Over the short term markets are driven by the sentiment of those buying and selling. Over the long term the markets are driven by fundamentals such as quarterly profits, interest rates, and events both domestic and foreign. Long term investors generally do very well by determining the intrinsic value of…

If a trader wants to make money trading options they need a way to determine if prices are doing up, down, or sideways. The strategies that you choose and the degree to which you hedge your risk in trading options will be based on what you think the market will…

An item in the financial news caught our eye the other day. Warren Buffett appears to be expecting a recession. How do we know that? He is rotating parts of his massive Berkshire Hathaway portfolio into consumer defensive stocks. At Top Gun Options we trade options. We are able to…

Here at Top Gun Options we always emphasize that you need to pay attention to what is happening across the country and the world and how it may affect your trading of options. The most recent huge examples were the Covid-19 pandemic with the resulting crash and recovery, the worst…

There are times when the market gets ready to fall off of the earth. We typically suggest that you get long volatility, buy puts on the S&P 500, or go pop some popcorn, go for a walk, or get into cash and don’t trade anything. There is a time when…

Anyone who pays attention to our trading here at Top Gun Options can see that we use a handful of strategies again and again. This may seem repetitive. What is, in fact, repetitive is that we repeatedly profit from using these strategies. For example, we use a lot of credit…

In the world of options trading a credit spread is a strategy in which the trader buys and sells options on the same stock (both calls or both puts) with the same expiration date but at different strike prices. The strike prices chosen are such that the premium received for…

There are more than four hundred possible options trading strategies. Do you need to know them all? Keeping your options trading simple is generally a good idea. This is especially important for beginners. A trader may think that they will be missing out on potential profits if they limit the…

Investors are fleeing Chinese stocks like rats leaving a sinking ship. China’s population is aging and even shrinking at bit. Their real estate sector is in trouble. Their public and private debt burdens are huge and growing. And the US and its allies have finally woken up to the fact…