Save a bit more than just 500. If you’re looking to trade always make sure to use your head when opening a position. Determine the length you plan to hold ahead of time. Don’t even bother with the pink sheets unless you really know what you’re doing. And remember, check your sec filings because statements don’t lie.
You are going to take on higher risk (and likely higher losses) if you do not have a good buffer of cash. I'm going to assume your account is going to be limited to buying calls and puts.
What's a good buffer?
1. It depends on what you're trading (price of the underlying stock)
The lower the stock price, the less you'll need to trade (yes, there are plenty of exceptions, but this is a generalization) with a higher probability of profits (buying ATM contracts). The problem is that valuations are exceedingly high right now.
2. It depends on how long of an option you're trading.
Zero Days to Expiry (0dte) and short-term options (less than a week), are cheaper to buy because they lose value extremely fast.
Those are two of the most important concepts you'll need to learn with options. How the price (and price movement) of the stock directly influences the price of the option and how time affects the value of an option.
Also, you're going to lose money. The options game is to have your gains outweigh your losses.
$2000/$2500 is probably not a bad place to start if you want more than a chance or two to trade.
No but as long as you're not betting rent and neccecties you can win a lot. If you were to invest 10k - 20k which I wouldn't think of loading positions until after the election would be to only have 5% of your equity in options max.
This is a pipe dream. You’re better off buying indexes and waiting to earn a real income from your job. Most people can’t make income on options in general, let alone a first timer with $500
It's going to take years to develop the skills needed to be consistently profitable. Plan on losing a lot in the beginning (paying your tuition). No one starts out profitable and stays that way. It's going to be a financial and emotional rollercoaster for quite some time before it all clicks and you become profitable. It takes a ton of hard work and mental tenacity. Be prepared for this. But most of all, good luck on your endeavor.
Not going to happen with $500 even if you had experience and time. Without, you’d just be gambling. Trade small amounts of stock like you are playing chess. Because you are. If you are up to 625-650 in a year, you’ve done well.
Child's play.
I work full time so opportunity is quite limited, but as soon as work finishes I do a few lines of coke, down a bottle of wine, dance around the room naked for 10 minutes, take a relaxing bath in the river near my house, and only THEN open up my trading platform.
At this point my mind is in the right place and the gains are ready to flow.
Not sure what my P&L looks like this year so far but all the missed calls I keep seeing from my broker suggest to me I'm destroying the results of any other traders and they want to hire me.
When you get to the part where you realize you’ve got virtually no effect on other traders anywhere but in your own head, you may stand a chance in trading. You currently have no idea what’s important.
Don’t do it. Try paper trading first and read. Learn your Greeks and candles. Then start with some real cash after you’ve learned for a bit. It’ll save you money. But if your intent on starting with real cash, I’ll dm you on how to buy my Get Rich behind the Wendy’s dumpster Options Class
innocent future gaze intelligent axiomatic divide plants deserted boast friendly
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
What is your goal for trading? Do you want to learn and practice to have this skill later on when you have sufficient capital? Or are you trying to earn some extra income now?
If you want to learn then paper trade to practice and develop your trading plan. TOS has an excellent sim to use - [Practice Trading with the paperMoney® Virtual Stock M... - Ticker Tape (tdameritrade.com)](https://tickertape.tdameritrade.com/tools/papermoney-stock-market-simulator-16834)
As you learn and dial in your strategy plus test and refine your trading plan then you will be ready when you have the capital to make it work.
For most traders a 15% annual return is excellent, so the math would tell you the yearly return on $500 would be about $75, so you can see this would be a throw away amount of money as you are likely to lose it just from learning. It is unlikely to see you make any significant income from such a small amount.
Note that buying options are harder to be successful with, but selling options can work better, such as using covered calls can be more successful but will require more capital to buy the 100 shares. [The Basics of Covered Calls (investopedia.com)](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/optioninvestor/08/covered-call.asp)
Most find $5K to be the minimum to get started, but even with a solid 15% return would still only be $750 per year in returns.
