Steve Smith
Steve Smith have been involved in all facets of the investment industry in a variety of roles ranging from speculator, educator, manager and advisor. This has taken him from the trading floors of Chicago to hedge funds on Wall Street to the world online. From 1987 to 1996, he served as a market maker at the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (CBOE) and Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). From 1997 to 2007, he was a Senior Columnist and Managing Editor for TheStreet.com, handling their Option Alert and Short Report newsletters. The Option Alert was awarded the MIN “best business newsletter” in 2006. From 2009 to 2013, Smith was a Senior Columnist and Managing Editor for Minyanville’s OptionSmith newsletter, as well as a Risk Manager Consultant for New Vernon Capital LLC. Smith acted as an advisor to build models and option strategies to reduce portfolio exposure and enhance returns for the four main funds. Since 2015, he has worked for Adam Mesh Trading Group. There, he has managed Options360 and Earning 360, been co-leader of Option Academy, and contributed to The Option Specialist website.
Steve Smith's Latest Posts
Options: How To Buy Them Before They Expire Worthless
One of the persistent and pernicious myths regarding options is that 80% of all them are worthless. The number belies the fact that most options get closed well before expiration and can create some misleading beliefs that selling premium is the only sure way to make money trading options. We’ve all seen the marketing emails […]
Futures Trading: Will VIX Term Structure Remain Calm?
Despite increasing drag of trade tariffs and swirling cross-currents of currency valuations curtailing global growth causing overseas markets in bear territory, the U.S. stock market keeps powering higher. And judging from the Volatility Index, or VIX traders expect the calm to continue even as we head into the notoriously turbulent month of October. The term […]
SPDR ETFs: This Group Is Down 12% In 2018 [DETAILS]
![SPDR ETFs: This Group Is Down 12% In 2018 [DETAILS]](http://optionstradingresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/spdr-etfs-150x150.png "SPDR ETFs: This Group Is Down 12% In 2018 [DETAILS]")
After being one of the best performing sectors in 2017, homebuilders have been pretty shabby in 2018. As measured by the SPDR Homebuilder ETF (XHB), the group is down some 12% year to date. And because that ETF includes some companies that are only tangentially housing related such as Home Depot (HD) and William Sonoma (WMS) which has done quite well, […]
Options Trading: 5 Basic Rules Of Thumb
One of the members of my Options360 service wrote asking whether I had hard rules for managing my options trading. He knows I’m pretty much a stickler for entry points relative to the underlying shares, but when it comes to applying the options strategies, I allow more leeway for flexibility. That, in fact, is one of the […]
Options Trading: From Weed Killer To Profit Tiller
As laws regarding recreational marijuana continue to loosen restrictions and expand applications, many traditional ‘vice’ companies such as alcohol and tobacco are looking to get in on what is expected to be a $300 billion business by 2025. As we’re about to see, this process creates some lucrative options trading opportunities. Most recently, we saw Constellation […]
Investing Advice: How To Safely Short A Stock
Over the years, Tesla (TSLA) has been a bit of a widow maker to short sellers. The stock has gained over 300 percent since 2013. But even as the price rose, or probably because it rose, the short position continued to increase. It is now one of most heavily shorted stocks out there, with over 25% of the float […]
Options Trading: A Golden Opportunity
When I first started publishing options trading articles online in 2002, I quickly learned that if you wanted to get feedback, write something negative about gold. People will really bug out. At the time, gold was trading around below $400 an ounce and I thought that was too high. It of course proceeded to have […]
Options Trading: 4 Ways To Protect Your Portfolio
Amidst heavy saber rattling over tariffs and a seeming slowdown in global growth, earnings season is about to kick off. We have big banks such as JPM and BAC reporting on Friday and Netflix set to post results on Monday. This will be the real acid test for the bull market. Will companies post sufficient […]
Trade War: 4 Potential Market Outcomes
With the U.S. set to initiate some $34 billion in tariffs on China tomorrow and the Chinese expected to respond in kind 24 hours later, the opening skirmish in what could spiral into a trade war is upon us. So far, except for a few down days that have been more hiccup than correction, the stock market […]
Recession Prediction: Is Call Buying A Warning?
Going by the reaction in China, you would’ve thought global markets were in for a thrashing after President Donald Trump’s latest belligerence on trade. And while a few cracks widened, in the end it was another muffled reaction in U.S. stocks. Any immediate recession prediction has yet to bear fruit. For the S&P 500 Index, […]
Options Trading: Introducing The Synthetic Long
Of the many options trading strategies that provide leverage, one of the most interesting is synthetic long stock. This combines a long call and a short put opened at the same strike and expiration. The name “synthetic” is derived from the fact that the two positions change in value dollar for dollar, with changes in 100 shares of stock. […]
Market Volatility: Traders Are Short VIX – Again
In the wake of February’s market volatility induced sell-off that resulted in the implosion of several volatility-based ETFs, I’ve written plenty on the topic. I’ve covered everything from what exactly happened, and the opportunities it presented to basic flaws in VIX related products, to the current SEC investigation as to whether there was market manipulation at work. In the course […]
Options Trading: Time To Swipe Right On IAC
On Tuesday, Facebook (FB) ‘Amazoned’ the online dating industry by announcing it would add a dating feature. The news sent shares of IAC Interactive (IAC) and Match (MTCH) into a tailspin dropping some 20% each and wiping out $4 billion of market capitalization between the two companies. As we’re about to see, this opens up some interesting options trading possibilities. This is […]
Options Trading: Get PEPE With This Tech Trade
The selling of decent reports continues to be a theme, and the whole market looks on shaky ground. Today’s options trading will try and sidestep these larger issues. I’m going to establish a Pre-Earnings Premium Expansion, or PEPE, trade in Skyworks Solutions (SWKS). Skyworks develops semiconductor products that go into a wide variety of products from cell […]
Options Trading: How To Handle Earnings Reports
Earnings season officially kicks off with some of the big banks such as JP Morgan (JPM) and Citi set to report this coming Friday morning. This is an important, yet difficult time for options trading. Earnings can be very tricky to trade as there are many moving and unknown parts; will the company miss or […]
Recession Prediction: Is Volatility A Problem?
Stock market volatility has increased substantially over the past two months. While large declines during the first week of February and over the past few days have garnered most of the attention, it should be noted that the S&P 500 has spent over 30 of past 40 trading days within 3% of all time highs. […]
Options Trading: Playing The New Volatility Regime
Whether the stock market correction is over, or if the recent correction signaled the end of a bull market is debatable and will only be determined over time. For options trading, we’re going to have to hedge our bets a little. One thing that does seem to have come to end was the extended period […]
Options Trading: Do Diagonals Beat Covered Calls?
The covered call strategy is one the most popular options trading strategies, especially among investors that don’t consider themselves option traders. It’s a way for owners, especially for buy and hold types, to generate income from the stocks they own while also providing a bit of a hedge for their portfolio. But for those that might […]
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