The Option Alpha Podcast

We're joined by Adam Cohn, Vice President and Head of Trading Operations at TradeStation, to discuss trading operations, market structures, and the complexities of order execution. Learn about order routing and execution, payment for order flow (PFOF), the role of market makers, and more.

These are the top 7 tips and tricks you can use to set up your portfolio to manage options expiration better. With automation, it's easier than ever to navigate options expiration intelligently.

This podcast explores the latest and most pressing challenges emerging for investors who have embraced autotrading, and what you can do to avoid them.

This episode is a deep exploration into the inevitable rise of automated trading, and why it is necessary for traders to embrace the technology sooner rather than later.

This episode explores the top 15 questions for options trading generated by ChatGPT.

In this episode, we explore what data tells us about market drawdowns and the impact the drawdown’s magnitude and the position’s holding period have on price recovery.

We tested 286 ticker symbols and analyzed their behavior relative to major moving averages to determine if stocks are more likely to reverse or trend. Here’s what we learned.

We researched the trend trading's impact on option trading strategies. Here are the results for SPY, GLD, and TLT credit spreads above and below the 200-day moving average.

This podcast reviews the Monthly Iron Condor ($3K portfolio) Bot’s performance over the last 12 months and explores future adjustments that we can make to the strategy.

Options spreads are a simple but powerful and flexible strategy for traders. This episode focuses on understanding option spreads and how to trade them in your portfolio.

What if you could build an automated strategy that navigates all market conditions? The Hexabot evaluates the market trend and proactively adapts to current market conditions. In today’s episode, we introduce you to the Hexabot and share its entire origin story.

Strike prices are a critical concept to master if you're going to trade options. You need a holistic understanding of what they are, how they work, and why they are different than break-even prices to successfully and safely trade options.

‍Covered calls are a great way to generate income on your stock positions. Learn why many stock traders start with covered calls and the benefits of using a synthetic covered call strategy.

On this episode, we'll explore four intelligent ways you can leverage SmartPricing in your automations.

Follow along step-by-step as we break down break even price calculations for ten popular options strategies.

Bear markets are inevitable and unavoidable. In this episode, we present intelligent ways to prepare for and survive a bear market using options trading.

In this week's shop talk, we explore how to manage your autotrading expectations, and share tips for trading routine consistency, and discuss current market news.

We "talk shop" about the recent news with Elon Musk's Twitter bid, why people are attracted to IPOs, selecting and refining the right strategy, crude oil volatility, habit-forming and changing, and what we have noticed in markets recently.

In this episode, we present a collection of questions to help you dig deep into your psychology and mindset around trading.

On this podcast, we introduce a new bot template that you can clone with one click. This bot is perfect for traders with portfolios of around $3,000.

I did not trade last year. My attention was focused on the launch of the autotrading platform and not on the daily routine of trading. The year away provided many lessons that I want to share with you all in this episode.

In this show, we'll highlight ways to allocate capital inside your bots and unpack some thought-provoking questions you should consider when building your automated trading strategies.

The iron butterfly strategy is popular for traders of all experience levels. This episode explores the basics and provides 8 actionable suggestions you should consider before placing your next trade.

Trading doesn't have to be complicated. Before automation, you had to complete countless tasks manually for every position. Now you can automate these repetitive processes with bots. Here are 12 examples of complex things you can automate with bots.

In this episode, we share how to get access to our new platform and what comes next on your autotrading journey. We’ll also explore why we built the platform, what it does, and what’s next for Option Alpha.

What is "Deep Work?" How can it help your investing and your life? In this episode, we'll discuss the concept's roots and share tips to improve your daily routine.

Learn more about the Option Alpha Handbook, a free, non-subjective, digital encyclopedia for everything you want to know about trading.

Follow along step-by-step as we build a bot and update automations. Learn how to use the Backtester to identify a strategy and create a bot template with simple, specific decision criteria.

What is hedging? What is diversifying? Are they the same thing? This episode takes a closer look at the pros and cons of each concept, portfolio risk management, and what you really need to know about correlation.

Learn how to intelligently use SmartStops to optimize your trade exits with Option Alpha's proprietary technology that lets you set a profit target and trail the position with a stop loss.

On this episode, Pete Mulmat of the Small Exchange joins the podcast to discuss futures contracts. Learn why Pete is on a mission to make futures more accessible with small, standardized, and simple contracts.