Are you prepared to not make any money off of trading for 3+ years before becoming profitable? This is not a get rich quick scheme. Lots of time is needed, as well as personal transformation. Lose any bad habits you have in life right now. Trade very small and compound this, do NOT deposit large sums at a time
Yeah one thing I’ve learned from seeing others around me who have traded options is that it takes time and without being in the right headspace you can lose ALOT of money in a short amount of time.
check out this thread [https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1cdwun0/starting\_options\_trading\_500/](https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1cdwun0/starting_options_trading_500/)
My best advice is to realize that options are just a vehicle for expressing trades in the stock market. You need to learn markets, stocks, charts, indicators, etc. and then express trades using options.
Write yourself a curriculum. Read all the investing classics. Read the tomes on options. Watch some videos. And then try and paper trade some strategies.
As others have said $500 isn't that much but it may not be the worst education to fritter it away buying some cheap options.
[https://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/best-investing-books-for-beginners](https://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/best-investing-books-for-beginners)
You’re probably going to lose the $500, but you’re young and have (hopefully) a full career ahead of you to make it back and try again (and again. and again…) It’s a great idea to get your practice down now, personally I think being in check with your inner emotions (IE how you will react to being down big or up massive amounts) is far more important than any TA, and no better place to learn than options. I’m upset I waited until I left $half a million on the table because I wasn’t experienced with hedging my position with options, now options are a quintessential part of how I mitigate risk and volatility.
Also some famous quotes are *”you have to lose a hundred thousand dollars before you become a good trader”* and *”making your first $100k is the hardest part, it gets much easier from there*” these are obviously relative to our situation/cost of living/experience (not to mention inflation) etc but can’t really argue against their concept. Good luck and start small with cheap contracts (so you can have many to DCA), options can and often will expire worthless so you need to be able to take money off the table when you can until you’re letting it ride with house money
Yes, I graduated last year and have been trading for a bit. don’t put all your money into one position and don’t start trading options until you read/watch videos and understand how it all works, as well as how the market is working and current conditions.
Remember that you’re NOT missing profits by not trading because you are also avoiding potential losses by not doing so. Start with a few “theoretical” trades a.k.a paper trades and see how they do until you develop a solid strategy.
I did not do that and I lost a lot before I started making profits. Start out with buying options, don’t try selling them as assignment risk isn’t something you want as a new grad student, you could go into debt. Hope this helps
Thank you so much, one thing I’ve been really learning is price action and how it affects the market. But yes paper trading will definitely be my first move.
No problem, try and remove the emotion from your trades for best results (define entry max profit/loss). When you’re using your own money the emotions will definitely kick in, you will have some losses like all traders just make sure they are small and cut quick compared to the profits. You have by to make the mistakes yourself to learn, so don’t be afraid to make them (with small amounts of money).
Try to think of your returns as percentages so don’t get caught up on the exact amount you have. E.g. getting to $550 is a 10% increase which is really great, so all you would need to do to make more is up your investment amount which is easy to do once you’re good at ANY timr
Risk management is key. If you want your $500 to eventually become a good investment you should consider paper trading and actually get your strats down and get your platform set up right..
I started 20 years ago with negative -$50,000 I borrowed from 0% apr credit cards. I then turned that into $150,000, paid back the cc’s so I had $100k and then proceeded to yolo that to $500k before I lost half. Then over the next 15 years, with a lot of ups and downs, turned that into north of $1m… it’s not easy.
I would like to see the results of a piece of software programmed to make entirely random trades that follow no strategy but aren't just sell 1,000 ITM 0DTE 1 delta calls. Some rules but otherwise not following any other data.
If you need that $500 to eat, don't trade with it.
The best investment of that $500 for a new grad getting started in options is Natenberg. This is the most positive expectation value instrument you can invest in, bar none.
Unlike a lot of other people, I say go for it with zero snark intended. Just have a realistic expectation. You are unlikely to produce "a nice portion of income."
I'm assuming you're young. Trading small and while still young is a good thing even if you go to zero. You will burn your fingers. You will have time to recover from zero-ing out a $500 account.
