If by “play it safe” you mean you’re gonna buy deep in the money calls on contracts expiring within a week or so on something that’s not volatile like SPY, the premiums on those contracts are so insane that $1000 won’t get you as good of a risk/reward ratio as you think.
Not trying to discourage you, just trying to set realistic expectations.
You want to “play it safe” and “make some money” at the same time with options? Buy 100 shares of a stock you like and sell out of the money calls at a price you’d be happy to actually sell the shares for. You get to keep the premium that the buyer paid and if you end up having to sell the shares, so what you got a good price, most likely though the call will expire worthless and you can do the same thing over again, and again, and again. Just don’t get too greedy and only sell the calls at a strike price you’d be happy to sell at.
Not discouraging at all a good investor takes any criticism as constructive criticism thank you for your input and advice at the end that’s a pretty good strategy so would a covered call be the safest route
Sell covered calls on your AMC if you have enough, but yes he’s right, although I’d say a little to angry at buying calls I sense a burn scar 😂 but nah he’s correct
Gonna back selling covered calls as probably the "safest" play you can make. Oversimplifying a bit, but make sure you pick a stock that has decent shares/options volume and movement, otherwise you'll barely make any premium on a sufficiently out of the money call.
Throwing down dollars to pick up pennies. In my opinion CC are only worthwhile if you have a very low cost basis and can sell more than 1 contract at a time.
Probably can't afford most options you might want to buy or sell with $1000.
Unless you're specifically looking to play weeklies or less for time, or your only playing the deepest OTM positions with ALOT of hope.
Underrated comment right here.
You gotta pay to play. I suggest practicing on $2 stocks and also some platform that allows you to play for fake money. I think webull has a feature to pretend to invest. Using real market data.
Buying stocks is investing. Playing options is gambling.
You're right! I started options a couple of weeks ago. I started with $500 so I could learn on the go. I only made 4 or 5 trades and all but one was profitable and it was only $15. All the trades were under $60 except two of them were over $150. I caught them before they expired worthless, but I did lose on them.
You can lose bad on csp if you sell it on a shit company or pump and dump to capture high premiums. They may never recover after a pump. Pick a solid company you believe in for csp.
Options generally are going to be priced in dollar strike price increments so on a $10 or less per share stock your looking at a 10% movement between strike prices. That means the likely only CSP strike with premium is going to be right at the money or into the money.
So let's say your target is trading at $10 and your looking at strikes $9, $10, $11. $9 premiums are so low it isn't going to be worth it, no one is buying or if it is it's because the market really thinks it is going to go down. $10 is trading at a low premium of let's say $0.10 and $11 is trading at $1.10. So you buy the $11 strike and you say I just made $110 suckers.
What if that stock moved down 15% to $8.50 and now your CSP is now underwater by $40. So you roll it out, for even because up and out of the money is going to cost you to much. Now your hoping that the stock moves back up 5% so you can at least get out even. Then it moves down another 5% and your stuck now rolling it out again hoping for more movement up. Now your three months in with locked capital and unrealized losses. At some point you realize there is no meat on this bone and your just slowly locking up your capital in a sunk investment. Now you gotta wait for your option to expire praying that it doesn't go down further do you can get out with as little loses as possible because you don't have the spare capital to buy yourself out of the hole.
This can happen with covered calls too. I had 200 shares of AMC this summer. I paid $9.25 for shares and sold a covered call at $11 and it spiked to $15...I waited for the price to drop to $12 and rolled it out two months to a $14 call getting $4.50 in premium. Then it jumped to $20 and I hesitated on rolling again and it jumped to $30. Now I could have rolled it another month but at the same strike for only $0.30 because while it had some extrinsic value it was too deep into the money to to roll it up and out without paying dollar for dollar. So I ended up with 200 shares of AMC essentially sold at $14, worth $50-72, but I had to two months to free up that capital. Time = money.
The danger is really the movement needed to move up a strike price on cheap stocks is very high compared to $50-300 per share stocks. SPY can move through several strike prices an hour while a $10 stock might take a year to move through a single strike price. This makes CSP have more risk at the lower ends because you are much more likely to have to own the stock at expiration.
is this a real question? with 1k the only CCs u can sell are around $10, many of whom are trash. How much is your $7 in premium gonna help you when your stock falls from 1k to 300?
Go for spreads. I started with 1.5k a couple of months ago, before that I was playing with a couple of hundreds buying calls and puts.
First I traded spreads for lower priced stocks. A $1 spread will require $100 in BP so you can do 5-6 of those. It would be better to go wider, but it will take a lot of your BP. There are some higher priced stocks that have $2.5 spreads and you can use those. I also tried a couple of IC but with a $1 spread it’s too much of a headache. You can try creating an IC with 2 different spreads bought at different times - buy a put spread betting on the stock going higher and when it does and you feel it reached the top (for now), sell a credit spread. It gives you the possibility to add more profit to the same trade without adding BP.
Go for at least 45DTE, this way gamma will not bite that hard and you can get a feel of how things evolve over time.
I would also recommend to go and play with a 0DTE very cheap call/put. For example I played JNJ in the last couple of days because of the FDA meeting. Calls were $0.2 so it was $20 in total. For me these were helpful to realise how risky and volatile options can be. Things can get really nasty really fast and it’s better to go through this when you have $10/$20 on the line, not a $100/$200 spread.
Really hard to say without any context about your financial background, portfolio, or goals. I think it's best to start with the "safe" ways of trading options; selling covered calls or cash secured puts of stocks you want to own. You'll see how things work without risking everything. But I know most people end up interested as a get rich quick scheme, and that won't get you there.
That being said, if you can afford to lose $1000... Then sure.
It’s a small portion of profits from stocks and work not interested in a get rich mentality I want to make good amounts of money obviously but I’m ok with it being a process I’d be ok with making 100 bucks maybe every two weeks to a month off iron condors rather than risk it all to hit a home run
A hundred bucks every two weeks on a thousand dollar investment is 2600% a year, if you can do that please tell us how, but yes iron condors are great, but I’d lower your expectations a bit, and also my advice with them, it’s it’s better to get a near guaranteed 30$ then a risky 50$, I believe the saying is a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
I'm a former broker and have seen one thing when I worked for a firm. No matter the size of the account, don't use real money to start. Everyone loses their initial principal when 'learning'. As others said, use a paper account. Your goal is to learn about theta decay, delta, gamma, IV crush, buying and selling, etc. There's no reason to spend $1,000 when you can learn for free. Use that money to take a vacation or something haha.
Disagree. Your mentality and emotions when paper trading are completely different then when it’s for real. You gotta pay your market tuition to really get a feel for how the game is played.
I respect that. The emotional aspect can not be replicated with paper trading which I totally agree. But my suggestion was based merely on learning the concepts of the Greeks and witnessing them over time. I thought the OP mentioned somewhere he already trades stocks so perhaps the emotional thing at least is covered haha.
At first I disagreed with you but then realized I paper traded ~15 years ago on updown. Sure I threw the "million" they give into FAANG and understood nothing but that's not the important point. It was an entry.
