How have you gone about learning?
Please, please do not go about learning the same way I did. I started out throwing money at options and losing a lot of it. The first good play I did was a straddle (buying a put and a call) on Dell (guess which side went to zero? ;-) and Microsoft (both died, it stayed within the channel).
Invested 14K in the whole play, each cost about 3.5K. Three went to basically nothing, but the options expired three days after Dell reported earnings. Ended up with 22K -- up 50% in a month or so! (And if I had put the entire 14K into Dell calls? It would have been 92K. Woulda shoulda coulda...)
But the next quarter I lost a lot of money, more than I had made -- options giveth, and options taketh away.
Lately things have been good with Dell, and I'm looking forward to November's report. I want to pay off my 1999 Corvette (a very nice piece of machinery -- twice as fast and twice as safe as my old car, 1990 Mustang GT convertible). ;-)
What I should have done was read one of Larry McMillan's books on options.
A not so bad idea might be to click on Freeus, and read some of her questions and the replies she got, as she just recently learned about options, and bought her first option on Monday. We're all rooting for it to grow into many shares. ;-)
Good trading,
KenB |
