CHRISTMAS PROMOTION
LTOptions at a 33% discount during the Year End Holidays.
Tell me More

BookingAlpha Option Trading Advisory

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

TastyTrade - truly changing financial education

Note: This article was written in April 2013 when I had been watching the show for less than a month. For a more in depth review describing and analyzing both good and bad points please visit tastytrade - an unbiased review, my comprehensive article after watching the show for two years.

If you haven't watched an episode of TastyTrade, take your time and take a peek. TastyTrade runs a live show everyday during market hours and they have become something like a permanent radio station I listen to while I work. Because I can't watch the show, as I work in an open office concept, at least I get to listen to the show on my head phones all day long and boy oh boy do they make my day better.

Update: You may also want to read my second review of TastyTrade two years after this first one

The one thing I love the most about TastyTrade is the fact that they don't try to predict market direction, at least neither Tom nor Tony. In fact they constantly criticize how "nobody knows anything" and how half a century of self directed investors trying to predict market direction has resulted in nothing but failure.

Their whole trading approach is based on Implied volatility. Is volatility too low statistically speaking? is it to high? and then they make their trading decisions based on that. It all starts there. But they try to reduce cost base in their trades; get theta working in their favor; trade small, in fact very small, and do it often. It's their concept of number of occurrences: a high number of very small bets in both directions (bulls and bears) and letting market cyclicality make both sides eventually winners. They also apply a "mantra" of "managing winners" which means you close positions that are winning, rather than manage losers. Their whole system is based on statistics, which over the long run, provided there is a high enough number of occurrences, should play out in their favor.

But even if that approach doesn't make sense to you, you can always judge by hearing their comments on the trades they are making and get an overall idea if their trades are working or not. Also on the "Where do I start?" segment we've been able to see for 3 months how his daughter has been learning while trading a small $2500 account, trade by trade. There's also Dave the Ex-Trader, and again, the whole world is seeing his trades and progress of the portfolio over time. As of this writing the hosts haven't shared their own personal profits/losses and it remains to be seen if that will be the case as it could be a show stopper for them in the event things go wrong for an extended period of time and they lose credibility.

TastyTrade offers a great educational value and it really hurts when I miss segments such as "Confirm and Send", "Best Practices", "Market Measures". Here is a list of the segments and a brief description. They have made so many studies on the markets and destroyed so many myths and theories in the show that I can safely say, your vision of the markets will change by watching it just for a couple of weeks.

The show has some sessions with traders that do try to predict market direction. I guess they have seen themselves forced to do that in order to attract different audiences and not be impositive about their style.

TastyTrade has been around for a while now, and it has thousands of viewers already. But still, a little help to spread the word doesn't hurt. If I can help them increase their audience while I also offer this good resource to my readers, I guess I'll be doing good. I feel I have learned a lot from them for free, that somehow I owe them and want to help spread the word.


The industry is changing folks, I've said it before. You can now find more and more valuable trading related content on the web than ever before. Little by little, being honest in this joke of an industry will stop being a revolutionary concept.

Cheers!

For a more in depth review describing and analyzing both good and bad points please visit tastytrade - an unbiased review, my comprehensive article after watching the show for two years. 

Related Articles
tastytrade - an unbiased review
A simple strategy that beats most traders
Investing in GURU - Another strategy to beat the markets?
tastytrade - an unbiased review (my second review of tastytrade)
LT Trend Sniper - a Forex strategy that works
Useful resources for learning about mechanical trading systems



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

1 comment:

  1. Have not yet hear about the TastyTrade. After reading this article will definitely check it out.

    ReplyDelete