18
Jun

Stock and Option Education advice? Online trading academy?

Posted by  in Friday, June 18th 2010   3 comments already   

Hello, I have been trading stocks for over a year and have been doing quite well but now I would like to take it to the next level and start trading options. I am seriously considering going online trading academy where they seem to have an excellent program althoough not cheap. Does anyone have any advice or input on these guys? s The courses are a lot of money (5gs for a week) but I feel that this education could enable me to make back my tuition in months maybe weeks. IS there any traders in the house with some advice?

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3 Comments Already

mygif
Karen Said,
June 18th, 2010 @10:50 pm  

I heard from someone last week who had taken the course. She is a very smart woman and had very good things to say about the trading, but — she came away extremely confused, frustrated, and overwhelmed.

It seems that they try to jam too much into a short period of time — if that’s your learning style, go for it. Most people learn better by learning blocks of information that fit together into a process.

mygif
zman492 Said,
June 18th, 2010 @11:11 pm  

You need to understand there are no secrets to trading options. It is well known and well publicized what are good practices and bad practices. That means they will not teach you anything useful that you could not learn for much less elsewhere

My recommendation is that you start by going through the free educational material at

http://www.cboe.com/LearnCenter/default.aspx

and

http://www.optionseducation.org/

After doing that I suggest you read at least one good book about options. My favorites are “Option Volatility & Pricing” by Natenberg and “Options as a Strategic Investment” by McMillan.

If you then want to pay to go to a class you will at least have background information which will help you get the most out of the class and reduce the chances of getting swamped with new information presented too quickly.

——

Edit:

I see another answer suggested you use

http://www.optiontradingpedia.com

I just spent a little time looking at that site and it is full of errors. Do not try to learn options from it.

Fur an example of the problems at the site, consider the paragraph

“Interpreting The VIX
The VIX is quoted as a percentage estimating the implied volatility of the market, which is the expected annualized movement of the S&P-500 over the next 30 days. When the VIX is at 30, it means that the S&P-500 might move as much as 2.5% (30% divided by 12 months) up or down over the next 30 days.”

http://www.optiontradingpedia.com/vix.htm

To convert an annual volatility to a monthly volatility, you divide by the square root of 12, or 3.46 so if the annualized volatility is 30%, the monthly volatility is 30/3.46, or roughly 3.5%.

Second, saying the 30 day volatility is 3.5% does not mean the S&P-500 might move as much as 3.5% up or down over the next 30 days. It means the model predicts the price will change by less than 3.5 percent (one standard deviation) 68% of time time, less than 7 percent (2 standard deviations) 95% of the time, and less than 10.5 percent (3 standard deviations) 99% of the time.The volatility is simply the standard deviation expresed as a percentage. (The distribution percentages can be looked up in a table such as the one at

http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/eda/section3/eda3671.htm .)

mygif
James Said,
June 18th, 2010 @11:49 pm  

Before your pay for options training, make sure you visit and study it for FREE first at http://www.optiontradingpedia.com where you get ALL of the options strategies and concepts explained for FREE. Then if you still think options is suitable for you, then research for courses.

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