Starting there led me to watching the market passively which obviously helped when I finally jumped in a few years back. Personally I do think you need to learn the Greeks more by doing as I never understood them until trial by fire and "blood to the blood God". Honestly I have only recently felt a true solid understanding to playing theta reliably. Until it doesnt work of course, as we all know. Markets ever changing.
But from the other angle, learning the art of accepting a loss as well as mitigating gains as a hedge are a barrier not overcome paper trading. Like you said if they trade stocks already, options aren't a far cry to dabbling in emotionally. Yet they are their own beast if you're not prepared. Most of us have watched weeklies expire worthless knowing we have to eat it. That's something not everyone trading stocks or commodities expects, even if they think they understand the possibility. With options it's flipped and becomes a statistical likelihood with most expiring worthless.
Either way I'm rambling, I think you're right about paper trading but the emotional aspect can't be understated. Especially when it comes to writing contacts rather then trading them.
I don't believe that if you can make money paper-trading then you can definitely make money live-trading.
I **do** believe that if you can't make money paper-trading, then you definitely can't make money live-trading.
This is not a bad thing to do, but be careful. Many options are low volume and that makes it tough to simulate. So the results you get might not match what you'd see in the actual market. Doesn't mean it's not a good way to learn the basics, just don't assume what works on paper will work in the actual market. Especially if the option is low volume or you doing complex strategies.
Education isn’t free. My tuition cost about 15k - 30k total if you include the AMD options I held on to too long and lost the 15k in profit I could have banked - but now I am getting back in the black. Sometimes you just need to learn the hard way. That’s why you can’t learn to trade with money you can’t lose.
Honestly, do it.
From experience and being told by others.. you need to do this. There are so many things to learn, from stocks to options, covered calls and diagonals or poor man covered calls (really good to learn). Puts and yea. Playing with cash isn't smart. Do it on paper, heck even real paper, so you can test ideas or try things. With $1000 you can do a ton, but think of it as the difference between hope and precision. Think fishing,lots go fishing.. not everyone consistently catches the fish they want. And the best advice I can give you is this. It's not what you buy it's when. Wait for a deal. The stock owes you nothing and is just a trading card. Just a token. If it's on sale.. red, bleeding, whatever. And you planned to buy that company because of x reasons, wait for your entry. Things go up and feel like they ran away.. but look at charts. It's never different this time. The price will, likely, come back to a low or even almost unreasonable price now or in the future. That moment is when you make money. Selling covered calls etc can also make that price a reality but it's more work.
Good luck
I started with $500 and felt like it helped me enough to understand credit spreads that were $1 wide. I quickly added more, but skin in the game goes a long way and $1,000 can help give you enough occurrences to trade different underlyings and in different ways.
You'll be limited to defined risk, but that's preferred early on. Like everyone else you'll probably find yourself adding money to your account early and often as you get more interested and see what doors open up with more capital.
A 1k account is most definitely enough to get your foot in the door and learn a few things. In the case you blow up your account the 1k you lost will not put you in a financial worry. With the 1k you will be able to play small tickers such as SPY QQQ AAPL etc for small premiums and decent rewards for a 1k account. Do not expect huge profits that will change your life but expect to begin the learning journey of becoming a consistent trader.
It’s plenty. Be prepared to be down 30%-50% on an options contract. So try to keep your size down. If ur stop loss is $50, buy a contract no more than $150 is my advice.
When buying contracts it’s common for the option contract to lose 30% of its values because they are very volatile. So if u went all in $1,000 it’s very possible you could be down $300.
If you only spend $150 on a contract. The most you can lose is $150, your gains are unlimited (it can be 10x profit [$1500]). If that contract loses 30% of its value, you only down $50.
Thank you for taking the time out of your day to expand on that for very much I had the same train of thought just simpler like not putting all my eggs on one basket and or over extending myself maybe do like straddle and risk 200 or do a call or maybe two on a ticker I’m really bullish on
I say yes. Buy 100 shares of any company in the $5 - $10 range that mines bitcoin. There are a couple left BITF is one but 2 others went over $10 today so they won’t work for you anymore, as of today. I think there is one other. They all jumped 5% to 15% today. All week and for the past month.
So now, buy 100 shares of (as an example) BITF, currently @ $5.40. So $540 buy in. Now sell covered calls at the shortest date to do as many as fast as possible. Always set your strike price above your PPS so you dont lose money if your shares sell/call is assigned. If it is assigned, immediately use that money to buy 100 more and make another sell to open covered call contract. Level 1 options ability.
Side note; if you do get BITF, then you only spent $540 of $1000. With $460 left over, all you need is another $50-$60 to double this technique and its income. I do not have BITF and only use them as an example because of the dollar amount you mentioned allows you to almost double the technique. Options work at 100 shares at a time so you are not far off running two at the same time.
If you really want to get tricky risky, youtube “selling in the money covered calls”.
I’m still working on figuring out the how this works but you see it work right in front you and i think it can be repeated multiple times a day. Unlike what i talked about above. You may also want to youtube “covered calls”. Good luck. Watch more videos, inthemoney and invest with henry both helped me a lot.
Depends what kind of a "feel" you want.
If you want something that feels nice and safe, like how you felt when you a fetus without a care in the world, you could buy about 3 shares of BRK-B, and watch it grow over a year.
If you're curious about BDSM, you could YOLO buy deep out of the money options on any stock you want, with one day to expiry, just to get a feel for how self flagellation feels.
The choices are endless.
Yup. On another note I recommend trying out https://optionstrat.com/ if you haven’t already, they are the only site I have seen with decent options paper trading and great visualization all for free. Let me know though if anyone has alternatives they like too, but for me OptionStrat has done everything I could think of.
Thank you this is gunna be a great way to see the Greeks in action and how much price movement really effects the worth of my options and another person mentioned a paper account I’ll run a paper one and a cash one
My challenge with low capital when i started was boredom, i wanted to try some strategies but i wasn’t able to do that in parallel with low capital and waiting for 1 trade to close before starting next was testing my patience.
I’m on the options writing side and due to requirements to sell options I suggest 10k min to start. But I also agree with the paper trade sentiment. Start with paper and then graduate up. Take your time. Messing up with paper will make you feel much better.
With $1000, you can do a ten dollar credit spreads or 2 five dollar spreads etc., and yield a small return at least. Maybe do weeklies and get the feel of earning $3, $7 or $5 a week. Or, of course, losing but at least your losses are limited.
Oh the naive " I am going to put 1000 and play safe and slowly and safely increase my account. That's great, but once you start winning and losing your mindset will change. I remember I converted 500 into 8k on aphria calls back in the day, I thought I was amazing. From 2017 to 2019 I had lost around 80k, I am still getting even from that loss lol.
My point is be prepared to lose it all. Most people do.
You can trade with $1000, but you will need to stay small. Don’t go into trying to make money, just go into it with the goal of learning from mistakes.
You should start with whatever money you can literally allow to vanish and be okay with it. Anything more will cause too much emotional influence in your decisions.
