Frequently Asked Questions
Right Answers for the Right Questions
The OptionTiger courseware uses U.S. Stocks, Indices and ETFs for all analysis and live trading examples. But the underlying education is applicable to any market around the world. Macroeconomics, Market psychology, Technical analysis, Volume analysis and a variety of other factors don’t change. Additionally, Options which is our core focus, is a purely mathematical concept. This concept is universal across all assets and all markets around the world. It doesn’t matter if you trade the US markets, London FTSE, German DAX, South Korean Kospi, Indian Nifty or the Australian Ordinaries. The basic understanding of markets and application of strategy remains the same around the world. Whatever market you’re in, you can apply these techniques and strategies to the stocks, indices and ETFs in your market. The tools and the platform will differ from market to market, and you can study your platform to get the required information you need.
Absolutely. First of all, there are several strategies that can be applied to both Stocks and Options. And if you already own Stocks, we’ll show you ways to make additional income while you own these stocks. We’ll show you ways to buy the stocks you like for prices far less than what its currently trading for. There are several exciting ways to play Stocks using Options and we get into these strategies in detail.
Yes. Regardless of what level you’re at, we take you through step-by-step. No other site provides this kind of breadth and depth on the financial markets.
We look at all investment timeframes, but our sweet spot is Swing trading. Once you learn the set of tools available to you, you can adapt it to your timeframe of choice.
In general, swing trading takes advantage of monthly cycles in the markets. In a swing trading environment, you may hold your position for anywhere between 2 weeks to 6 weeks. Whenever you hit your profit targets, you should take your profits, and move on to the next trade. Buy and Hold strategies worked well in the past, but they don’t do well anymore. The swing trading approach does not marry you to any market condition for a long time, and you can be nimble enough to adapt to the current situation. Market conditions this month may be very different from the last month and may be very different from what it is next month. And swing trading strategies provides the ideal approach to deal with this kind of market condition and maximize opportunities to make monthly returns.
We teach you ways to decide your “adjustment points”. We also show you ways to put a “conditional” order so your order can only be filled if this condition is satisfied. If you follow this kind of disciplined strategy, you won’t need to worry about your positions during working hours. Risk management and conditional orders are key.
Yes, you can. Active traders can apply all our Options strategies. In general, not every strategy has to be applied by everyone. We provide a comprehensive toolkit at OptionTiger, and everyone can make an informed decision on which tools to pick and choose from this toolkit for his or her individual situation. You could be very successful just using Stocks, and the basic Long Call and the Long Put options. This is perfectly fine. Everyone needs to operate in their comfort zone.
Our live trading examples take up all the major stocks, Indices and ETFs. We focus only on instruments that have high liquidity in the markets. High liquidity is important to be cost-effective on trade entry and exits. You can apply the strategies you learn to any stock of your choice because we show you what to look for. Our live trading examples comprise of AAPL, GOOG, IBM, PCLN, SPX, SPY, GLD, NFLX, CMG, AMZN and many more..
Index trading involves using instruments that cover the broad market indices like the S&P 500 or the Nasdaq index itself. Index trading has several advantages over stocks, and we cover these in the courses. ETF trading also shares several of these advantages. To name a couple, Index and ETF trading have instant diversification so you’re not exposed to any company specific risk like accounting fraud, oil spills etc. Index and ETF trading can play a very important role for working professionals. We use the SPX Index and the SPY ETF as well as the Gold GLD and Euro FXE ETFs extensively in our examples.
The Bond Market is almost 100% operated by smart money. The Bond Market can give us extremely important signals that impact the stock markets. You may never invest in a bond in your life, but its absolutely critical to understand how they work. Bond markets are play a central role in the overall macroeconomic environment, so understanding how it works, and its behavior is critical. We break down every important aspect of the Bond markets, Inflation, Interest rates, Quantitative Easing, the role of the Federal Reserve and much more in detail.
Yes, we cover Futures trading in our Advanced module. Futures are a fast moving instrument, especially suited for day-traders. We show you what you need to know about Futures markets so that you can get a deeper level of understanding of how these markets work, but they may not be suitable for everyone. We also show you how you can use Futures markets at very specific times to hedge your stock or Options positions. We also cover Options on Futures, and this is again a complex product. You may never use these products but its good to know how they work.
You could. We would recommend Modules I and V because these modules are important to get a 360 degree view of the landscape. If you’re already familiar with Option spreads, you can then start with the advanced module. However, we show you using live trades everything that can go wrong with trades, so if you’re somewhat unclear on how to deal with spreads, we recommend Module IV as well.
We take up every major stock for analysis and education purposes only. We’re not a registered investment advisor or broker, so we cannot provide specific buy or sell recommendations. All our webinars take up stocks for analysis purposes and we study the different considerations you have to give before choosing a particular strategy, stock, strike prices etc.
We recommend you try a few courses first, and make sure you’re comfortable with the content. A lot of intellectual property has gone into each module. While we offer a full credit for any course, unfortunately we cannot refund Bundle purchases.
At every level, you can apply strategies that can be profitable. That’s the great aspect of Options. You need to understand the level you’re at, and understand the issues at that level completely. So for example, if you just use Options to buy stocks at ridiculous prices and that’s your only play, you need to learn to do that well. You shouldn’t be trading spreads just to try things out. You can try anything with a paper money account first to understand the dynamics of more advanced strategies. If you master any level (even the basic levels), you’ll learn to operate efficiently and profitably at that level. This is what is important.
No. There are three distinct levels you can operate at – the basic Stock and/or Option combo level, the Spread level or the Advanced level. You can be at any of these levels for any length of time, and in fact be very successful at that level and never have to move any higher. It’s only dangerous if you’re at one level, but you start experimenting with a higher level without fully understanding the complexities of that level. OptionTiger is designed to progress you from one level to the next at your own pace, so take your time and master each level completely before moving ahead. If you want to increase your understanding of more complex levels, always use your paper money account.
We use the Thinkorswim trading platform in all our examples. While there are many good trading platforms in the market, we have found Thinkorswim to be top-notch. Other good platforms are Trademonster, OptionsXpress which is now part of Charles Schwab and TradeKing. All of these platforms are technologically advanced, the differences are mainly in the way screens are laid out. Unfortunately, we can’t recommend you use any one or the other, its up to you. You can open paper money accounts on all of these platforms without committing much capital.
