Learning Markets has a large international readership and a question we get frequently is how to set up a brokerage account in the U.S. if you don’t live there. U.S.-based accounts offer some distinct advantages to traders so we think this is worth addressing.
The flow of information to investors can be confusing, and news is the worst of all the culprits. The truth is no one fully understands why a market is moving the way it is in the short term. We’ll walk you through two case studies to prove our point, and offer a few suggestions for harvesting legitimate value.
Brokers have complicated and long commission structures. Each one claims to have the best pricing. But deciding which broker is better for you really depends on who you are as a trader.
It’s possible to control your risk and improve your returns by selling a call option against a stock or ETF you already own and collect the option premium. We learn how to trade a covered call by walking you through an example and show you some of the common risks associated with this strategy.
We explain call options using a chart of Oracle as an example. Options traders will buy calls when they think a stock or index will move up. We discuss the advantages and risks associated with buying call options.
We walk through each section of a chain sheet so you can better understand what to look for when evaluating an option trade. In this example we look at a chain sheet for Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) for demonstration purposes.
Using puts, it is possible to invest and benefit from declines in the stock market or in individual stocks – without ever owning them. We show you the process for analyzing a potential put candidate and walk you through how to purchase a put.
Implied volatility can be used to adjust your risk control and trigger trades. The concept of implied volatility is simple to understand but hard to predict. In this article we talk about how IV changes prices and why this matters to investors.