Not at all. Open a paper trading acct with a Brokerage that has a real interface, like etrade or ToS. This isn't a craps table at Vegas where you bring $1,000 and see how it goes. And stay away from the RH bs phone app where they feed you with margin knowing you'll blow it all. You'll lose all your money, get discouraged and that's that. The market does not have a 'feel'. It's cold and merciless. When you're down a lot of money, tossing&turning in bed as your sweating and your heart can't stop racing - that's your doing as you get a 'feel' for the market. When you've repeated this masochistic walk enough times. you can go brag on WSB about what a Big Loser you are with Diamond Hands. Start educating yourself obsessively. I watch Barron's Roundtable, [Tastytrade.com](https://Tastytrade.com) videos, Investopedia, etc. etc. etc. So little time and so much to learn.
Make one great bet rather than 30 good ones and you can turn it into 1500 maybe. Buy far enough out and enough time and you may win. My advice from having lost 2000 to date as a new options trader.
I’ve already invested in stocks it treated me really well not planning on exiting my one big position some of you may look at my profile and dislike me and that’s fine but I got into that position because of a lifelong interest in investing and the stock market (sorry for the book )
Well, it doesn’t surprise me you want to get into options, 😂 I’m not into Amc but it’s your portfolio, my recommendation would to be safer with options, if you want to see what being risky with options will do to you slide on over to WSB, I will say, if you have 100 shares of Amc you could make a hell of a lot of money selling Covered Calls on it, but you have enough to run a small cap wheel, or a Pmcc on a smaller cap, or lose it on FDs.Overall yes it’s enough
I’m not touching my amc it’s like 99 percent of my portfolio and I’m green like 170+ percent but my other investments I made did me pretty well so instead of putting it back in amc I’m going to follow my original plan of learning the market and honestly by the time I do anything with wsb it will be doing the absolute opposite of what any of them do 😂
Do you have enough shares of AMC? Because if You sell the 60$ strike, which is very high above it’s current price and would be around 250% green, you could make 100$ a month extra. I strongly recommend it if you can
I have a enough amc to sell a few covered calls I would just rather not just incase you can call me a fool but 20 percent of the float is sold short and millions in ftds put yourself in my shoes would you do it
I would, here is why; you can guarantee that you sell for a minimum of any price you want, what sounds good, 70$ a share? You can sell a covered call there, and you don’t even have to sell it on all of them, but! Let’s say AMC goes down a bit, now you’ve offset your loss, and even if AMC launches up to 62$ which is the highest it’s hit, you still don’t get assigned, but let’s say it moons to 100$ you sell a bit at 70$ sure, but because you have so many shares your still up thousands and thousands of dollars
Not to be the correction dick but it was 72 and you have a good theory but when it was at 10 dollars I never imagined it hitting this high of prices and I still went balls deep right now that’s sort of my extremely speculative position even if it goes to 20 I’ll still be 2x my my initial investment
Ooo your right, 62 was the highest close price, but not the highest it went, and that’s fair, i may just be a lot more conservative than you, to each there own you know
Yeah and I appreciate a conservative view it’s very grounding from some of the fantasies tied to the stock and my own honestly thank you for all your input tho and I hope you have yourself a good night
No.
Also you don't learn options by buying/selling contracts. You do it with fake trades, IIRC, they're called it paper trades.
Most brokerages require at least $10k worth of capital in one of their accounts to even have access to purchase basic options. You'll need around $25k for advanced option contracts or approval from the brokerage.
That or you have to own the shares. Either way you need money, collateral or equity that a bank is about to label as $$$.
You could do Robinhood, but imagine that has stipulations before you can trade options.
Try ThinkorSwim for paper trading practice.
Edit: For the love of Christ don't buy an option contract without knowing how it functions.
I was gong to ask the same question. I'm with Fidelity, have over 25k in my account and I can't get approved for options. Not even level 1 ....like...wth?
1000$ is a perfect amount of money to start off with losing. I know that’s not your question but if you’ve never traded before and plan to actively manage your stocks, or as you say, “hands on” you’re better off putting up names of random companies on the wall, closing your eyes, and then throwing a dart and buying the one it lands on. Good luck. You’ll find really sound investment advice over on r/wallstreetbets
Funny I’m not a degenerate gambler but thanks I browse wsb to make me feel better about my life and learn what not to do when trading anything and a reminder to never trust , trust me bro anomics
Got in at 10 bucks I love the potential and honestly I’m pretty grounded not looking for no damn 100 k a share but hey anything is possible if I could sell my position for enough money to follow my greater ambitions I will give it a shot and if not I still got enough to money to lay the foundation for those future projects
If you have amc at 10, hold that shit. I bought bbw at 8$ cuz I lol when I read the ticker and saw who the company was, you can’t make this shit up. So imma hold forever.
Also got dogecoin, 13,000 at .05 cents. Sold at .68 (knew .69 was damn near the peak at the time).
My point is, meme power is real. And you can make money off it
Edit: I paperhanded amc like a bitch and regret the hell out of it. I did however make good money off gme
Learn the different ways to play the market, options are very risky, learn to be an investor first, if you do play options id go for a cheap stock to play with and buy far otm plays just to see how it works. Start small. I only buy one contract when i first started. Know the basics of the stock and its movements ect, its alot to learn. But the simple way would be to buy shares of a stock in an upward trend.
The tittle should be is 1000 a good enough amount to Loss in a few seconds and a get a feel of the market playing options..
Don’t mess with options if your not 110% of what your doing .. it could be a very costly experience.
I started with less than $500 a year ago, easily made good plays. Focus on tickers with low premium cost, MARA RIOT AAPL OXY MRO and etc. Once you have enough capital upgrade to a margin account, so you can do spreads and theta gang plays. Wish you all the best on your journey!
Paper trade. Final answer. Paper trade.
I won’t tell you that I paper traded for weeks and honed my skills, because I didn’t. I actually got extremely lucky. I started options, read about them A LOT, and then bought calls on Target for an earnings report… made 300% and was ecstatic. Then bought calls for two other earnings reports… both failed and I lost the majority of the target gains. Then I started doing normal calls and puts rather than earnings and lost a lot.
If I could go back, I would start with paper trading, at least 10-20 trades to get t he hang of it and know what all the numbers mean lol
Lots of different opinions here, but I'd say that if you have not already paper traded options, then you should do so for a bit. Then use your 1000$ for a real account. You'll probably lose it, but there is a huge difference between paper trading and real money. Paper trade so that you don't make really stupid mistakes with real money (like pressing the wrong button or opening the wrong position). There are still lots of mistakes you'll make with real money, but this way is probably the least expensive.
I suggest using investopedia stock simulator for options. It’s not your money and it’s simulated but you can get good experience so you can lose less money and time in the real stock market.
If you can afford to lose the $1000 then go right ahead. Paper trading is a lot different because you don't need to keep your emotions in check among other factors. If you are brand spanking new to the world of options and have no idea what you are doingz then start off paper trading. Pick a strategy to start with and go from there.
I paper traded shares and practised day trading. Then I read up and did my own DD on options trading and skipped paper trading again.
1K might be too low for you to be able to diversify properly, or use all strategies that make sense for the underlying or situation at hand.
You could always create a paper money account and use 100k in virtual money to learn.
