Posts by Eric Hale

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 car without a seat-belt, why…

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 Rate Policy (ZIRP). The Fed…

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 10 minutes before the close,…

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 the global market, strengthening of…

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. The maximum profit is theoretically…

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 of 70. Arguably, one of…

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 that you’ll give up nickels…