Decision recipes are the building blocks of automations. On this episode, we highlight eight popular decision recipes used in the autotrading platform.

In this interview, Jason Goepfert discusses investor psychology, managing risk exposure, and whether market sentiment analysis actually works.

On this episode, we do a deep dive into the volatility of bid-ask spreads with four case studies, and discuss how you can use automation to address pricing anomalies.

On this episode, we talk about the future of automated trading, if automated trading provides an edge, and the possible downsides of automated trading that you should carefully consider.

On this week's show, we'll do a mini "State of the Union" on what we've been up to, what's new, and what you can expect moving forward.

This podcast walks through the two macro trend bots we built to demonstrate how you can start leveraging the new automation tools at Option Alpha to trade either stocks or options in a trend.

This show is dedicated to helping you understand all the different ways you can hedge a short naked put.

It’s well documented that investors not only chase performance, ultimately yielding sub-par performance in pursuit, but they also do not have enough patience to stick with strategies long enough. My hope is that it ends today. You should objectively look at strategies for what their expected outcome range is, not what it’s done recently.

In today’s show I welcome back Cameron Skinner to learn more about his strategy when trading options.

In this episode I walk through just one type of strategy that I think is the tip of the iceberg for situational trading and hedging bots. This example automates hedging using the VIX.

In this show, we will go through 18 questions to help you prepare for the inevitable moment of options exercise and assignment.

This podcast is geared specifically at exposing 13 classic and detrimental investor biases that ruin performance. Any of these sound familiar?

I’m going to help you break down the zillion ways you can save money to invest in core concepts that I have used my own life to save money at an incredible pace.

In this episode we answer some common questions about the new autotrading platform. We’re also going to go through some of the features you will love about it.

When it comes to trading, tax concepts and terminology can get complicated fast. Our goal in this episode is to help educate and explain trading taxes for all traders so that it’s useful to you moving forward.

We answer 15 of the most popular options expiration questions to help you understand and effectively navigate options expiration.

This is a vacation checklist for options traders to use before going off the grid so you don’t have any surprises when you turn your computer back on after a few days of market activity.

This show is dedicated to executing and filling options trades.

This episode is a case study of a recent FXI position in which we were assigned stock. I'll walk through the entire position from start to finish, including all the profit and loss calculations with adjustments and early assignment.

We explore investor sentiment from all angles and help discover which readings, if any, give predictive power to future stock market returns or trends.

This trading psychology podcast was curated to help you learn how to more effectively recognize and manage the dozens of emotional and cognitive responses you’ll encounter in your trading career.

This podcast episode helps to explain why diversification fails when multiple securities autocorrelate during market drawdowns.

This podcast episode features the best covered call management techniques for stock and options traders.

We’re diving deep into “LEAPS” options contract in this podcast episode with a comprehensive guide for traders to help you make the best decisions for your portfolio.

This podcast episode takes an in-depth look at box spread basics, their advantages and disadvantages, and how they can be used by options traders.

This is a trader's guide to index options, how they work, how they are different, and what you need to be aware of if you decide to start trading them in your portfolio.

After some in-depth research, these are the findings of the protective put strategy and its effectiveness at protecting or hedging stock positions.

In this episode, we discuss the impact of volatility on options pricing.

In this podcast, I walk through the research on earnings moves and how different options strategies performed under various setups and conditions.

We’re excited and honored to have a very special guest on the podcast, Richard Hudson. We discuss the misbehavior of markets and why financial models are flawed.

This episode is a recording of the newest book Option Alpha released entitled “Mastering Covered Calls.” I encourage you to pick up your copy now (did we mention it’s 100% free) and follow along as you listen to this audiobook.

On this episode we go over the top three performance insights we learned from our massive study on covered call performance.

In this episode I want to cover the 5 critical factors that your trading strategy should have. To us, these serve as the foundational elements for choosing which investing vehicles, indicators, or systems most appropriately fit your portfolio.

Check out our interview with former market maker and CBOE instructor Kevin Davitt. You're going to love this candid and wide-ranging discussion as much as we enjoyed the time with Kevin.

This is a list of the 27 biggest fears and questions traders in our community have about options trading.

These are the 3 potential market setups that lead us to break our profit-taking rules, based on the Profit Matrix research about holding positions longer towards expiration.

