You think making money trading options is easy? Well, losing it is even easier! Here’s ten ways guaranteed to blow out your account.**
- Treat options like they’re stocks. Buy calls if you think the stock is going up. Buy puts if you think it’s going down. You see, trading options is really as simple as any newsletter advertisement will tell you. You’ve read it… it must be true!
- Pyramid all those profits you’re going to be making. After all, you don’t want this to take forever. This goes hand in hand with money management tip I talk about in #6.
- Forget about learning how options work. You’ll just be wasting your time and money. Yes there’s a lot of quality free content available at the option exchange websites. But really, how much time to you want to waste in learning this stuff? All you need is some good picks.
- Don’t paper trade. This will just slow you down on your quest to glory. You’ve seen the newsletter ads, you know how much you can make in a month. Why waste time paper trading? Just think how much sooner you can quit your job if you don’t paper trade.
- Subscribe to a service that provides you with lots of hot options tips. The more this service costs, the better it will be. They don’t need to follow the trades to completion, they just need to provide a lot of high priced trading ideas.
- Don’t worry about money management. That’s for wimps. You’re not in this to lose money, you are in it to make money… and lots of it! How else are you going to make good money, if you’re always worried about losing it? So don’t be a scared cat. Let it ride, baby!!!
- Spend as much time as possible on social networks so you can see what everyone else is doing. That’s real important, specially when you don’t (cough) know what you are doing. Look, someone’s got to know what they’re doing, so why not just follow them? Specially the one’s that post a lot of strong opinions. They probably make lots of money trading for a living. How else would anyone have time to post all those comments?
- Spend just as much time on trading forums. They’re also a good place for hot tips. The best tips usually come from anonymous posters. They are probably hedge fund traders that just want to share their best trading ideas, without getting caught. And they’re doing this out of the good of their hearts. After all, why else would they want to remain anonymous?
- Always double down on a trade that isn’t working. Keep on doubling down until the trade eventually works out. I came across this secret tip on both a trading forum AND a social network, so it must be true.
- Go big or go home. Don’t bother starting out trading one or two contracts. That will just take way too long. We are talking fast money here. The more contracts you trade, the faster you will get rich.
** Naturally, I can’t really guarantee that you’ll wipe out your account if you follow all these steps. But chances are pretty good. So please, don’t even try!
