Who here trades / has traded options through a broker? Looking to get started with an online brokerage

I trade options with TD Ameritrade. I got the dough discount rate, though I am not sure if it is really a "discount" once you hit higher volumes of trades. Seems to be alright. I can definitely see how it could be seen as riskier because you can lose a lot of money if you don't know whats going on.

Though if you trade stocks, I'd recommend getting option privileges, if for nothing else than to sell calls off the stock you plan on holding onto for a while.

I'll browse the thread for a bit if you want to ask questions, though I am new to it myself.

Dough is moving in 2017

TastyTrade finally decided they had enough giving advice away for free. Now they'll start their own brokerage and actually shill for themselves. The new TastyTrade brokerage isn't up yet and they will have to reconnected to all their shit like Dough. It sucks because I like those guys and I like ThinkorSwim. I hate applying for accounts it takes fucking forever and sometimes they're fags about giving access you want (TD Ameritrade was to me for a year at least) like the highest option trading or future access. Who knows when all of TastyTrade's shit will be up and running on their own and new built platforms. Shit's gay.

I assume they're continue to show TOS on their show

Yeah I saw that. I wonder how their broker is going to be like. When I first applied for TD Ameritrade, they gave me the lowest tier for option trading. So I went back and told them that it was disappointing to wait 3 months to reapply at a "chance" to get a higher tier. So they asked me for some documents proving my trading ability, and they gave me the Tier 2 margin account, which I am happy with. I am not writing any naked calls or puts anyway.

I wonder what their broker is going to be like though. If they have really cheap commissions, I might just move there. Maybe leave something in TD Ameritrade just to keep using ToS?

Yep, typical faggot lying his ass off on Veeky Forums again.

I use tradeking for options trading. Good platform and the app is decent.

Yeah I'm over the moon that they're doing this and the fact that they're allowing international customers too. If I could have signed up to use ThinkorSwim or Dough I would have done already.

Been paper trading options for about 10 months now and will join them as soon as I'm allowed.

I was doing my paper trading with Interactive Brokers and it just doesn't seem to keep track of the maths correctly so I've always had to keep a note of initial credits and roll credits as my positions move so it will be so nice to use their new platform which is created with exactly this style of trading. I guess it will be tailor made and perfectly cut out for this. Can't wait. I'm so ready.

I'm a professional options trader. Ask me anything.

Im looking to move up from robinhood and I was looking at Scotttrade because its got sweet AH and PM trading. Have you used the platform before? If so what do you think of it?

>I'd recommend getting option privileges, if for nothing else than to sell calls off the stock you plan on holding onto for a while.

Writing covered calls is a good way to get some extra gains when exiting a position too. Just call writing in general is a good way to boost returns and I'm always surprised it's not more popular.

>10 months

Congrats! How have you been doing?

I think the reason for that comes down to a few things:

>General ignorance about options
I personally started out trading with stocks, and it was frustrating. I didn't have a lot of capital, so my gains were small and it took forever to reach a decent profit point. No one ever told me about options. Hell do you know how I found out about options? I went to twin peaks with my friend and some dude that we held the door open for sat down next to us at the bar and spent the entire night telling us his life story and how easy it is to get rich in America. Dude was flashing back and forth between manic and depressive every 10 minutes. But I decided to trust this crazy foreign guy and research into options that he mentioned, and that's how I found out. So I imagine it is a lot harder to hear about. Everyone knows about stocks, but so many people (at least in my age group) don't even know options exist.

>Stereotypes about options
This one is pretty straightforward. Yes options have an ability to loose more in a one quick swoop, but people equate them to lottery tickets. They think it is too complicated and scary. And compared to stocks where the general knowledge truly is to buy low and sell high (the trick being able to figure out when that is), it is intimidating to learn which leads to the last thing:

>Barrier to entry
You can open an account in like 30 minutes and start trading stocks, but options require an application process and wait times. Just a little bit of effort required to break into the world, and you can keep a good portion of people out.

It is really unfortunate. I so far have taught two of my friends how option trading works, and they learned it extremely quick. They may not have advanced knowledge, but they know enough to where they could realistically make a few basic trades no problem.

Not quite naked puts. I also buy puts at a slightly lower price to limit my possible losses in the event I do lose

Yeah doing pretty well. Been really enjoying learning options, very rewarding. Can't imagine trying to trade stocks alone now, not when you can gain such an advantage by increasing your probabilities.

I think I was about 20-25% ROC and to be fair I was barely putting on any trades at first so that was in quite a short amount of time. But Paper trading isn't a completely fair gauge. Just really helps to practice and test out the methodology and see that it works. I'm confident about moving into doing it for real now.

If you have been doing it for 10 months, and you've been making money, I think you will do just fine in the real world.

So since you are waiting for them to open, do you know how much you will transfer to the broker to start out?

Just small at first. About 10k. Once I've built up my confidence some more and can prove it to myself I'll add another 10k and just keep building up from there.

Hey, that's great. So are you going to be doing both stocks and options then?

As someone who has traded options extensively in the past - DON'T. When it comes to options, you HAVE to get BOTH the direction of the stock price (is it going to rise, fall or remain flat) and the TIME PERIOD it takes for that move to initiate in order to profit. For example, you buy calls on this stock. In order to profit you calculate that you need a minimum 10% rise within 30 days in order to profit. Your prediction turns out to be correct and the price indeed rises - but the price rises by only 8% and this happens just a few days before expiry. You will not only not profit from this trade, your option will most likely expire worthless by the entire premium you paid EVEN IF you were right on the direction of the trade. I just gave an example of a call trade here. Now imagine if you were selling options. Yeah, you'll be fucked even harder if the price doesn't rise/fall/remain flat exactly in 30 days as you predicted.

You simply can't consistently win with options. Most successful option traders just get rich from a one off black swan trade and then they retire, write books with the usual "just bee yourself" advice, or become an """analyst""" for CNBC or tastytrade.

Honestly, you are way better off just initiating ordinary leveraged trades where you have more control on your take profits and stop losses.

Everything. Stocks, options, futures (when I've learned some more). I plan to just keep learning the domain until the end of my days.

Yeah that's good. Hey you probably are ahead of me then. I don't know futures. I've only focused on options for now. Do you have any specific goals with trading? Grow wealth, make a little monthly income, for fun...?

All of the above. But yeah I don't know enough about futures yet either and they're quite a bit bigger and scarier. But I've done quite a few futures options trades which have worked out well. I doubt I'll have enough capital to be able to actually trade them for a while yet anyway.

Simply don't use options to bet. However you can write credit spread and iron condors to use time decay/volatility to your advantage. Write them one standard deviation out and you have about a 70% probability of max profit. Manage your stops and you can do well.

Hey well, I wish you the best, and hopefully tasty will open up with no problems and you can start trading as soon as possible.

yeah I know the odds. But more often I have been ripped off by my broker due to large spreads on some options

Yeah I can understand that. A big spread and an unfortunate burst can do serious damage to an account. I still believe options are useful, but you have to take into account your risk tolerance. Like I have a few large spreads, but they are far out of the money in hopes that I won't get shafted by huge market shifts. It might still happen to me, but that's the unfortunate part of the game.