In this podcast episode, we'll discuss the put-call ratio and investigate if it is a useful market indicator.

In the world of investing, and specifically trading options, you need to live by certain rules that keep you safe and protected from the unknowns of the market. These are the 11 golden rules to follow.

Since we are option sellers and our edge comes from selling overpriced options when IV is high, it's natural to assume that buying options during low IV markets is a way to make money. This podcast explains why that is not always true.

This episode provides an in-depth look at a short put options trade that resulted in assignment of long shares of stock. With patience, mechanical adjustments, and proper position sizing we were able to manage this position over many months.

In this podcast episode, we interview Kevin Smith and Tavi Costa from Crescat Capital, a top performing macro hedge fund.

This is an updated look at the progress of the new autotrading platform at the time of recording. Will and Rob from the Option Alpha team join Kirk for an in-depth discussion about the new platform.

Learn how to build an options portfolio with $3,000.

The truth is that you are going to have losing trades, a lot of them, over the course of your career. The first step on your road to elevating yourself is to ask yourself, "Can I trust the process?"

In this podcast I talk about why it's important we know the story of the three little pigs that traded options. I'll walk through each of the different portfolios the three little pigs used and how volatility and variance can impact long-term performance.

In this podcast I walk through the four general market situations I avoid trading aggressively.

Before you place your next options trade you need to ask yourself these 7 questions first.

This podcast is dedicated to the 17 most popular questions we are asked by Option Alpha members.

If you trade iron butterflies today's case study is for you. We walk through our assignment and covered call adjustment that ultimately netted a profit.

In this show we'll focus on our most recent case study in EWZ, a trade in which we turned a losing set of straddles into a $540 winner with a little patience and some mechanical adjusting.

Learn how to manage your money and generate wealth with this 3 step process..

Were you recently assigned an options contract in your account? Here's a case study on how to manage the new stock shares moving forward.

This episode focuses on what I'm calling the 5x2 trading psychology matrix. This "victim matrix" has 2 paths you can follow every trading event, and each path has 5 stages or steps.

On this show, I have the opportunity to interview former CBOE options market maker and volatility trader David Lincoln. This is an episode you won’t want to miss!

Do you trade options? Struggling to be profitable? See if you are making these 11 common options strategy mistakes.

In this episode, we use backtesting results take a deeper look at whether it is more profitable to sell options 60 days out or 30 days out from expiration.

On this podcast we interview a very special guest, Larry Connors, and discuss his new book, "Buy the Fear, Sell the Greed."

Choosing which ticker symbols and options strategies to use when entering new options trades can sometimes seem overwhelming. This podcast breaks down the key factors when entering new option trades and building out your portfolio.

In this podcast, I want to walk through a recent trade in which we were assigned on a short put and help you understand how being assigned options impacts your account and how you can still trade around these events using a couple key strategies.

In this podcast episode I want to slowly walk through the concept of contango and backwardation. I will offer a couple of different examples showing how it works in real life and how we might be able to use this awareness of futures pricing part of an options strategy in our portfolio.

Ever feel like some of the options trades you make blow up in your face? Here's why it happens and what you can do about it.

When it comes to options trading, there are a lot of things you can control, and a few you cannot. This episode provides tips on how to manage the risks you can control and avoid "blowing up" your trading account.

In this episode, we dive into the three main areas of the expected probability paradox to help you understand why option selling still outperforms the market, even if you can't find perfect pricing.

This podcast is a deep dive into options skew and the volatility smile for both inter-month and intra-month option contracts.

Today's podcast is essential to help you understand how to calculate break-even prices the correct way on iron condors, iron butterflies, and other risk-defined strategies.

The goal of this podcast episode is to help you completely understand how implied volatility works, why we need it, where it comes from, and how we can profit from it as option sellers.

In this podcast episode, you'll learn how to overcome the fear of being "wrong," learn from your trading mistakes, and transition into new habits.

On this episode, we use our backtesting software to analyze the results of a weekly bull call spread in DIA, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF, and its performance compared to a monthly bull call spread in DIA.

Some traders wrongly assume that if they can't trade unlimited risk option strategies, such as straddles and strangles, that they should just avoid trading options altogether. Here are four alternatives to convert unlimited risk option strategies into risk-defined positions.