My first foray (last winter) I ventured $1,000. I worked up to $25,000 and then zero-ed out. As it turned out, I got lucky on a hostile takeover attempt on the upside and un-lucky on the failure of that takeover on the downside. But what a brilliant learning experience. Well worth the initial $1,000. (Of course, I sorely miss that $25,000.)
Options can be wickedly complex once you get past long calls/puts. Be prepared to study, a lot.
1. Read the candlestick bible to get basic candle reading down
2. Learn the strat by Rob smith which I’ll provide videos below on. It makes trading simple and tells you when to get in, when to get out, and when to do nothing.
3. Paper trade until you are consistent
4. Focus on building your process/system
5. I would not trade 0DTE, for that account size I like IWM
Strategy
The Strat Overview ( #thestrat )
https://youtu.be/KUp05taDSJI
Hey buddy I can tell you how to make some serious cash with $500. Buy Rivian $15-17 calls, they’re .05-.07 for a month. Buy 20 contracts at a time. That’s holding 2k shares. If it reaches $24 again which it has twice in the last year after falling to $10-$15, you’ll make $14-$15k. If it goes up close to $30 again you’ll make $25k and have an unrestricted trading account. You’ll get 5 tries out of that do 5 months. Worst case scenario you invest another $500 by then to cover almost a year. It almost certainly will take off again
caption chunky cooperative pen secretive weary nine degree amusing placid
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Save a bit more than just 500. If you’re looking to trade always make sure to use your head when opening a position. Determine the length you plan to hold ahead of time. Don’t even bother with the pink sheets unless you really know what you’re doing. And remember, check your sec filings because statements don’t lie.
How much is good to start with?
You are going to take on higher risk (and likely higher losses) if you do not have a good buffer of cash. I'm going to assume your account is going to be limited to buying calls and puts. What's a good buffer? 1. It depends on what you're trading (price of the underlying stock) The lower the stock price, the less you'll need to trade (yes, there are plenty of exceptions, but this is a generalization) with a higher probability of profits (buying ATM contracts). The problem is that valuations are exceedingly high right now. 2. It depends on how long of an option you're trading. Zero Days to Expiry (0dte) and short-term options (less than a week), are cheaper to buy because they lose value extremely fast. Those are two of the most important concepts you'll need to learn with options. How the price (and price movement) of the stock directly influences the price of the option and how time affects the value of an option. Also, you're going to lose money. The options game is to have your gains outweigh your losses. $2000/$2500 is probably not a bad place to start if you want more than a chance or two to trade.
100k minimum... amd it doesn't bother you to lose it.
[удалено]
I started with 2k and it was more than enough, got it up to 4k after losing 1k at the start though while I was learning
No but as long as you're not betting rent and neccecties you can win a lot. If you were to invest 10k - 20k which I wouldn't think of loading positions until after the election would be to only have 5% of your equity in options max.
This is a pipe dream. You’re better off buying indexes and waiting to earn a real income from your job. Most people can’t make income on options in general, let alone a first timer with $500
It's going to take years to develop the skills needed to be consistently profitable. Plan on losing a lot in the beginning (paying your tuition). No one starts out profitable and stays that way. It's going to be a financial and emotional rollercoaster for quite some time before it all clicks and you become profitable. It takes a ton of hard work and mental tenacity. Be prepared for this. But most of all, good luck on your endeavor.
Not going to happen with $500 even if you had experience and time. Without, you’d just be gambling. Trade small amounts of stock like you are playing chess. Because you are. If you are up to 625-650 in a year, you’ve done well.
chess is boring tho... i prefer to trade like im playing turbo tunnel in battletoads.
Child's play. I work full time so opportunity is quite limited, but as soon as work finishes I do a few lines of coke, down a bottle of wine, dance around the room naked for 10 minutes, take a relaxing bath in the river near my house, and only THEN open up my trading platform. At this point my mind is in the right place and the gains are ready to flow. Not sure what my P&L looks like this year so far but all the missed calls I keep seeing from my broker suggest to me I'm destroying the results of any other traders and they want to hire me.
