{"id":20311,"date":"2022-11-02T17:00:28","date_gmt":"2022-11-02T21:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jeffclarktrader.com\/?p=20311"},"modified":"2022-11-02T17:00:28","modified_gmt":"2022-11-02T21:00:28","slug":"dont-let-this-mistake-blow-up-your-account","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/dont-let-this-mistake-blow-up-your-account\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Let This Mistake Blow up Your Account"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Jeff&rsquo;s Note:<\/strong> In just a few hours, I&rsquo;m going to show how you can protect your portfolio from a massive $4 trillion market event that&rsquo;s guaranteed to strike.<\/p>\n<p>Most people will be caught by surprise. But if you follow <a href=\"https:\/\/signup.jeffclarktrader.com\/?cid=MKT682897&#038;eid=MKT687302&#038;step=start&#038;plcid=PLC159592\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">my secret strategy<\/a>&hellip; there could be hundreds of opportunities to potentially double your money &ndash; or more &ndash; within the next 40 days.<\/p>\n<p>Now&rsquo;s the time to act before it&rsquo;s too late. If you want to get your portfolio back on track, <a href=\"https:\/\/signup.jeffclarktrader.com\/?cid=MKT682897&#038;eid=MKT687302&#038;step=start&#038;plcid=PLC159592\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">click right here to join my presentation tonight at 8 p.m. ET<\/a>.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Don&rsquo;t do stupid things.<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s a good rule for life in general. But it&rsquo;s an especially good rule for option traders.<\/p>\n<p>Like most good rules, though, we don&rsquo;t really understand their importance until we break them. And when it comes to trading options, doing stupid things can be an expensive lesson.<\/p>\n<p>For example, it&rsquo;s stupid to use options to overleverage a position.<\/p>\n<p>The options market was created so investors could reduce risk. Options allow investors to hedge their positions, and to risk much less money than if they bought a stock outright.<\/p>\n<p>But like most good ideas on Wall Street, options quickly turned into vehicles to &ldquo;get rich quick.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>So, we forget about the &ldquo;risk&rdquo; side of the equation, and we focus only on the &ldquo;reward&rdquo; side. We get caught up in the allure of fast gains. We take on bigger positions than we should. And then we blow up our accounts.<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s stupid. And that&rsquo;s also why many folks who&rsquo;ve traded options this way will tell you that option trading is risky.<\/p>\n<p>But it&rsquo;s not the option that&rsquo;s risky. It&rsquo;s the strategy&hellip;<\/p>\n<p>Let me explain&hellip;<\/p>\n<p>Let&rsquo;s say you have $10,000 to invest. You can choose to buy 100 shares of Company X at $100 per share. Or you can buy one call option contract &ndash; which gives you the right to buy 100 shares of Company X &ndash; for, let&rsquo;s say, $400&hellip; and leave the remaining $9,600 in your account.<\/p>\n<p>If Company X&rsquo;s stock goes up, you&rsquo;ll make money with the call option since it allows you to buy 100 shares. If the stock goes down, you&rsquo;ll lose money. But the most you&rsquo;ll ever lose is the $400 you paid to buy the call option.<\/p>\n<p>Even if Company X&rsquo;s shares drop by 20% or more, the biggest hit you&rsquo;ll ever take is that $400. Your remaining $9,600 is still sitting in your account.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, losing the entire $400 you spent on the call option is a 100% loss on the trade. However, that&rsquo;s still a more favorable outcome than potentially losing 20% or more of the $10,000 you&rsquo;d risk if you had bought the stock.<\/p>\n<p>This is a simple example. But it&rsquo;s the simplicity that proves my point. Options allow you to reduce your risk on a stock trade, while allowing you to profit just as much.<\/p>\n<p>But that benefit disappears if you overleverage the trade and take on a larger position with options than you&rsquo;d otherwise take with the stock.<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s the biggest, and stupidest, mistake most option traders make. Instead of replacing a 100-share purchase with one call option, they take the entire amount they would&rsquo;ve allocated to the stock and buy a much larger position with options.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, instead of buying one $400 call option to reduce the risk of a $10,000 stock trade, a foolish trader will take the entire $10,000 and buy 25 call options. What would have been a 100-share purchase has turned into control of 2,500 shares.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of using options to reduce risk, this trader has increased their risk by 25 times.<\/p>\n<p>Losing 100% on an overleveraged trade would be a disaster. And it&rsquo;s why so many folks think options trading is dangerous &ndash; because they&rsquo;re doing stupid things.<\/p>\n<p>Options trading isn&rsquo;t dangerous if you use options the way they were originally intended &ndash; as a way to reduce risk.<\/p>\n<p>Remember, limit your options exposure to control just the number of shares you&rsquo;d would normally purchase. Leave the rest of the money in the bank. Then it won&rsquo;t be so bad to lose 100% on an option trade.<\/p>\n<p>It&rsquo;ll almost always turn out better than what you could&rsquo;ve lost on the stock.<\/p>\n<p>And in this bear market, it&rsquo;s more crucial than ever to reduce risk. Buying and holding stocks in a market like this is dangerous.<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s why <a href=\"https:\/\/signup.jeffclarktrader.com\/?cid=MKT682897&#038;eid=MKT687302&#038;step=start&#038;plcid=PLC159594\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">I&rsquo;m issuing my most timely warning yet<\/a> &ndash; only this time it&rsquo;s not a prediction.<\/p>\n<p>In my 40-year career in the financial markets, I&rsquo;ve seen this kind of setup only a few times before&hellip;<\/p>\n<p>So, if you think the rollercoaster we&rsquo;re in right now is unbearable&hellip; I&rsquo;m sorry to say that for most people &ndash; it&rsquo;s only just begun.<\/p>\n<p>Something big in the market is about to &ldquo;snap,&rdquo; potentially causing dozens of popular stocks to freefall overnight. This event could be devastating for those who remain in the dark.<\/p>\n<p>But if you&rsquo;re on the right side of it, it could change your fortunes in a very short time.<\/p>\n<p>During my presentation tonight at 8 p.m. ET, I&rsquo;ll go over how to protect your wealth from this massive event and potentially make back this year&rsquo;s losses.<\/p>\n<p>But time is running out to prepare&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/signup.jeffclarktrader.com\/?cid=MKT682897&#038;eid=MKT687302&#038;step=start&#038;plcid=PLC159594\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">click right here to instantly secure your spot<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I&rsquo;ll see you there.<\/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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this bear market, it\u2019s more crucial than ever to reduce risk\u2026<\/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-20311","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\/20311","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=20311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20311"},{"taxonomy":"publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication?post=20311"},{"taxonomy":"person","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person?post=20311"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-type?post=20311"},{"taxonomy":"ticker","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ticker?post=20311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}