Option Trading Blog by Market Taker Mentoring

How Important Is It to Review Your Trades?

In my opinion, one of the most helpful things to do to improve your option trading or any type of trading is to review your trades. You need to pretend that you are the late, great Roger Ebert (hard to believe it is almost 3 years now) of option trading and give your trades a […]

Options Trading System

Looking for an options trading system to treat yourself or someone in need this Holiday Season? Let the Market Taker Mentoring Trading Path be your options trading guide. The MTM Trading Path The MTM Trading Path is a simple, but powerful proprietary options trading system designed to be a veritable options trading guide that outlines […]

How Option Delta and Gamma Influence Each Other

Not sure if you have noticed, but the market has been very volatile lately. Stocks have been moving in sometimes dramatic fashion on a daily basis so it might be wise to review how option prices change when the underlying changes. The option “greeks” help explain how and why option prices move. Option delta and […]

A Directional Option Spread

With the huge selloff in the market last week, it might take some time for stocks to get back to levels they had been trading at just a few sessions ago. In fact, they might not ever make it back to those levels truth be told. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an option […]

Choosing Between Different Risk/Reward Scenarios

As an option trader, you have so many different strategies and risk/reward scenarios to think about before initializing a trade. Many of my students in my Group Coaching class as well as my one-on-one students ask me all the time how do you decide between buying a debit spread and selling a credit spread as […]

It Could Be a Double Play

With Alcoa announcing its earnings this past week and a plethora more of them to soon follow, it might be a good time to talk about a subject that is brought up quite often in MTM Group Coaching and Online Education; double calendars vs. double diagonals. Double Calendars vs. Double Diagonals Both double calendars and […]

Historical and Implied Volatility

With the market supposedly heading towards the slower summer months, it is always important but probably even more so for option traders to understand one of the most important steps when learning to trade options; analyzing implied volatility and historical volatility. This is the way option traders can gain edge in their trades especially when […]

Fractal Position Management

Option traders have to manage risk. Want a job description? That’s about it. In fact that is a job description for every trader; even ones that don’t trade options. Every trade has a risk and reward associated with it and traders must realize that especially when first learning how to trade. Because options are instruments […]

Implied Volatility and Bull Put Spreads

Implied volatility (IV) has been relatively low in the market until recently. With recent downturn in the market, some implied volatility levels have increased of of their recent lows. Implied volatility by definition is the estimated future volatility of a stock’s price. More often than not, IV increases during a bearish market (or a sell […]

What Is an Option Strangle?

An option strangle is an option strategy that option traders can use when they think there is an imminent move in the underlying but the direction is uncertain. With an option strangle, the trader is betting on both sides of a trade by purchasing a put and a call generally just out-of-the-money (OTM), but with […]

When Investors Should Consider a Collar Strategy

A collar strategy is an option strategy that can particularly benefit investors. In this blog we have a lot more options education for traders and less for long-term investors so here is a strategy both can consider. A collar is simply holding shares of stock and buying a put and selling a call. Usually both […]

Weekly Options and Time Decay

There are so many different characteristics of options that I talk a lot about with my options coaching students. But one of the more popular subjects is that premium sellers see the most dramatic erosion of the time value of options they have sold during the last week of the options cycle. Most premium sellers […]

Thoughts on Front-Month Puts

With the market threatening to move lower after a bullish run last year and earning’s season upon us,it might be a good time to talk about put options. If a trader buys a put option, he or she has the right to sell the underlying at a particular price (strike price) before a certain time […]

The Best Online Trader Community in the World!

Thank you all for your overwhelming support for our brand new MTM Elite Trader’s Community. I’m glad to say the launch of this state-of-the-art traders’ resource was a HUGE success! We promised you the best trader chat room ever to exist! And we delivered! The new MTM Elite Traders Community has been referred to as […]

Six-Year Low in the VIX? What’s It Mean to YOUR Options Trading?

The VIX, or CBOE’s Implied Volatility Index, hit a six-year low this week. What’s that mean to options trading? Lots! Options trading is greatly affected by implied volatility. At its most basic level, when the VIX is low, it tends to mean lousy options trading. Option traders are not incented to trade when the VIX […]

Double Calendars vs. Double Diagonals

Today we will talk about a subject that is brought up quite often in MTM Group Coaching and is often debated by option traders learning to trade advanced strategies; double calendars vs. double diagonals. Double Calendars vs. Double Diagonals Both double calendars and double diagonals have the same fundamental structure; each is short option contracts […]