If you really understood the VIX you would not trade it. On top of all the risks, which are frightening, it can be easily manipulated. You – and I mean YOU – can move the VIX with as little as $50. Only two kinds of people make money on the […]

OptionsANIMAL Raises Target Price for Apple (AAPL) to $190.75 and Expects Implied Volatility to Rise – Pleasant Grove, UT Despite technical warning signals, Apple Inc. (AAPL) shares still have some room for growth.  Volatility behavior indicates there may be opportunities for options traders. OptionsANIMAL’s proprietary approach to trading begins by […]

When I tell people that I trade options, I often get the same response: options are risky. Frankly, options are the opposite of risky – when they are used properly – they give traders the ability to limit risk and also increase their odds of winning. You wouldn’t drive your […]

There has been no doubt that since March of 2009, the market has been in a consistent uptrend. This has been driven, in large part, by the Federal Open Market Committee’s quantitative easing (QE) through various mechanisms, including maintaining the Effective Federal Funds Rate at near zero – Zero Interest […]

What the heck happened to AAPL in the last few minutes of trading on Friday? If you were watching AAPL at the close on Friday, March 20, 2015, you would have noticed that there was a neck-breaking snap in direction. The stock was chugging along sideways and then, at exactly […]

The market can be fickle. Some days, there are “hurricanes” of bad news and the market seems to chug along. Other days, a whisper of a wind seems to send the market into turmoil. What is moving the market today is most likely due to investor fears around weakness in […]

A lot of options traders have a common path when it comes to their understanding of options strategies. The first trade that they will typically do is a long call. The long call gives them the potential to make a lot of money with a relatively small amount of risk. […]

First, let’s be clear why you would want to trade like Warren Buffett. In a word: Success. Warren and the other ‘Huskers in Omaha manage Berkshire Hathaway Corporation. Between 1965 and 2013, Berkshire Hathaway has had an overall gain of 693,518%, outperforming the S&P 500 by more than a factor […]

Should you be legging into iron condors? Generally, I do no try to leg into iron condors. I place the trade all at once. Trying to be “tricky” by placing the put side at the lows and and the call side at the highs usually doesn’t work. What happens is […]