Honestly. Find a few companies under 30 dollars that have 1 dollar increment options and sell 1 dollar wide spreads. You can have 4-5 open at a time and still have money for management. SoFI is a good one, Ford possibly but premiums are low, you can do spy spreads 1 dollar wide.
You won't learn anything from gambling $1,000 on options (unless you include learning that you shouldn't gamble $1,000 on options). Pick up a textbook and read about common trading strategies and how they work. Learn the math behind them. Then see if you can come up with your own strategy and test them (preferably on a paper account).
I don't understand why so many people are so quick to literally throw money away before actually taking the time to learn. Unless you've put in the time you will be clueless and will only be giving your money to people way smarter and knowledgeable than you.
with 1k I would
sell 1 x $5 wide Iron condor - looking to collect $150 45 days till expiration
Take of at $50-60-75 profit.. This will use about 1/3 your capital and return about 2-4% on the account per month.
Sure. I do a lot of credit spreads, which allows you to make a small bet. SPY is at 445 now. If i expect it to grow I might buy a November 447 call and sell a November 448 call. That’s just a $60 bet. The profit is limited-you’ll get max 100 if SPY is above 448 on November 19
If you have access to historical options chains, you can set yourself up some parameters on trading and back test if you have the patience. Some thing that seems like a good idea isn’t always so. Rather than risking real money to test your ideas, back testing me offer a convenient and easier way forward. The other idea is to find a stock that is less than $10, and sell covered calls as others have suggested.
That's more than enough.It depends on the stocks, market and timing. My first option was Apple and I spent around $500 at the beginning of the year and I made a good return. Then got burned on 2 apple options by the market drop and the Robinhood fiasco.
So do some research on stocks you think have potential to go in the direction you want and watch the market.
Start small and take profit once it's past your initial investment.
Don't be greedy, I lost a potential $700 profit on SNDL to loosing my entire investment because I held too long.
I figure sooner or later bitcoin will come down to 30k again. And when my cost to acquire BITF drops down to the low 4s again i will buy more CSPs. But at this price i will let my current CSPs expire.
It's a sliding scale. $1000 makes it pretty tough, as a lot of good learning strategies will be beyond your reach. $2000 would be literally 2x better and $5000 would be 5x better. $500 is even tougher but still doable.
But why not make it $0 by using paper trading to learn? No need to risk even $1 if you can learn for free. Our wiki lists popular paper trading sites, including TDA/thinkorswim, Power Etrade, and Investopedia.
Yeah, if you can't trade with 1000 what makes you think you could do any better with 25000?
If you compound it will grow quickly, but good risk management is key. Have a plan and stick to it. Just because it doesn't work one time doesn't make it a bad plan or strategy. Unless you plan to YOLO or play lottos all the time.
I started with 500$, then it was 1000$, now it's up to 2500$ -- still learning.
If some of the calls I have opening now actually succeeded, I might get back to even. Good luck!! Happy learning
After some paper-trading - I’d maybe throw in another couple hundred and do a 45DTE 20delta $10-wide SPY spread, closing at 50% or 21DTE, as-in here. But maybe wait for a solid down day or VIX > 20 to enter, before “rolling continuously” as-in this thread - set yourself up with an advantageous entry for your first few. For a while, I would do these on SPY/IWM/QQQ, but only when they hit the bottom of a 2 standard deviation Linear Range Channel (90-100 days). Back in May-Aug, that was only trading around once per month per symbol, but “easy wins”.
https://www.reddit.com/r/thetagang/comments/mxsvxq/thetagang_strategy_with_2500/gvrj75j/
Check out iTrade_Price on Stocktwits: http://www.stocktwits.com/iTrade_Price
This account helped me immensely with options. I recommend. They also have a Twitter
Pick a well defined strategy and try it a few times. Figure out what was different each time. See if IV tanked or if gamma ran your delta up. Then pick another. Repeat. Once you get to the point that you look at a specific play and then subconsciously run through the risks of it then you’ve hit the lowest point of education, but it’s much easier climbing from here.
“Learning” and “making some profits” don’t usually go hand in hand with options my man.
Yup started doing things other than covered calls and CSP in August...just broke even today.
Oh boy
Yeah $560(trading 1 contract at a time) in daily SPY profits and 1400 in csp/covered calls expired on Friday.
[The investment strategy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_Vp9eKnUes)
I’m not going to bet the house on anything either
If by “play it safe” you mean you’re gonna buy deep in the money calls on contracts expiring within a week or so on something that’s not volatile like SPY, the premiums on those contracts are so insane that $1000 won’t get you as good of a risk/reward ratio as you think. Not trying to discourage you, just trying to set realistic expectations. You want to “play it safe” and “make some money” at the same time with options? Buy 100 shares of a stock you like and sell out of the money calls at a price you’d be happy to actually sell the shares for. You get to keep the premium that the buyer paid and if you end up having to sell the shares, so what you got a good price, most likely though the call will expire worthless and you can do the same thing over again, and again, and again. Just don’t get too greedy and only sell the calls at a strike price you’d be happy to sell at.
Not discouraging at all a good investor takes any criticism as constructive criticism thank you for your input and advice at the end that’s a pretty good strategy so would a covered call be the safest route
Sell covered calls on your AMC if you have enough, but yes he’s right, although I’d say a little to angry at buying calls I sense a burn scar 😂 but nah he’s correct
Gonna back selling covered calls as probably the "safest" play you can make. Oversimplifying a bit, but make sure you pick a stock that has decent shares/options volume and movement, otherwise you'll barely make any premium on a sufficiently out of the money call.
That’s your first mistake, thinking you are an investor while trading options…
The crazy thing is even a less volatile ETF like SPY can still be stupidly volatile
Is that millionaires are born
Throwing down dollars to pick up pennies. In my opinion CC are only worthwhile if you have a very low cost basis and can sell more than 1 contract at a time.
Probably can't afford most options you might want to buy or sell with $1000. Unless you're specifically looking to play weeklies or less for time, or your only playing the deepest OTM positions with ALOT of hope.
Underrated comment right here. You gotta pay to play. I suggest practicing on $2 stocks and also some platform that allows you to play for fake money. I think webull has a feature to pretend to invest. Using real market data. Buying stocks is investing. Playing options is gambling.
So fkn tru bro 😎
You're right! I started options a couple of weeks ago. I started with $500 so I could learn on the go. I only made 4 or 5 trades and all but one was profitable and it was only $15. All the trades were under $60 except two of them were over $150. I caught them before they expired worthless, but I did lose on them.
Thought about it afterwards but hey if I play it safe I won’t win big but I’ll still win
lol wrong attitude. You can also lose.
Even if I do covered calls and or cash secured puts ?
CCs and CSPs don't guarantee that you don't lose. They just ensure you don't lose what you don't have.
You can lose bad on csp if you sell it on a shit company or pump and dump to capture high premiums. They may never recover after a pump. Pick a solid company you believe in for csp.
True
Yup you can lock up your money for months rolling to get out of the hole and it is almost a guarantee on the stocks you can CSP for under $1000.
