{"id":18440,"date":"2021-05-15T07:30:24","date_gmt":"2021-05-15T11:30:24","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2021-05-15T07:30:24","modified_gmt":"2021-05-15T11:30:24","slug":"one-of-the-biggest-mistakes-option-traders-make","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/one-of-the-biggest-mistakes-option-traders-make\/","title":{"rendered":"One of the Biggest Mistakes Option Traders Make"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Most people say option trading is risky.<\/p>\n<p>Novice traders often don&#8217;t take the time to learn the right way to use options. They jump right in &ndash; thinking, &ldquo;I got this.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>They gamble, blow up their accounts, and then walk away penniless and swearing off options forever.<\/p>\n<p>Even experienced traders sometimes get caught up in the allure of fast gains. They overleverage their positions &ndash; take a bigger position size than they should &ndash; and then take a hit. All the option traders I know, including myself, have blown up their accounts at least once.<\/p>\n<p>But it&#8217;s not the option that&#8217;s risky&hellip; It&#8217;s the strategy. And when used the right way, options are far less risky than trading stocks.<\/p>\n<p>You see, most people use options the wrong way. Most people use options to increase leverage&hellip; To get more &ldquo;bang for their buck.&rdquo; In other words, most people use options to increase risk.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s wrong. That&#8217;s the exact opposite of what options were designed for.<\/p>\n<p>The options market was created so investors could reduce risk. Options allow investors to hedge their positions&hellip; And to risk much less money than they would buying a stock outright.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s say you want to buy stock in Company X. It trades for $10 a share. You could put up $1,000 to buy 100 shares&hellip; But you can control the same amount of stock with one option contract. You can buy a contract for, let&#8217;s say, $50&hellip; And leave the other $950 in your account.<\/p>\n<p>If Company X&#8217;s stock goes up, you&#8217;ll make money. If the stock goes down, the most you&#8217;ll ever lose is that $50. That&#8217;s a 100% loss&hellip; But it&#8217;s a lot less than potentially losing 20% or more of the $1,000 you risked buying the stock.<\/p>\n<table bgcolor=\"#eeeeee\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"10\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\" style=\"border: 1px solid #D7D7D7; margin-bottom:20px;\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"padding-left: 15px;padding-right: 15px; padding-top: 10px; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;font-size:17px; line-height:24px;\">\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"-ms-text-size-adjust: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: none; margin-bottom: 20px; font-size: 18px;\"><strong>Free Trading Resources<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Have you checked out Jeff&#8217;s free trading resources on his website? It contains a selection of special reports, training videos, and a full trading glossary to help kickstart your trading career \u2013 at zero cost to you. Just <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jeffclarktrader.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">click here<\/a> to check it out.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>This is a simple example. And it&#8217;s the simplicity that proves my point. Options allow you to risk much less and profit just as much as buying stocks.<\/p>\n<p>But that benefit disappears if you overleverage the trade and take on a larger position with options than you would otherwise take with the stock.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the biggest mistake most novice option traders make. Instead of replacing a 100-share purchase with one call option, they take the entire amount they would have allocated to the stock and buy a much larger position with the options.<\/p>\n<p>Rather than buying one call option for $50 and leaving the remaining $950 in the bank, novice traders take the entire $1,000 and put it into buying more call options.<\/p>\n<p>They end up buying 20 call options to try to get more bang for their buck. What would have been a 100-share purchase has turned into control of 2,000 shares. Instead of using options to reduce risk, they&#8217;ve increased their risk 20 times.<\/p>\n<p>Losing 100% on an overleveraged trade would be a disaster. And it&#8217;s why most folks think option trading is dangerous. But it&#8217;s not dangerous if you trade options the way they were originally intended&hellip; As a way to reduce risk.<\/p>\n<p>Limit your option exposure to control just the number of shares you would normally purchase. Leave the rest of the money in the bank. Then it won&#8217;t be so bad to lose 100% on an option trade.<\/p>\n<p>It will almost always turn out better than what you could have lost on the stock.<\/p>\n<p>Best regards and good trading,<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/casey-assets.s3.amazonaws.com\/images\/misc\/jeff-clark-signature.png\" width=\"200\" style=\"max-width:200px; width:100%;\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Jeff Clark<\/p>\n<p><strong>P.S.<\/strong> At the end of yesterday&rsquo;s <em>Market Minute<\/em>, my colleague Eoin Treacy discussed his thoughts on the movement in bitcoin, Tesla, and the tech sector in his second presentation of Eoin&rsquo;s Insights.<\/p>\n<p>His thoughts on the market will be featured every Friday so don&rsquo;t forget to tune in. If you missed it, you can <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/this-metal-is-heating-up-for-a-big-rally\/#eoin\">click right here to watch<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Use these tips to reduce your risk&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"service":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"publication":[10],"person":[7],"newsletter-type":[],"ticker":[],"class_list":["post-18440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-minute","publication-market-minute","person-jeff-clark"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18440"},{"taxonomy":"publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication?post=18440"},{"taxonomy":"person","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person?post=18440"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-type?post=18440"},{"taxonomy":"ticker","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ticker?post=18440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}