Stock Market is the bottom in?

[SD51555]

 

[Telemark]

I have a Fidelity account. They let you see pre-market.

That's a good point. I used to trade with Active Trader, but the new Trader+ software is not good for day trading. If they add hotkeys it will be well worth using, since they don't charge commission.

 

[BenA]

That's a good point. I used to trade with Active Trader, but the new Trader+ software is not good for day trading. If they add hotkeys it will be well worth using, since they don't charge commission.

I'm just learning, so hot keys may get me in trouble. I like the safety net of putting in conditional orders with defined limits. I could see getting to the point where I would want to do that faster though. It does take longer, which is aggravating some times.

 

[Telemark]

I'm just learning, so hot keys may get me in trouble. I like the safety net of putting in conditional orders with defined limits. I could see getting to the point where I would want to do that faster though. It does take longer, which is aggravating some times.

They should have programmable hotkeys that allow you to set them up with all the conditions you want. It lets you get into, and more importantly out of, a trade in milliseconds. You can use market orders during market hours, and during extended sessions you can buy and sell with limit orders on the ask or the bid with an offset to make sure your orders get filled. The problem with entering everything manually is the price might go past your limit before you are done filling out your order ticket.



This is how it looks on the Lightspeed platform. You create the order, and then you can map a button on your workstation or click on the Keyboard tab to program hotkeys. It's essential for momentum trading, which is what I am trying to focus on. It just allows me to be more flexible with working hours, since I trade from different time zones. If I want to hold something overnight, or trade/invest on a longer timeline, I use my Fidelity account. Both accounts are set up to trade on margin, and I can trade options, too. I actually prefer trading options on Fidelity.

The Fidelity platform is good to learn on, since it's simple but has most of the functions a trader would need. I use the trailing stoploss on a lot of my positions, especially if it's something with higher risk. Another thing I will say about Fidelity is they are extremely professional, and their customer service is excellent.

 

[Telemark]

It's only 04:06 in New York, and already ACCL made a nice move on decent volume. I probably could have done something with it, but I was goofing around and missed the first move up. It moved over $4 in about 90 seconds. If I had been prepared, I probably could have made a couple thousand dollars off it with hotkeys. I made a nice scalp on it, but premarket things move FAST. No way could you trade that fast and that early with Fidelity.

 

[SD51555]

We're on the front end of earnings season. Lots of good stuff in play all of a sudden. Having seen two days of calm in a row, I'm going back in.

Sold SNAP Feb 6th $7 puts for 15 cents/ea.
Sold UNP Jan 30th $220 puts for $1.80/ea.
Sold LMT Jan 30th $635 call for $2.32.
Sold CVX Jan 30th $180 calls for 36 cents/ea.
Sold DOW Jan 30th $25 puts for 32 cents/ea.

I'm guarded on DOW. That's been a dog for years. I'm only flirting with a few shares. Dividend is rich, price is down, and options juice is good headed into earnings. I'll cast a worm out there.

I normally don't sell calls into an earnings announcement, but I've got a feeling about this quarter. It's also a good time to acquire stuff with puts, and it's my favorite, and often only way I will buy a stock, unless I'm just investing weekly trading generated cash. As the cash comes in, I've been stashing it in either ET, WEC, or PRU.

I recently emptied those bucks when Visa and UNP came around. It takes a lot of free cash to sell puts on that stuff. I lost all of my EPD at a handsome little gain, so I'm gonna be touring the dividend aristocrats until EPD comes back down.

 

[keets]

You guys are way ahead of me, but I am curious of what you think of the covered call ETF's, like SPYI , QQQI

 

[Telemark]

You guys are way ahead of me, but I am curious of what you think of the covered call ETF's, like SPYI , QQQI

It's a dividend ETF rather than a growth ETF. They can have a better return in bull markets due to the call option strategy, but the main thing is that it generates cash rather than growth. When I get a bit older, it is probably something I would be interested in so that I could earn income without selling any of my position. The dividends should be taxed as qualified dividends, I believe. That means a max tax rate of 20% as opposed to ordinary income tax rates, though the rate could be as low as 0% depending on your income level and source.

These ETFs can be held in an individual brokerage account or a Roth IRA, rather than a tax-deferred account in order to take advantage of the income in case you have maxed out your tax-deferred retirement account. This can have significant tax implications, especially when taking required minimum dispersal from a tax-deferred account at age 73. It can also provide you tax-free income in a Roth IRA after age 55.

This is not the whole picture, and some details may be incorrect, as I have not considered purchasing this asset class yet.

 

[SD51555]

You guys are way ahead of me, but I am curious of what you think of the covered call ETF's, like SPYI , QQQI

It's usually a tradeoff between growth and income. Trouble is, any ETF that is geared towards income always seems to severely underperform their stated objective. High dividend yielding stock ETFs can't eek out 2.5%, when they could fill them with solid stocks that yield 3-5%. These buy-write strategy funds are the same way.

It is very easy to make 12% annual income selling calls on dividend stocks. The hard part is avoiding getting "bucked off" when your stocks surge and you're left behind and avoiding a falling piano in high yielding stocks.

I don't like funds because they can fill them with garbage, and that's what the S&P 500 is. I woudn't own 90% of the stocks in it, ever. Of the 50 that leaves, 40+ of them are overpriced most of the time, and the ones that aren't, aren't always good options trading stocks.

I try to encourage people to try to learn selling covered calls and cash secured puts. It can cut years off your working time on earth, and the job pays thousands of dollars per hour for what you have to put into it. What I mean is, it takes about 5 minutes per week to manage. Put $800 in a trading account, get approved for level 1 options trading, and then start farting around with SNAP. It's cheap, and attractively priced right now. It'd give you the chance to go through the motions and experience of making options trades.

Once you're comfortable with it, you can work on higher priced stocks which is where the safety and better returns are found. Single digit stocks are bottle rockets, and can fizzle out as fast. But big, boring, and old is where the money is at.