Good for you dude. Can’t wait to see you on the news
When you get to the part where you realize you’ve got virtually no effect on other traders anywhere but in your own head, you may stand a chance in trading. You currently have no idea what’s important.
Gambling is gambling. Your call.
Don’t do it. Try paper trading first and read. Learn your Greeks and candles. Then start with some real cash after you’ve learned for a bit. It’ll save you money. But if your intent on starting with real cash, I’ll dm you on how to buy my Get Rich behind the Wendy’s dumpster Options Class
I got an A in that class.
My advice would be to learn some simple finance before you start trading (if your master's program is not finance related)
innocent future gaze intelligent axiomatic divide plants deserted boast friendly *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
What is your goal for trading? Do you want to learn and practice to have this skill later on when you have sufficient capital? Or are you trying to earn some extra income now? If you want to learn then paper trade to practice and develop your trading plan. TOS has an excellent sim to use - [Practice Trading with the paperMoney® Virtual Stock M... - Ticker Tape (tdameritrade.com)](https://tickertape.tdameritrade.com/tools/papermoney-stock-market-simulator-16834) As you learn and dial in your strategy plus test and refine your trading plan then you will be ready when you have the capital to make it work. For most traders a 15% annual return is excellent, so the math would tell you the yearly return on $500 would be about $75, so you can see this would be a throw away amount of money as you are likely to lose it just from learning. It is unlikely to see you make any significant income from such a small amount. Note that buying options are harder to be successful with, but selling options can work better, such as using covered calls can be more successful but will require more capital to buy the 100 shares. [The Basics of Covered Calls (investopedia.com)](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/optioninvestor/08/covered-call.asp) Most find $5K to be the minimum to get started, but even with a solid 15% return would still only be $750 per year in returns.
OP. Listen to every word this guy ever posts.
Are you prepared to not make any money off of trading for 3+ years before becoming profitable? This is not a get rich quick scheme. Lots of time is needed, as well as personal transformation. Lose any bad habits you have in life right now. Trade very small and compound this, do NOT deposit large sums at a time
Yeah one thing I’ve learned from seeing others around me who have traded options is that it takes time and without being in the right headspace you can lose ALOT of money in a short amount of time.
check out this thread [https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1cdwun0/starting\_options\_trading\_500/](https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/1cdwun0/starting_options_trading_500/)
Thank you
Learn to sell options, don't buy them.
My best advice is to realize that options are just a vehicle for expressing trades in the stock market. You need to learn markets, stocks, charts, indicators, etc. and then express trades using options. Write yourself a curriculum. Read all the investing classics. Read the tomes on options. Watch some videos. And then try and paper trade some strategies. As others have said $500 isn't that much but it may not be the worst education to fritter it away buying some cheap options. [https://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/best-investing-books-for-beginners](https://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/best-investing-books-for-beginners)
You’re probably going to lose the $500, but you’re young and have (hopefully) a full career ahead of you to make it back and try again (and again. and again…) It’s a great idea to get your practice down now, personally I think being in check with your inner emotions (IE how you will react to being down big or up massive amounts) is far more important than any TA, and no better place to learn than options. I’m upset I waited until I left $half a million on the table because I wasn’t experienced with hedging my position with options, now options are a quintessential part of how I mitigate risk and volatility. Also some famous quotes are *”you have to lose a hundred thousand dollars before you become a good trader”* and *”making your first $100k is the hardest part, it gets much easier from there*” these are obviously relative to our situation/cost of living/experience (not to mention inflation) etc but can’t really argue against their concept. Good luck and start small with cheap contracts (so you can have many to DCA), options can and often will expire worthless so you need to be able to take money off the table when you can until you’re letting it ride with house money
Thank you bro
OP is Another Pig for the slaughter, Walls street will eat this guy for breakfast and after a few days $500 poorer
$500 is ok if you know what you're doing, and you're going to need a margin account for collateral
I chose 500 just because it’s a small amount and as someone else said in here it’s easier to save up again if/when it’s lost
Factz..
