What Is A Market Order, Limit Order, Stop Order?
The order you enter should reflect your trading strategy, not just be placed to effect the trade. For example, if you are entering a trade in leisurely …
Investing
Options Chains Explained
Option prices are typically presented by brokerage firms in option chains, sometimes called an option montage (mostly in books). Notice how the following …
Stock And Option Prices Explained
Stock and option “prices” are the bid and asked price quotations posted by market makers (MM) or exchange specialists, not to be confused with the …
Stock Ratings
To make smarter buy and sell decisions, you can use various fundamental, technical, sentiment and macro-economic tools and factors. Fundamental research …
How To Buy And Sell Options
It is market wisdom that smart option traders buy cheap options and sell expensive options. And indeed, we frequently see that the ideal option to buy will be …
What Is Open Interest?
Open interest is the number of contracts open (outstanding) in a unique option series. A standard option contract relates to 100 shares, so for example an open …
Option Expiration Cycles
Expiration Cycles Stock options trade in one of three quarterly cycles: January, February or March: Option Month Cycle What it really means: January Cycle …
American Express Example
Following is a 2005 research circular relating to the American Express (AXP) spin-off of Ameriprise (AMP) shares, abridged for illustration purposes. The …
Option Symbols and Expiration Cycles
The stock option symbol consists of 19 characters, all letters or numbers, which include the following information: Let’s take as an example a historical …
What Are The Top Finance Blogs?
A key to successful investing is having an informational edge over your competition of traders and investors. The best investment funds in the world employ …
Puts and Calls: Covered and Naked
Puts and calls can be naked or covered, and their deployment depends on the trader’s strategy and expectations for the underlying stock. The following …
How Are Options Values Calculated?
Main Factors Determining Option Price While a number of factors figure into option prices, stock option premiums are primarily affected by the movement of the …
Will The Stock Market Crash? (Infographic)
Will the stock market crash after a massive rally since March 2009, or does the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and NASDAQ have more to go? The …
Introduction to Options
Introduction to Options Before getting into covered calls, I have to cover some option basics. You will never master option trading until you are fluent in the …
When Will The Stock Market Crash?
Most people would claim the future is unpredictable, but is it really? Sometimes patterns emerge in stock markets that illuminate a seasonality. This is …
Why Don’t More People Write Covered Calls?
There are several reasons. For one, the general populace is largely unaware that such a thing exists. Only covered-call services such as at Markettamer.com …
The All-American Buy-and-Hold Investing Scam
Since I was a boy in the 1950s/60s, even long before, the public has been indoctrinated by Wall Street and the financial press to believe that there is one, …
How Did Robo Advisors Grow So Fast?
The growth in the robo-advisor industry has been astonishing since leading robo-advisors, such as Betterment, launched in 2008. In just a single decade, the …
3 Seasonally Weak Healthcare Stocks This Summer
Although the stock market has defied gravity for longer than most bears can tolerate, some healthcare stocks are entering a period of seasonal weakness. Acorda …
Options Trading Basics
Before getting into covered calls, I have to cover some option basics. You will never master option trading until you are fluent in the option basics. This …