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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Math Junkie who wrote (24887)	10/5/1998 5:47:00 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Respond to of 70976

OT, re: "did you have much trouble convincing E*Trade to let you trade options? " No, I didn't. They are the only broker I've ever used. I began buying stocks in early 1996, started using margin a year later, and just started doing options (and shorting!) this year. Yes, margin is actually more risky than options. I'm sure if you asked them, they'd tell you their exact criteria for allowing options trading. I read the CBOE info, and I didn't think it was very helpful. The details are just not that important, and distract from the crucial choices: in the end, it still comes down to picking the right stock, and the right entry/exit points. The main difference between options and stocks is that you have to do more things right with options, and so there are more opportunities to lose a lot of money. Leverage is a dangerous thing, even in the hands of people who win Nobel Prizes in Economics! Overconfidence kills more people than lack of skill.