{"id":19606,"date":"2022-04-11T16:00:06","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T20:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jeffclarktrader.com\/?p=19606"},"modified":"2022-04-11T16:00:06","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T20:00:06","slug":"how-to-reduce-your-trading-risk-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/how-to-reduce-your-trading-risk-3\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Reduce Your Trading Risk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Andrew&rsquo;s note:<\/strong> This Wednesday, Jeff Clark will sit down with his oldest son Grant to see if he has what it takes to double his money &ndash; all on camera.<\/p>\n<p>He&rsquo;s going to use Jeff&rsquo;s most profitable trading technique&hellip; it&rsquo;s the same technique <a href=\"https:\/\/signup.jeffclarktrader.com\/?cid=MKT622490&#038;eid=MKT624951&#038;step=start&#038;plcid=PLC137019\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">that could&rsquo;ve doubled your money 16 different times in 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Jeff has developed and refined this technique over the course of his nearly 40-year career and on Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET, he&rsquo;s going to teach his son step-by-step so he can see how it&rsquo;s done. To find out if Grant will succeed (and receive a free recommendation from Jeff) just <a href=\"https:\/\/signup.jeffclarktrader.com\/?cid=MKT622490&#038;eid=MKT624951&#038;step=start&#038;plcid=PLC137019\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">click right here to secure your spot<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And below, read on to find out the most common misconception about options&hellip;<\/p>\n<hr>\n<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.<\/p>\n<p>All the option traders I know, including myself, have blown up their accounts at least once&hellip;<\/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&nbsp;<em>reduce risk<\/em>. 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<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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>But it&#8217;s not dangerous if you trade options the way they were originally intended&hellip;&nbsp;<em>as a way to reduce risk<\/em>.<\/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<table style=\"margin-bottom: 20px;\">\n<tr>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/files.jeffclarktrader.com\/global\/signatures\/jeff-clark-signature.png\" width=\"200\" height=\"77\" alt=\"signature\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>Jeff Clark<\/p>\n<p><strong>P.S<\/strong> With the S&amp;P 500, Dow, and Nasdaq all down, it seems like the typical &ldquo;buy-and-hold&rdquo; investor is a thing of the past for now.<\/p>\n<p>These days, the technique I&rsquo;ve used for decades could potentially double or triple your money, every week, without touching a single stock along the way. And, it can make money faster than just buying stocks.<\/p>\n<p>Most people have no idea what&rsquo;s coming next. But by following my simple strategy, you could see the chance to <a href=\"https:\/\/signup.jeffclarktrader.com\/?cid=MKT622490&#038;eid=MKT624951&#038;step=start&#038;plcid=PLC137019\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">make money whether the stock market is booming, crashing, or doing nothing at all<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So, <a href=\"https:\/\/signup.jeffclarktrader.com\/?cid=MKT622490&#038;eid=MKT624951&#038;step=start&#038;plcid=PLC137019\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">join me on Wednesday April 13 at 8 p.m. ET<\/a>, where I&rsquo;ll sit down with my son Grant and teach him exactly how to use this strategy so you can see first-hand how it&rsquo;s done. I&rsquo;ll even give away a free recommendation for you to try it yourself. Just <a href=\"https:\/\/signup.jeffclarktrader.com\/?cid=MKT622490&#038;eid=MKT624951&#038;step=start&#038;plcid=PLC137019\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">click right here<\/a> to sign up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most people use options the wrong way&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"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-19606","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\/19606","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\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19606"},{"taxonomy":"publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication?post=19606"},{"taxonomy":"person","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person?post=19606"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-type?post=19606"},{"taxonomy":"ticker","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ticker?post=19606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}