{"id":21688,"date":"2024-04-01T07:30:56","date_gmt":"2024-04-01T11:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jeffclarktrader.com\/?p=21688"},"modified":"2024-04-01T07:30:56","modified_gmt":"2024-04-01T11:30:56","slug":"one-of-the-best-ways-to-amplify-your-trading-profits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/one-of-the-best-ways-to-amplify-your-trading-profits\/","title":{"rendered":"One of the Best Ways to Amplify Your Trading Profits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Editor&rsquo;s note:<\/strong> Today, we&rsquo;re handing the reins to colleague Larry Benedict &ndash; a market wizard and legendary hedge fund manager.<\/p>\n<p>He&rsquo;ll tell you about the four predictable times a year when potential trading profits skyrocket&hellip;<\/p>\n<p>Here&rsquo;s Larry&hellip;<\/p>\n<hr style=\"margin-bottom:20px;\">\n<p>Every year, there are four predictable times when the profit potential for trading skyrockets.<\/p>\n<p>It has nothing to do with earnings reports&hellip; or a release of economic data&hellip; or anything like that.<\/p>\n<p>It&rsquo;s much more advanced. The elite hedge funds of the world utilize it for big trading returns.<\/p>\n<p>But as advanced as it is on the surface, it&rsquo;s simple to understand just why these times are so profitable and so predictable&hellip; and how anyone can use them to amplify their profits.<\/p>\n<p>So what exactly is it?<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center\">The Four Most Profitable Times to Trade Every Year<\/h2>\n<p>This event is called &ldquo;Quadruple Witching Day.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s led to some of the biggest trades of my career&hellip;<\/p>\n<p>These days occur, like clockwork, on the third Friday of every March, June, September, and December.<\/p>\n<p>Why are these specific days so powerful? Because on these days, quarterly contracts on index futures, index options, stock options, and stock futures all expire on the same day.<\/p>\n<p>This ignites a flurry of trading volume, as all the world&rsquo;s money managers and hedge fund traders ramp up their activity.<\/p>\n<p>And the final result? A large spike in volatility across all asset classes&hellip; lasting all week.<\/p>\n<p>Where there&rsquo;s volatility, there&rsquo;s a big trading opportunity.<\/p>\n<p>Let&rsquo;s break down the four markets that expire on Quad Witching Day:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Index futures<\/strong> allow investors to buy or sell a stock index with the contract settling on a future date. Investors use index futures to speculate on the direction of an index &ndash; buying if they believe the index will rise and selling if they believe it will decline.<\/p>\n<p>At expiration, the existing position is exercised, and a profit or loss is settled into the investor&rsquo;s account in cash.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Index options<\/strong> control the right to buy\/sell financial indexes, like the Dow or S&amp;P 500, for a specific price and certain period of time.<\/p>\n<p>Index options give investors the right, but not the obligation, to transact the index. The result of the trade is determined by the index price relative to the option&rsquo;s strike price on the expiration date.<\/p>\n<p>Index options don&rsquo;t offer any ownership of the individual stocks. Instead, the transaction is cash-settled, giving the difference between the option&rsquo;s strike and the index value at expiry.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Stock options<\/strong> give a buyer the right, but not the obligation, to complete a transaction of the underlying security on or before a specific date and for a preset price called a strike price.<\/p>\n<p>Options can be purchased to speculate on a price increase or decrease of a specific underlying security &ndash; usually a stock or ETF.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Single stock futures<\/strong> are agreements to buy or sell a specific security at a determined price at a specified future date.<\/p>\n<p>Single stock futures are obligations to take delivery of shares of the underlying stock at the contract&rsquo;s expiration date. Each contract represents 100 shares of stock. However, holders of stock futures don&rsquo;t receive dividend payments.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So how do all these expirations impact the market?<\/p>\n<p>This is a busy time, with options exercising&hellip; delivery&hellip; hedging&hellip; arbitrage&hellip; and speculative trading activity hitting a peak.<\/p>\n<p>So, during Quad Witching Days, the most obvious effect is a sharp increase in trading volume and volatility.<\/p>\n<p>And Quad Witching Day is a good time to trade options, in particular, because of this volatility and volume.<\/p>\n<p>When volatility rocks the markets, options premiums inflate. And when they do, it can increase the potential gain in options trades.<\/p>\n<p>And the best way to take advantage of this added volatility is to buy options expiring on Quad Witching Day.<\/p>\n<p><!--GREY BOX START--><\/p>\n<div class=\"card bg-light mb-4\">\n<div class=\"card-body\">\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"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\">click here<\/a> to check it out.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><!--GREY BOX END--><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center\">An Example Trade<\/h2>\n<p>The best time to trade options, in my view, is in <em>the week leading up to<\/em> Quad Witching Day &ndash; not the day itself.<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s how we&rsquo;ve made some incredible wins in my <em>S&amp;P Trader<\/em> and <em>Opportunistic Trader<\/em> advisories.<\/p>\n<p>We just added a new one to the books last month.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday, March 11, we bought call options on the S&amp;P 500 Index (SPX) in anticipation of the Quad Witching on that upcoming Friday.<\/p>\n<p>But we didn&rsquo;t have to wait till the end of the week to profit.<\/p>\n<p>The very next day, those call options were already up just over 49%. We went ahead and booked that gain in just one day.<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s the kind of trade a Quad Witching makes possible.<\/p>\n<p>So if you&rsquo;ve never paid attention to these events, consider adding them to your trading calendar.<\/p>\n<p>They can be a powerful way to amplify your profits in a short window&hellip;<\/p>\n<p>Regards,<\/p>\n<p>Larry Benedict<br \/> Editor, <em>Trading With Larry Benedict<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every year, there are four predictable times when the profit potential for trading skyrockets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"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":[58],"newsletter-type":[],"ticker":[],"class_list":["post-21688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-minute","publication-market-minute","person-larry-benedict"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21688","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\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21688\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21688"},{"taxonomy":"publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication?post=21688"},{"taxonomy":"person","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person?post=21688"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-type?post=21688"},{"taxonomy":"ticker","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ticker?post=21688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}