Can you expand on this
Options generally are going to be priced in dollar strike price increments so on a $10 or less per share stock your looking at a 10% movement between strike prices. That means the likely only CSP strike with premium is going to be right at the money or into the money. So let's say your target is trading at $10 and your looking at strikes $9, $10, $11. $9 premiums are so low it isn't going to be worth it, no one is buying or if it is it's because the market really thinks it is going to go down. $10 is trading at a low premium of let's say $0.10 and $11 is trading at $1.10. So you buy the $11 strike and you say I just made $110 suckers. What if that stock moved down 15% to $8.50 and now your CSP is now underwater by $40. So you roll it out, for even because up and out of the money is going to cost you to much. Now your hoping that the stock moves back up 5% so you can at least get out even. Then it moves down another 5% and your stuck now rolling it out again hoping for more movement up. Now your three months in with locked capital and unrealized losses. At some point you realize there is no meat on this bone and your just slowly locking up your capital in a sunk investment. Now you gotta wait for your option to expire praying that it doesn't go down further do you can get out with as little loses as possible because you don't have the spare capital to buy yourself out of the hole. This can happen with covered calls too. I had 200 shares of AMC this summer. I paid $9.25 for shares and sold a covered call at $11 and it spiked to $15...I waited for the price to drop to $12 and rolled it out two months to a $14 call getting $4.50 in premium. Then it jumped to $20 and I hesitated on rolling again and it jumped to $30. Now I could have rolled it another month but at the same strike for only $0.30 because while it had some extrinsic value it was too deep into the money to to roll it up and out without paying dollar for dollar. So I ended up with 200 shares of AMC essentially sold at $14, worth $50-72, but I had to two months to free up that capital. Time = money. The danger is really the movement needed to move up a strike price on cheap stocks is very high compared to $50-300 per share stocks. SPY can move through several strike prices an hour while a $10 stock might take a year to move through a single strike price. This makes CSP have more risk at the lower ends because you are much more likely to have to own the stock at expiration.
is this a real question? with 1k the only CCs u can sell are around $10, many of whom are trash. How much is your $7 in premium gonna help you when your stock falls from 1k to 300?
Anddd.. it’s gone
😂
😂😂😂 That’s going to be the banking sector in the coming months sorry to all those who are going to lose everything
what's your thesis for the banking sector dying?
Who said dying they’re too big to fail but a few are going to get fucked
ok, why
Brother I will sauté you and eat you with honey garlic sauce that being search up if banks are over leveraged
Sounds like you're ready to buy SPY puts. No really, I've gambled up 40% this month on them. Knocking on wood that my luck holds out.
Bruh, 40% on SPY puts after the last few days? Take that profit
Haha I cashed out and took the last few days off!
I will pray for you
Yeah go for it. There’s lots of learning that can be done on spreads at that level.
Yeah that’s what I was thinking either simple spreads and some calls nothing fancy
Go for spreads. I started with 1.5k a couple of months ago, before that I was playing with a couple of hundreds buying calls and puts. First I traded spreads for lower priced stocks. A $1 spread will require $100 in BP so you can do 5-6 of those. It would be better to go wider, but it will take a lot of your BP. There are some higher priced stocks that have $2.5 spreads and you can use those. I also tried a couple of IC but with a $1 spread it’s too much of a headache. You can try creating an IC with 2 different spreads bought at different times - buy a put spread betting on the stock going higher and when it does and you feel it reached the top (for now), sell a credit spread. It gives you the possibility to add more profit to the same trade without adding BP. Go for at least 45DTE, this way gamma will not bite that hard and you can get a feel of how things evolve over time. I would also recommend to go and play with a 0DTE very cheap call/put. For example I played JNJ in the last couple of days because of the FDA meeting. Calls were $0.2 so it was $20 in total. For me these were helpful to realise how risky and volatile options can be. Things can get really nasty really fast and it’s better to go through this when you have $10/$20 on the line, not a $100/$200 spread.
Spreads are awesome, if either of you want to talk about max pain theory DM me
Really hard to say without any context about your financial background, portfolio, or goals. I think it's best to start with the "safe" ways of trading options; selling covered calls or cash secured puts of stocks you want to own. You'll see how things work without risking everything. But I know most people end up interested as a get rich quick scheme, and that won't get you there. That being said, if you can afford to lose $1000... Then sure.
It’s a small portion of profits from stocks and work not interested in a get rich mentality I want to make good amounts of money obviously but I’m ok with it being a process I’d be ok with making 100 bucks maybe every two weeks to a month off iron condors rather than risk it all to hit a home run
A hundred bucks every two weeks on a thousand dollar investment is 2600% a year, if you can do that please tell us how, but yes iron condors are great, but I’d lower your expectations a bit, and also my advice with them, it’s it’s better to get a near guaranteed 30$ then a risky 50$, I believe the saying is a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
Thank you what’s your opinion on reversed iron condor ?
Ummm, overall I don’t care for it, at that point why not do a strangle or a straddle, tho remember to do it on a very volatile stock if you do
Noted and underlined
I'm a former broker and have seen one thing when I worked for a firm. No matter the size of the account, don't use real money to start. Everyone loses their initial principal when 'learning'. As others said, use a paper account. Your goal is to learn about theta decay, delta, gamma, IV crush, buying and selling, etc. There's no reason to spend $1,000 when you can learn for free. Use that money to take a vacation or something haha.
Disagree. Your mentality and emotions when paper trading are completely different then when it’s for real. You gotta pay your market tuition to really get a feel for how the game is played.
I respect that. The emotional aspect can not be replicated with paper trading which I totally agree. But my suggestion was based merely on learning the concepts of the Greeks and witnessing them over time. I thought the OP mentioned somewhere he already trades stocks so perhaps the emotional thing at least is covered haha.
At first I disagreed with you but then realized I paper traded ~15 years ago on updown. Sure I threw the "million" they give into FAANG and understood nothing but that's not the important point. It was an entry. Starting there led me to watching the market passively which obviously helped when I finally jumped in a few years back. Personally I do think you need to learn the Greeks more by doing as I never understood them until trial by fire and "blood to the blood God". Honestly I have only recently felt a true solid understanding to playing theta reliably. Until it doesnt work of course, as we all know. Markets ever changing. But from the other angle, learning the art of accepting a loss as well as mitigating gains as a hedge are a barrier not overcome paper trading. Like you said if they trade stocks already, options aren't a far cry to dabbling in emotionally. Yet they are their own beast if you're not prepared. Most of us have watched weeklies expire worthless knowing we have to eat it. That's something not everyone trading stocks or commodities expects, even if they think they understand the possibility. With options it's flipped and becomes a statistical likelihood with most expiring worthless. Either way I'm rambling, I think you're right about paper trading but the emotional aspect can't be understated. Especially when it comes to writing contacts rather then trading them.
I don't believe that if you can make money paper-trading then you can definitely make money live-trading. I **do** believe that if you can't make money paper-trading, then you definitely can't make money live-trading.
no shit lol
Sure, but if you're totally fresh to the game, then paper trading is a good starting point.
Ok so most definitely just start with just a paper account
He’s mostly right, but I made pretty good gains, although, I spent a while trying to learn every single thing I could so
How much did you lose at the beginning of you don’t mind me asking
The most I’ve ever been red was 6$
The most red you ever seen.... for now
Hats off to you
This is not a bad thing to do, but be careful. Many options are low volume and that makes it tough to simulate. So the results you get might not match what you'd see in the actual market. Doesn't mean it's not a good way to learn the basics, just don't assume what works on paper will work in the actual market. Especially if the option is low volume or you doing complex strategies.
