party seems to be over and The pending order to close the Bear Call spread on the QQQs for 0.10 (Talked about this pending close order here) was canceled. This position now fells more juicy.

Monday, October 31, 2011

November SPY position closed

Demo Trading:

The trade open here as part of an adjustment was closed today as the markets went down yielding a nice profit for this bearish position (Bull Call Spread).
The trade was as follows:

Thursday, October 27, 2011

November SPY Credit Call spread adjustment

Demo trading:
I adjusted the SPY Bear Call spread initially opened here, by closing the position and opening a new Credit Call Spread using the 133/135 November Calls. The rally today was INSANE, and although markets are overbought, the massive short squeeze can keep the markets overbought for a while. I totally underestimated the conversations in Europe to solve Greeks' debt issues. Good lesson for life.

The trade was as follows:

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

November SPX Bull Put Spread

Demo-trading:

Sell 5 SPX Nov 1125 Put @7.60
Buy 5 SPX Nov 1120 Put @6.80

As a result a 0.80 credit was obtained per vertical, meaning a total of 0.80 * 5 * 100 = $400 dollars of credit. The maximum loss in this play is $2100 if the market falls abruptly before November 19 and SPX ends up below 1124.20.

Monday, October 24, 2011

November QQQ Bear Call Credit Spread

Market still getting insane on its way up. Very low volume though. Just sold the Nov 61 Call and Bought the Nov 63 Call on the QQQs. Everything for a 0.33 credit. 12 contracts per leg, maximum risk $2040. Potential reward $396. QQQ would need to go up to 61.33 in order for the position to start losing money at expiration.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Robots or Humans in trading?

Nowadays, there is a huge trading volume that belongs to automated trading. Make no mistake, I'm not talking about $97 Forex Expert Advisors (EA). There is this blog I follow TopDogTrading that started a poll a few days ago.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Getting started with serious demo-trading

In the morning of October the 20th, two days ago, I officially started my serious attempt at trading income plays and keep a record in this blog.

The trade was a Bear Call Spread, and it was entered as follows:

Sell 12 SPY Nov 130 Call @0.65
Buy 12 SPY Nov 132 Call @0.35

Friday, October 21, 2011

I have lost my ass

Yup.....I lost it,....and I don't know where I put it.
Nah nah, just to start off with a small comic line after a while absent. I'm in a good mood today, probably because it was pay day at the office ;)

I haven't lost my ass, what I have lost is a lot of money in the few months I've been trading which makes me part of the 90% - 95% of traders who lose money.

GPS Forex robot team lies

This is a follow up on my previous article which you can find here.

On Monday May 9 there was a sell off in the EURUSD pair late in the day. Given that GPS only goes long EUR it had a hard time and lost its trade miserably, -88 pips. The entry was at about 1.4375 a few seconds after 7pm Eastern Time.

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Option's price fluctuation

Options price fluctuations

I always wanted to know the price fluctuations of a specific option on a stock, both intra day and longer terms. This is pretty basic information but for some reason most Brokers' trading stations don't offer that feature (If ThinkOrSwim doesn't I bet most don't offer it either). This might help you...

Saturday, August 6, 2011

The Dynamic position size paradox

In my previous post Risk a percent of your account per trade I talked about money management and capital protection basics, by only risking a fixed percent of your trading capital per single trade, and showed how to adjust your position size in a Forex play to meet this goal regardless of how far or close your stop loss is from the entry.

Given that we adjust the risk at our will by regulating the position size on every trade, we can say we are using a dynamic position size technique. Now let's analyze this interesting occurrence that has more to do with Math than trading but it is something to keep in mind for our game.

Saturday, July 30, 2011

How to risk a percent of your account per trade


Many of us have read something like "Only risk x percent of your account per trade", as a rule of thumb. However not many of us, specially in Forex have a clear idea on how to achieve this. So, let's get down to business.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

The dirtiest of the industries.

Sometimes, you just get sick of it. At times I really feel that the trading arena is dirtier than drugs, porn and guns put together. Check this out http://www.freelancer.com/projects/NET-C-Sharp-Programming/Prepare-Forex-Statmeents.html. Things like this one are happening everyday. Be extremely wary guys, and always, always expect the worse from everyone in this industry.


Go to the bottom of this page in order to see the Legal Stuff

Sunday, May 8, 2011

The Truth about the GPS Forex Robot.

Mark Larsen apparently gained some popularity as a "clean guy", "a fresh image in the forex industry", "a transparent no BS approach kind of guy". Mainly by giving away free stuffs like reviews and tips for trading the forex markets, plus some explanations here and there of basic forex strategies. And, that was good, maybe even easy in an industry so full of lies and shit. But it was even better for his pockets when later on he came out with the GPS Forex robot invention which saw the light in December 2010. Easy sale, provided he had proven to the world he was a "different guy".

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Instant Pips Review


The Instant Pips method is the first one of four strategies included in the Forex profit accelerator package. This course fellas is sold for over 2000 bucks!! And of course it is full of good reviews by affiliates everywhere all over the internet. Well, today you will have my opinion about this product.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Discipline is key

No matter how many times you read that, your mind will always play tricks on you. I recently received an email from the GPS Forex robot team, which I am using as part of my Forex arsenal. This email was talking about the success of the robot during his first months...

Saturday, March 5, 2011

How much money is enough?

Almost everybody has a number. Truth is, when you get to it, or if you ever get to it, chances are your level of spending will be much higher, so you will need more haha. But anyways, it is a valid question. How much money would I need in order to retire?

