Episode 2 of 4.

In this series Allen helps you understand what level your trading is at on the Option Continuum and exactly how to move up to the next level.

Make sure to listen to the episode before this one to catch up.

So now that you know where you are, right? And you have an idea of how many levels there are ahead of you, I have some steps I can take you from one level to the next. And then I have some more steps that can take you from any level to move you along. So let's go through those. I mean, if you want, you can take screenshots of these. Level one, if you're at level one, if your Option Clueless, you know, very simple, read the passive Trading Book that we gave you, that's going to help you a lot. Get familiar with stocks and options, you know, start watching the financial media starter, covering what the words are, and try to make sense of it. And then we do have a reading list at the website OptionGenius.com/readinglist. So that's a reading list for selling options specifically. So if you want to get into options, those are some of the books that I recommend, they'll get you started, and basically just get more information, just gathering information. Okay, that's the one thing, the first thing.

Option level two - options scared, here, what I want you to do is go ahead and open an account, you don't have to fund it, just open the account, go through the process, start creating what I call the watchlist. Now, the watch list is a list of stocks and ETFs that you particularly would like to watch, in particular like to trade. So if there are some companies out there that you're really interested in, add them to your watchlist, you know, and start watching them, start seeing how did their stock behave? You know, if you're working for a company, then that definitely should be on your watch list. Pay attention to the stock, how does that stock behave? You know, if you eat out like I do at fast food, I know everything about fast food, I know almost all the restaurants, I know how they're doing, I know what items are selling or not. It's just something with me. So a lot of the fast food companies, they're on my watch list, then you want to learn the basics. And you'll find the basics in the reading list. You know, you'll learn the jargon, you'll learn what is a put, what is a call, how does it work? Why do we sell the why do we buy stuff like that? And then number four, really, you got to know why that thing that we did in the last session, really, really ask yourself dig deep, you know, the deeper you go the more times you you ask yourself that why question - it gets really emotional. And I've seen people do it. And they've just been crying because they finally understood something about themselves that they didn't know before.

Because we think oh yeah, I just wanna make more money. No, it's not the money. It's never about the money, there's always something more deep, more mental, more emotional. That's why we're doing this. And if we don't understand that, then we don't we don't follow through.

Level three is option confused. So this is where you have an account, I want you to start trying to put on some trades. And these are virtual trades, paper trading. So you're putting on trades you're putting on, you know, maybe you buy some stock, or you sell an option, you buy an option, just seeing how it works. And then you need to list out all the questions that you have, right? Everything that doesn't make sense to write it down on paper, don't just think, oh, yeah, I got to figure it out, write it down on paper, look for the answers. And then either ask us if you can't find them. Okay, that's how it's gonna get you to the next level. The next level is option curious. Which, right here, you're going to be trading smaller trades, on stocks that you already own, or that you would like to own. So here is where I want you to actually put money to work. And maybe you put $500 in a trade, maybe put $1,000 into trade or even less 250. Sometimes, you know, and you're doing small trades, to get your feet wet, to go through the process to understand, hey, this is not as scary as I thought it was going to be. You know, if you just do it over and over and over again, it breaks down those barriers. And you'll be like, Oh, okay, I got this, this is simple, I can understand this. And then you want to keep a trade log. And this is just for everybody. Keep a trade log of all of your trades. Now I do it on paper, I have a folder here with me. And I have my trades going back for a decade. And I write them all down on paper. And I have some of them on spreadsheets, but really I like to have them on paper. And then at the end of the year, I haven't done it this year and I am to. But at the end of the year, I go back and I look at each trade. And I look at the ones that I didn't do well on the ones that I screwed up on. And that's how I learn. Because you don't learn when you do a positive trade. You're like, oh, yeah, I did it. I'm smart. I'm gonna genius. You don't learn anything. But when you get your butt handed to you, that's when you're like, Okay, what did I do wrong? What happened? Was there something I could have done differently? Or was it just the market and sometimes it is just the market. But the only way to figure that out is to go through every trade and you can't go through that until you're taking you have a record and a log of all of them.