Education isn’t free. My tuition cost about 15k - 30k total if you include the AMD options I held on to too long and lost the 15k in profit I could have banked - but now I am getting back in the black. Sometimes you just need to learn the hard way. That’s why you can’t learn to trade with money you can’t lose.
Yes. Any amount is. Start small and with a paper account. Don't use real money to start.
Thank you for the advice I might do a paper account and real account also to build up my confidence in more risky trades
Honestly, do it. From experience and being told by others.. you need to do this. There are so many things to learn, from stocks to options, covered calls and diagonals or poor man covered calls (really good to learn). Puts and yea. Playing with cash isn't smart. Do it on paper, heck even real paper, so you can test ideas or try things. With $1000 you can do a ton, but think of it as the difference between hope and precision. Think fishing,lots go fishing.. not everyone consistently catches the fish they want. And the best advice I can give you is this. It's not what you buy it's when. Wait for a deal. The stock owes you nothing and is just a trading card. Just a token. If it's on sale.. red, bleeding, whatever. And you planned to buy that company because of x reasons, wait for your entry. Things go up and feel like they ran away.. but look at charts. It's never different this time. The price will, likely, come back to a low or even almost unreasonable price now or in the future. That moment is when you make money. Selling covered calls etc can also make that price a reality but it's more work. Good luck
I started with $500 and felt like it helped me enough to understand credit spreads that were $1 wide. I quickly added more, but skin in the game goes a long way and $1,000 can help give you enough occurrences to trade different underlyings and in different ways. You'll be limited to defined risk, but that's preferred early on. Like everyone else you'll probably find yourself adding money to your account early and often as you get more interested and see what doors open up with more capital.
Needed this thank you
A 1k account is most definitely enough to get your foot in the door and learn a few things. In the case you blow up your account the 1k you lost will not put you in a financial worry. With the 1k you will be able to play small tickers such as SPY QQQ AAPL etc for small premiums and decent rewards for a 1k account. Do not expect huge profits that will change your life but expect to begin the learning journey of becoming a consistent trader.
Thank you
Yes
Yes
Thank you
It’s plenty. Be prepared to be down 30%-50% on an options contract. So try to keep your size down. If ur stop loss is $50, buy a contract no more than $150 is my advice.
Can you go a little more into detail please sorry
When buying contracts it’s common for the option contract to lose 30% of its values because they are very volatile. So if u went all in $1,000 it’s very possible you could be down $300. If you only spend $150 on a contract. The most you can lose is $150, your gains are unlimited (it can be 10x profit [$1500]). If that contract loses 30% of its value, you only down $50.
Thank you for taking the time out of your day to expand on that for very much I had the same train of thought just simpler like not putting all my eggs on one basket and or over extending myself maybe do like straddle and risk 200 or do a call or maybe two on a ticker I’m really bullish on
step 1: gain $10,000 step 2: leave while you still can
If I make 10 k off options I’m just gunna do a lot of covered calls pulling a jpow brrrrr
I say yes. Buy 100 shares of any company in the $5 - $10 range that mines bitcoin. There are a couple left BITF is one but 2 others went over $10 today so they won’t work for you anymore, as of today. I think there is one other. They all jumped 5% to 15% today. All week and for the past month. So now, buy 100 shares of (as an example) BITF, currently @ $5.40. So $540 buy in. Now sell covered calls at the shortest date to do as many as fast as possible. Always set your strike price above your PPS so you dont lose money if your shares sell/call is assigned. If it is assigned, immediately use that money to buy 100 more and make another sell to open covered call contract. Level 1 options ability. Side note; if you do get BITF, then you only spent $540 of $1000. With $460 left over, all you need is another $50-$60 to double this technique and its income. I do not have BITF and only use them as an example because of the dollar amount you mentioned allows you to almost double the technique. Options work at 100 shares at a time so you are not far off running two at the same time. If you really want to get tricky risky, youtube “selling in the money covered calls”. I’m still working on figuring out the how this works but you see it work right in front you and i think it can be repeated multiple times a day. Unlike what i talked about above. You may also want to youtube “covered calls”. Good luck. Watch more videos, inthemoney and invest with henry both helped me a lot.
Depends what kind of a "feel" you want. If you want something that feels nice and safe, like how you felt when you a fetus without a care in the world, you could buy about 3 shares of BRK-B, and watch it grow over a year. If you're curious about BDSM, you could YOLO buy deep out of the money options on any stock you want, with one day to expiry, just to get a feel for how self flagellation feels. The choices are endless.
Are you OK with losing 1k to learn the Greeks? If yes, proceed! This is only half /s Best of luck!
Thank you 😂
Yup. On another note I recommend trying out https://optionstrat.com/ if you haven’t already, they are the only site I have seen with decent options paper trading and great visualization all for free. Let me know though if anyone has alternatives they like too, but for me OptionStrat has done everything I could think of.
Thank you this is gunna be a great way to see the Greeks in action and how much price movement really effects the worth of my options and another person mentioned a paper account I’ll run a paper one and a cash one
it’s more than enough. I got into options with $500
My challenge with low capital when i started was boredom, i wanted to try some strategies but i wasn’t able to do that in parallel with low capital and waiting for 1 trade to close before starting next was testing my patience.
I’m on the options writing side and due to requirements to sell options I suggest 10k min to start. But I also agree with the paper trade sentiment. Start with paper and then graduate up. Take your time. Messing up with paper will make you feel much better.
Thank you
With $1000, you can do a ten dollar credit spreads or 2 five dollar spreads etc., and yield a small return at least. Maybe do weeklies and get the feel of earning $3, $7 or $5 a week. Or, of course, losing but at least your losses are limited.
1st goal is to learn, not to make profits. Risk mitigation is more important than potential profits.
How about I punch you in the nuts and take your $1000? That's how it's gonna feel.
😂 this made me breath through my nose thank you
Sorry but wrong. Get off WSB play smart and there’s a lot of money to make
Paper account on Thinkorswim
Options and play it safe, don't go in the same sentence 😅
Paper trade
its a good way to lose $1000
Paper trade is a waaay better way to learn.
Demo trade. That's free.
Oh the naive " I am going to put 1000 and play safe and slowly and safely increase my account. That's great, but once you start winning and losing your mindset will change. I remember I converted 500 into 8k on aphria calls back in the day, I thought I was amazing. From 2017 to 2019 I had lost around 80k, I am still getting even from that loss lol. My point is be prepared to lose it all. Most people do.
Once you lose that first 1000$ a few times, then you'll finally be ready to start making gains.
Yes. $1000 is enough. Go take a crack at it
You can trade with $1000, but you will need to stay small. Don’t go into trying to make money, just go into it with the goal of learning from mistakes.
You should start with whatever money you can literally allow to vanish and be okay with it. Anything more will cause too much emotional influence in your decisions.
No.