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Forex brokers with the best spreads

This is a tough question and I think there is no absolute answer. However, as usual, going to an apparently neutral source seems to be the best bet. And of course, don't believe in anyone's sales pages or crappy paid reviews based website.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

FapTurbo vs Gps Forex Robot performance comparison


Today, February the 26, it is a month since I started trading Forex on a real money account, starting balance 1866.75 USD. If you have been following me for a while, you know that I spent a good deal of time investigating forex brokers on my own, going to non-commercial pages, (yes! go to the .org 's) because of all the fake and paid reviews out there. My initial venture can be read here and here. And I had said I would go with either OANDA or ATC Brokers but I didn't. And the reason is simple:

Thursday, February 24, 2011

How to spot paid/affiliate reviews

In view that paid reviews and affiliates are the origin of so many lies and scams nowadays, in this article I pretend to show you how to know if a product or service review is being written by an affiliate or not. Now, I'm not implying that all paid or affiliate reviews are fakes, I just think you should read them very warily and always being aware of its nature.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

My Plan B: Investing for the Long Term

Select Mutual Funds How to invest for the long term
This will probably sound like a boring post, mainly because if you are here you are probably a more active trader, either Forex or Options but I just wanted to change the topic a bit this time to talk about my Plan B. And I call it that way, because, although most of my money will always be working for me in the other areas (Forex, Options) I still think it is a good idea to have another weapon on your side.

Friday, February 11, 2011

ADX Power Forex System

The ADX Power, does it really work? - Hello folks, I hope you all had a good trading week, or a good learning week if that's the case. Even if you had a bad trading week, but a good learning week, overall you are in good steps. :p Well, unless you have literally lost your ass in terms of money, in which case yes, you have the right to feel miserable. Now down To Business. I felt some curiosity for the ADX Power System a while back. You can check it out explained here and here

Friday, February 4, 2011

Tip to close an Iron Condor (Part 2)

This is a sequel on How to Close an Iron Condor. The previous tip basically indicated that you open your Iron Condor position for some credit, and then you entered a closing limit order for the whole position, for a lower debit than the credit received. This closing order would be "Good till Canceled". From that moment on you become detached from the charts and ticks and your trade might automatically get triggered at the debit you specified should the market hit your limit price over time.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

AMZN, NFLX: big movers on earnings

My most recent trades (AMZN & NFLX) turned out to be a mess. I am just a newbie....out here trying to learn everything I can while paying nothing to nobody ever! It is a good goal, but also a tough one, but I am entirely sure that all the sea of knowledge you need is out there somewhere on the internet, by little pieces here and there, and with good work, you can become knowledgeable without paying thousands for courses and information that with a little effort can be found for free.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

How to play AMZN earnings

AMZN earnings report are due today at 4pm. After that time, and probably more obvious tomorrow, volatility in the front month options will come down from the astronomic levels they are in and this will be reflected in those options losing value. Let's check out an opportunity to short those options.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

How to play NFLX earnings

I don't know in the past but at least today, front month volatility in the January weekly options has sky rocketed, while February volatility remains comparatively lower. So, I started to play around with Calendars, selling front month options and buying under-priced February options for protection, just to see different profit pictures and there is one that definitely caught my eye and I think it has potential to be the best play overall analyzed in this blog, for several reasons, but mainly the good profitability range, good risk/reward and probability of success.

Iron Condor on SPX, trade closed (January)

All right, this trade was closed by parts yesterday during afternoon hours. By the way this is a follow up on the trade started here with an adjustment made later and described here

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Tip to close an Iron Condor (Part 1)

The purpose of this article is to explain an automatic an easy way to close an Iron Condor. It is true that the Iron Condor is a passive strategy which doesn't generally need constant surveillance. You set up your trade and you try to achieve a good profitability range where you are safe. Often times this range is good enough so as not to be overly worried about your play, making you effectively detached from the markets for a while....

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Playing AAPL Earnings with options - Trade Closed

Steve Jobs taking a vacation due to health problems is not fresh news anymore, AAPL earnings are behind and part of history,....with all the ghosts gone, the inevitable happened, options volatility in February just crashed, and with it, January expiration options went down substantially, which is great because we were shorting a couple of them, the 335 PUT and the 350 CALL. This is a follow up to the trade started here yesterday.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Playing AAPL Earnings with options

Well, well, well, earnings seasons fellas!! Lovely.
Taking a look at the volatility numbers of AAPL, the January options, yes the ones that expire in 3 days have caught the attention of investors and the interest has just been sky rocketing, with mixed news of earnings, plus their CEO taking some vacs due to medical reasons. This interest in the options have made volatility explode which translates into options being over-priced a.k.a too expensive.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Different ways to adjust an Iron Condor

This is a follow up on the Iron Condor played on the SPX index and initiated here. As you know the market has been steadily going up in the last weeks, which have resulted in my upper break even point being threatened. That's fine...

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Iron Condor on SPX

A little late to blog about it since I opened this position on February the 11th, but still, the idea might be valid for others. After the losses in the previous plays on IBM and POT, I am moving back this month to an index, which as you know is less volatile than a single stock. The less violent the movements the better for neutral trades. I am going with the SPX this time...

Butterfly play on IBM, trade closed

Finally and after 26 days, I decided to close the Butterfly play on IBM that was open on December 17 (click here to read that article). And the reason for closing the position is that the market is in an obvious uptrend which is causing IBM to go up and up, and there was not more upside room for my butterfly position.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Iron Condor play on POT, trade closed

I have been super lazy blogging lately and in the mean time swallowing the loss on the Iron Condor played on POT. The battle started here and then after some upside movement, there was an adjustment made which is explained here.