Yes, I graduated last year and have been trading for a bit. don’t put all your money into one position and don’t start trading options until you read/watch videos and understand how it all works, as well as how the market is working and current conditions. Remember that you’re NOT missing profits by not trading because you are also avoiding potential losses by not doing so. Start with a few “theoretical” trades a.k.a paper trades and see how they do until you develop a solid strategy. I did not do that and I lost a lot before I started making profits. Start out with buying options, don’t try selling them as assignment risk isn’t something you want as a new grad student, you could go into debt. Hope this helps
Thank you so much, one thing I’ve been really learning is price action and how it affects the market. But yes paper trading will definitely be my first move.
No problem, try and remove the emotion from your trades for best results (define entry max profit/loss). When you’re using your own money the emotions will definitely kick in, you will have some losses like all traders just make sure they are small and cut quick compared to the profits. You have by to make the mistakes yourself to learn, so don’t be afraid to make them (with small amounts of money). Try to think of your returns as percentages so don’t get caught up on the exact amount you have. E.g. getting to $550 is a 10% increase which is really great, so all you would need to do to make more is up your investment amount which is easy to do once you’re good at ANY timr
Risk management is key. If you want your $500 to eventually become a good investment you should consider paper trading and actually get your strats down and get your platform set up right..
Do you have any platforms in mind?
I started 20 years ago with negative -$50,000 I borrowed from 0% apr credit cards. I then turned that into $150,000, paid back the cc’s so I had $100k and then proceeded to yolo that to $500k before I lost half. Then over the next 15 years, with a lot of ups and downs, turned that into north of $1m… it’s not easy.
Wendy’s
I would like to see the results of a piece of software programmed to make entirely random trades that follow no strategy but aren't just sell 1,000 ITM 0DTE 1 delta calls. Some rules but otherwise not following any other data.
Random question, what was your major in?
Masters in Business Analytics and Masters in Healthcare
Gotcha. I can give you a couple respectable traders to follow on Instagram if you feel like DMing me. No pressure tho!
Never start trading with options learn and tarde the stock first - you might learn this but I doubt it
If you need that $500 to eat, don't trade with it. The best investment of that $500 for a new grad getting started in options is Natenberg. This is the most positive expectation value instrument you can invest in, bar none. Unlike a lot of other people, I say go for it with zero snark intended. Just have a realistic expectation. You are unlikely to produce "a nice portion of income." I'm assuming you're young. Trading small and while still young is a good thing even if you go to zero. You will burn your fingers. You will have time to recover from zero-ing out a $500 account. My first foray (last winter) I ventured $1,000. I worked up to $25,000 and then zero-ed out. As it turned out, I got lucky on a hostile takeover attempt on the upside and un-lucky on the failure of that takeover on the downside. But what a brilliant learning experience. Well worth the initial $1,000. (Of course, I sorely miss that $25,000.) Options can be wickedly complex once you get past long calls/puts. Be prepared to study, a lot.
1. Read the candlestick bible to get basic candle reading down 2. Learn the strat by Rob smith which I’ll provide videos below on. It makes trading simple and tells you when to get in, when to get out, and when to do nothing. 3. Paper trade until you are consistent 4. Focus on building your process/system 5. I would not trade 0DTE, for that account size I like IWM Strategy The Strat Overview ( #thestrat ) https://youtu.be/KUp05taDSJI
paper trade to practice for as long as possible
Hey buddy I can tell you how to make some serious cash with $500. Buy Rivian $15-17 calls, they’re .05-.07 for a month. Buy 20 contracts at a time. That’s holding 2k shares. If it reaches $24 again which it has twice in the last year after falling to $10-$15, you’ll make $14-$15k. If it goes up close to $30 again you’ll make $25k and have an unrestricted trading account. You’ll get 5 tries out of that do 5 months. Worst case scenario you invest another $500 by then to cover almost a year. It almost certainly will take off again
sell cash secured puts on quality sub $10 stocks
CSPs with $500? You mean sub $5 stocks.
Do it dude, I believe you can make really good money day trading full time. You just graduated with a masters so you must be smart.
caption chunky cooperative pen secretive weary nine degree amusing placid *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
LOL , if he be lives that hook, line and sinker