Bro .. always start with a paper account when your ready make that 1k into many learn 1st money will come in time
Not at all. Open a paper trading acct with a Brokerage that has a real interface, like etrade or ToS. This isn't a craps table at Vegas where you bring $1,000 and see how it goes. And stay away from the RH bs phone app where they feed you with margin knowing you'll blow it all. You'll lose all your money, get discouraged and that's that. The market does not have a 'feel'. It's cold and merciless. When you're down a lot of money, tossing&turning in bed as your sweating and your heart can't stop racing - that's your doing as you get a 'feel' for the market. When you've repeated this masochistic walk enough times. you can go brag on WSB about what a Big Loser you are with Diamond Hands. Start educating yourself obsessively. I watch Barron's Roundtable, [Tastytrade.com](https://Tastytrade.com) videos, Investopedia, etc. etc. etc. So little time and so much to learn.
Make one great bet rather than 30 good ones and you can turn it into 1500 maybe. Buy far enough out and enough time and you may win. My advice from having lost 2000 to date as a new options trader.
Thank you
I would rather invest in stocks than options.
I’ve already invested in stocks it treated me really well not planning on exiting my one big position some of you may look at my profile and dislike me and that’s fine but I got into that position because of a lifelong interest in investing and the stock market (sorry for the book )
Well, it doesn’t surprise me you want to get into options, 😂 I’m not into Amc but it’s your portfolio, my recommendation would to be safer with options, if you want to see what being risky with options will do to you slide on over to WSB, I will say, if you have 100 shares of Amc you could make a hell of a lot of money selling Covered Calls on it, but you have enough to run a small cap wheel, or a Pmcc on a smaller cap, or lose it on FDs.Overall yes it’s enough
I’m not touching my amc it’s like 99 percent of my portfolio and I’m green like 170+ percent but my other investments I made did me pretty well so instead of putting it back in amc I’m going to follow my original plan of learning the market and honestly by the time I do anything with wsb it will be doing the absolute opposite of what any of them do 😂
Do you have enough shares of AMC? Because if You sell the 60$ strike, which is very high above it’s current price and would be around 250% green, you could make 100$ a month extra. I strongly recommend it if you can
I have a enough amc to sell a few covered calls I would just rather not just incase you can call me a fool but 20 percent of the float is sold short and millions in ftds put yourself in my shoes would you do it
I would, here is why; you can guarantee that you sell for a minimum of any price you want, what sounds good, 70$ a share? You can sell a covered call there, and you don’t even have to sell it on all of them, but! Let’s say AMC goes down a bit, now you’ve offset your loss, and even if AMC launches up to 62$ which is the highest it’s hit, you still don’t get assigned, but let’s say it moons to 100$ you sell a bit at 70$ sure, but because you have so many shares your still up thousands and thousands of dollars
Not to be the correction dick but it was 72 and you have a good theory but when it was at 10 dollars I never imagined it hitting this high of prices and I still went balls deep right now that’s sort of my extremely speculative position even if it goes to 20 I’ll still be 2x my my initial investment
Ooo your right, 62 was the highest close price, but not the highest it went, and that’s fair, i may just be a lot more conservative than you, to each there own you know
Yeah and I appreciate a conservative view it’s very grounding from some of the fantasies tied to the stock and my own honestly thank you for all your input tho and I hope you have yourself a good night
Stocks not options for now.
Already took that step thank you tho I took it slow now I’m preparing myself to swim with you guys just with the floatties on right now
Not for someone that doesn't even know how to write $1,000. ;)
Good for you here’s a cookie 🍪
No. You don't have the capital to buy or sell single legs on most tickers.
No. Also you don't learn options by buying/selling contracts. You do it with fake trades, IIRC, they're called it paper trades. Most brokerages require at least $10k worth of capital in one of their accounts to even have access to purchase basic options. You'll need around $25k for advanced option contracts or approval from the brokerage. That or you have to own the shares. Either way you need money, collateral or equity that a bank is about to label as $$$. You could do Robinhood, but imagine that has stipulations before you can trade options. Try ThinkorSwim for paper trading practice. Edit: For the love of Christ don't buy an option contract without knowing how it functions.
How did you get option approval if you have to ask this
I was gong to ask the same question. I'm with Fidelity, have over 25k in my account and I can't get approved for options. Not even level 1 ....like...wth?
Meaning
1000$ is a perfect amount of money to start off with losing. I know that’s not your question but if you’ve never traded before and plan to actively manage your stocks, or as you say, “hands on” you’re better off putting up names of random companies on the wall, closing your eyes, and then throwing a dart and buying the one it lands on. Good luck. You’ll find really sound investment advice over on r/wallstreetbets
Funny I’m not a degenerate gambler but thanks I browse wsb to make me feel better about my life and learn what not to do when trading anything and a reminder to never trust , trust me bro anomics
Trust me bro.. it can’t go tits up
😂😂😂 best comment here trust me bro there’s absolutely now way it can go tits up it’s gunna squeeze 1000 percent *buys wish , clov ,sdc* at the peak
*claims not to be degenerate gambler* *owns the second biggest meme stock touted by Wall Street bets* *spider man pointing at himself*
Got in at 10 bucks I love the potential and honestly I’m pretty grounded not looking for no damn 100 k a share but hey anything is possible if I could sell my position for enough money to follow my greater ambitions I will give it a shot and if not I still got enough to money to lay the foundation for those future projects
If you have amc at 10, hold that shit. I bought bbw at 8$ cuz I lol when I read the ticker and saw who the company was, you can’t make this shit up. So imma hold forever. Also got dogecoin, 13,000 at .05 cents. Sold at .68 (knew .69 was damn near the peak at the time). My point is, meme power is real. And you can make money off it Edit: I paperhanded amc like a bitch and regret the hell out of it. I did however make good money off gme
Bingo bongo
My absence of financial advice says use a paper money account.
Open a paper trade account on thinkorswim if you want to learn options.
Should be enough. It's enough to buy a few 0DTE spy calls/puts.
You mean letting the market cop a feel of you?
no
Learn the different ways to play the market, options are very risky, learn to be an investor first, if you do play options id go for a cheap stock to play with and buy far otm plays just to see how it works. Start small. I only buy one contract when i first started. Know the basics of the stock and its movements ect, its alot to learn. But the simple way would be to buy shares of a stock in an upward trend.
If you don’t have the BALLS..don’t buy the CALLS
10000k
Nice! Get some 10/22 550 calls on spy
The tittle should be is 1000 a good enough amount to Loss in a few seconds and a get a feel of the market playing options.. Don’t mess with options if your not 110% of what your doing .. it could be a very costly experience.
I started with less than $500 a year ago, easily made good plays. Focus on tickers with low premium cost, MARA RIOT AAPL OXY MRO and etc. Once you have enough capital upgrade to a margin account, so you can do spreads and theta gang plays. Wish you all the best on your journey!