So this is how you get from option curious to the next level, which is option dangerous. So here we want to identify your risk tolerance. Okay, so this is one of the things risk tolerance is one of the reasons why I feel and I see people fail at trading when they really shouldn't. So there are and I see the ads all the time. There are plenty have newsletters and courses and ebooks and stuff that we can buy. And we can download and webinars to watch. And things that we can buy where it's the next greatest thing, right? It's the one system, that's going to teach us how to trade in one hour a day, or 20 minutes a day or two minutes a day, or whatever. And it's gonna make us a billion, a million dollars overnight. The thing is that, that thing might work. But it doesn't work for everybody. And it might not work for you if your risk tolerance doesn't match. So that's why I love trading options, because you can dial up and down the risk, you know, you can be more conservative, you can be more aggressive on all of our strategies. But most other types of trading, you can't do that, you try to be a day trader, you're going to be taking a lot of risk. Even if you put small amounts in every trade, you're still going to be taking a lot of trades a lot of risk. And for some people, you can't handle it. So if you take a square, and you put it try to put it into a hole in a round hole is not going to fit. So that's why most people cannot do most types of trading. Because the risk tolerance doesn't work. You also go in and go back to the basics. So if you're trying to do a system or a strategy, and you're not having success at it, it might be that you're trying to make it too complicated. So you need to simplify, you need to take it bare bones, start at the basics, level one, step one, step two, step three, you also need to start back testing. So depending on your broker, they might have the software available for you for free, or you might have to pay for it. But this really, really helps. And it really, really gets your confidence up where you can take your idea, you know, it's like, okay, I want to trade this way. And I'm going to do this and this, and this is how I'm going to adjust it. And this is I'm going to put on the trade. And you actually go back in time, find that situation, put the trade on, and then go forward in time to see how the trade worked out using historical data. So I've been doing this for a long time. And whenever I have a new strategy, I don't put real money to work, you know, I go back and I back test it. So I'll go back, you know, five years, 10 years, pick one particular stock, and then earnings or expiration by expiration, I'll put the trade on over and over and over and over and see how that strategy does. If it does great, then I'll try another stock. And then I'll try a different time period. Or if it doesn't do so well, I'll try to adjust it and see, okay, this didn't work, maybe I can try this, until I come up with something that works really well - then I tested with real money. And that's what small real money and then a test with more real money. And then if that works, then that's when I share it with my students.

So we have an oil Option Program, you know, that's the way I did that, you know, started with backtesting, then did it with small amounts of capital, then larger capital, and it'd be like, You know what, maybe I should teach this to other people. And then we taught it, it really worked well. And then you know, since then it's been growing. So number four, you got to deal with your fear. And that the backtesting really helps with that. But dealing with the fear is just, you know, overcoming a mental block. Really, number five, you got to get over the arrogance. And I've seen you'll see this a lot online right now. Because it was.. 2020 was a year where, you know, a lot of people made money in the market because the markets went up. And whenever the markets go up, people make money and they get arrogant. No, I can do this. Oh, I'm so super smart. I'm a genius. And like Warren Buffett says, you know, you don't know who's wearing clothes until the tide goes out, or something like that.

It's nothing like that, you know, you don't know who can swim until the tide goes out or whatever, and the tide is going to go out, you know, the market will not continue to go up forever. And that's when the arrogance will really hurt. So you gotta you have to have that humility aspect. And then number six is you gotta stop listening to everybody. There's a lot of people out there, and you don't know, who knows what they're talking about. So somebody could be like, Hey, I met you know, this happens a lot in Facebook groups online, somebody posts and say I made 1,000%. I mean, if you want, you know, I'll tell you how to do it. Just pay me money. Okay, but you don't know anything else. You could listen to this person and lose your shirt. Because maybe that was fake. And we're finding out that there are a lot of companies out there that sell newsletters that are fake, and they're lie, unfortunately, you know, in the book, passive trading, I talked about a guy Wade Cook, and Wade cook. I bought his book. He was very, very famous in the 80s. I mean, this guy was this guy was all over the place in the 80s. He had a dozen books and seminars all over the country. And I got one of his books and I learned what a covered call was. And I was like, holy cow. This is the coolest thing. And he's talking about how he does covered calls and he makes 20% a month and it's so easy. I think oh my god, this is amazing. I got to do this. I got to do this. Turns out Mr. Cook was not making money trading. He was losing money trading. And all he was doing was selling his books and seminars and whatnot and you was making money that way. But when they actually looked at his trading results, he was actually losing. And so he ended up in jail for tax evasion or something. There's another company right now called Raging Bull, they just shut down, because the government's coming after them, because their claims were so outrageous that they weren't backed up. And they were saying that they have traders that are making millions of dollars that were not making millions of dollars. They weren't making anything, they were losing money. So I mean, it's really a shame. And it, it really gives a black mark or black eye to what I'm trying to do. You know, because people that fall for those things, you know, the dreamers and the dabbler, they fall for those people, they see those people. Oh, you know, he's the and I actually did one of the podcasts is called the world's richest options trader, because that's what he called himself and he was flying around a plane. Turns out that guy's not making any money trading. Right? And so it gives people like me, a black guy who's really trying be like, hey, look, these are my real results, you know, I obviously made every single one of these trades. And I'm going to show you tomorrow, the results from nine years of trades. And I could not have done it five years ago, because I didn't have those nine years of trades. But now because I've been doing this for so long, I actually have the results from actual trades. And so I'll show you some actual trades of how you can double your money every year tomorrow. But again, you know, don't listen to everybody. You got to really verify who's doing it and they have to show you, they have to show you. So that's level five. Let's go to level six, Options Humble.

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