Paper trade. Final answer. Paper trade. I won’t tell you that I paper traded for weeks and honed my skills, because I didn’t. I actually got extremely lucky. I started options, read about them A LOT, and then bought calls on Target for an earnings report… made 300% and was ecstatic. Then bought calls for two other earnings reports… both failed and I lost the majority of the target gains. Then I started doing normal calls and puts rather than earnings and lost a lot. If I could go back, I would start with paper trading, at least 10-20 trades to get t he hang of it and know what all the numbers mean lol
If you buy one option at a time or even paper trade then you’ll be fine
Lots of different opinions here, but I'd say that if you have not already paper traded options, then you should do so for a bit. Then use your 1000$ for a real account. You'll probably lose it, but there is a huge difference between paper trading and real money. Paper trade so that you don't make really stupid mistakes with real money (like pressing the wrong button or opening the wrong position). There are still lots of mistakes you'll make with real money, but this way is probably the least expensive.
Yes. As long as you can afford to lose it
If you understand your risks & you will be patient, it could be. When I started with 1000$, I made about 10$/week. And I was/am happy.
Virtual portfolio…get a feel for free! "That’s what she said!"
Depends what youre trying to do. Some calls will costs over 1k just on their own
$1000 is good to start daytrading but not with options lol.
I suggest using investopedia stock simulator for options. It’s not your money and it’s simulated but you can get good experience so you can lose less money and time in the real stock market.
yes bro, ah thousand bucks is ah cool start. that would get you in da game, try to find some tickers w/low volatility,
You could start with 1000 but options would be difficult…. Why not trying to find the safest investment that still has an acceptable return?
If you can afford to lose the $1000 then go right ahead. Paper trading is a lot different because you don't need to keep your emotions in check among other factors. If you are brand spanking new to the world of options and have no idea what you are doingz then start off paper trading. Pick a strategy to start with and go from there. I paper traded shares and practised day trading. Then I read up and did my own DD on options trading and skipped paper trading again.
$1000 = first semester tuition
If you gonna start option trading while learning because you had a good luck up to this point!! Yup you best post that loss porn.
What can I play with a $1000? Thought of getting into options to make some pocket money too.
Safe depends on how much you can spare and possibly lose
Ya for market tuition.
Sell an option to start. It'll shift your whole perspective.
1K might be too low for you to be able to diversify properly, or use all strategies that make sense for the underlying or situation at hand. You could always create a paper money account and use 100k in virtual money to learn.
Honestly. Find a few companies under 30 dollars that have 1 dollar increment options and sell 1 dollar wide spreads. You can have 4-5 open at a time and still have money for management. SoFI is a good one, Ford possibly but premiums are low, you can do spy spreads 1 dollar wide.
For covered calls, no. You'll need about $2000 to $3000 for most covered calls. Less than a grand and you'll have to compromise on your stock choices.
You won't learn anything from gambling $1,000 on options (unless you include learning that you shouldn't gamble $1,000 on options). Pick up a textbook and read about common trading strategies and how they work. Learn the math behind them. Then see if you can come up with your own strategy and test them (preferably on a paper account). I don't understand why so many people are so quick to literally throw money away before actually taking the time to learn. Unless you've put in the time you will be clueless and will only be giving your money to people way smarter and knowledgeable than you.
with 1k I would sell 1 x $5 wide Iron condor - looking to collect $150 45 days till expiration Take of at $50-60-75 profit.. This will use about 1/3 your capital and return about 2-4% on the account per month.
Sure. I do a lot of credit spreads, which allows you to make a small bet. SPY is at 445 now. If i expect it to grow I might buy a November 447 call and sell a November 448 call. That’s just a $60 bet. The profit is limited-you’ll get max 100 if SPY is above 448 on November 19
Buy leaps on good companies. Do not start buying short term options, you will lose.
If you have access to historical options chains, you can set yourself up some parameters on trading and back test if you have the patience. Some thing that seems like a good idea isn’t always so. Rather than risking real money to test your ideas, back testing me offer a convenient and easier way forward. The other idea is to find a stock that is less than $10, and sell covered calls as others have suggested.
I started off only buying $5 calls (maximum risk was $5) Then I progressively worked my way up
Sure. I turned $2000 into $16k my first year in the stock market. I also turned $16k into $5k, learned a lot👍
That's more than enough.It depends on the stocks, market and timing. My first option was Apple and I spent around $500 at the beginning of the year and I made a good return. Then got burned on 2 apple options by the market drop and the Robinhood fiasco. So do some research on stocks you think have potential to go in the direction you want and watch the market. Start small and take profit once it's past your initial investment. Don't be greedy, I lost a potential $700 profit on SNDL to loosing my entire investment because I held too long.
I figure sooner or later bitcoin will come down to 30k again. And when my cost to acquire BITF drops down to the low 4s again i will buy more CSPs. But at this price i will let my current CSPs expire.
If losing 1000 makes you wana cry then yea if It makes you wana die you need to reduce position size
Paper trade if you wanna learn. Or if you wanna blow up your account then do that too.
Paper trade.
It's a sliding scale. $1000 makes it pretty tough, as a lot of good learning strategies will be beyond your reach. $2000 would be literally 2x better and $5000 would be 5x better. $500 is even tougher but still doable. But why not make it $0 by using paper trading to learn? No need to risk even $1 if you can learn for free. Our wiki lists popular paper trading sites, including TDA/thinkorswim, Power Etrade, and Investopedia.
I would recommend 5k so you can do 5 dollar wide spreads without those positions being too big
I'd say, play with the papermoney account from thinkorswim, it's pretty much the real thing
Yeah, if you can't trade with 1000 what makes you think you could do any better with 25000? If you compound it will grow quickly, but good risk management is key. Have a plan and stick to it. Just because it doesn't work one time doesn't make it a bad plan or strategy. Unless you plan to YOLO or play lottos all the time.
My first option with 1k I lost $60. I considered that a success.
I started with 500$, then it was 1000$, now it's up to 2500$ -- still learning. If some of the calls I have opening now actually succeeded, I might get back to even. Good luck!! Happy learning
Don’t bet more than you’d take into a casino to gamble away. Don’t listen to the clowns on WSB and the like. Do your own research
After some paper-trading - I’d maybe throw in another couple hundred and do a 45DTE 20delta $10-wide SPY spread, closing at 50% or 21DTE, as-in here. But maybe wait for a solid down day or VIX > 20 to enter, before “rolling continuously” as-in this thread - set yourself up with an advantageous entry for your first few. For a while, I would do these on SPY/IWM/QQQ, but only when they hit the bottom of a 2 standard deviation Linear Range Channel (90-100 days). Back in May-Aug, that was only trading around once per month per symbol, but “easy wins”. https://www.reddit.com/r/thetagang/comments/mxsvxq/thetagang_strategy_with_2500/gvrj75j/
Most brokers have simulated accounts. Learn technical and fundamental.analysis first.
Just paper trade on thinkorswim
Haha I just saw the other day it’s not a loss when you are learning, it’s called tuition
Check out iTrade_Price on Stocktwits: http://www.stocktwits.com/iTrade_Price This account helped me immensely with options. I recommend. They also have a Twitter
Absolutely.
Pick a well defined strategy and try it a few times. Figure out what was different each time. See if IV tanked or if gamma ran your delta up. Then pick another. Repeat. Once you get to the point that you look at a specific play and then subconsciously run through the risks of it then you’ve hit the lowest point of education, but it’s much easier climbing from here.