An Effective Options Trading Program Can Make or Break a Strategy
Options trading is tricky, confusing and risky. Fortunately there are a lot of great options trading programs available to help you select, analyze and manage your options trading. These programs range from those included for free with your option’s broker to $5,700 plus $90 a month for Wave59 Pro.
Options selection in an incredibly overwhelming task given the literally thousands of possibilities. Each option has multiple parameters such as strike price, delta, beta, theta and expiration date. An options trading program is just what a beginner or pro needs to run the countless “what-if” scenarios for their trade to ensure they are protected from volatility, eliminate as much downside risk as possible and calculate the precise time to enter and exit the position. These programs allow for more informed decisions in lesser amounts while minimizing risk. It it important to find the best option trading program. For the beginner there are many free options trading programs on the net.
Before making any options trades you should decide what type of trader/investor are you. Mr./ Mrs. Vegas — high risk/ high reward or low risk, highly likely but low return trades type. Once you decide lets look at what features to look for.
Options Trading Program Features
- Visual Analysis and Portfolio Tracking for Options Trading
- Portfolio Tracking – options program will manage and keep keep track of your multiple options transactions and your portfolio of options and the software calculates in real time how the current market condition has affected the value of your options. It will also re-calculate the change in the risks of your positions. These benefits make the option tracking software indispensable.
- Built-in Strategies – program should include the most effective and popular strategies built-in. Each strategy should have a graphical representation, an example, and a detailed description explaining the basics of the strategy, in what situations it is typically used, and its risk/reward characteristics. This greatly improve your understanding and analysis of complex options strategies.
- Options Pricing – this is an extremely useful feature in options trading. This evaluates an option’s fair value to help you decide if an option is fairly priced. Also, it calculates how the option’s price would change in different market conditions. What would the option’s return on investment, volatility and your profits be when you apply a specific option strategy.
- Option Valuation – is similar to options pricing. Options valuation monitors the price movement and volatility. It also calculates how much you can earn with a certain option.
- Custom Strategies – ability for you to construct and analyze your own strategies based on your own criteria, parameters, risk tolerance and objectives.
- Importing (Downloading) Option’s Data – instant downloading of current and historical stock and option’s data from the CBOE (Chicago Board Options Exchange) for virtually all options listed on the CBOE, AMEX (American Stock Exchange), PHLX (Philadelphia Stock Exchange), PCX or PSE (Pacific Stock Exchange), and ISE (International Securities Exchange).
- Downloaded Options Data – the options trading program will download (import) the current stock price and the “options chain” for that particular stock: a list of all options for available, expiration data, current price, and strike price for each option.
- Advanced Charting and Graphing – the charts and graphs should be highly customizable – you should be able to change the times, volatility, interest rate, stock price, and change the delta, gamma, or theta. Some options trading programs can combine profit/loss characteristics for several options on a single graph.
- Option Accounting Software – to help you calculate all of the proceeds from the countless trades.
- Exporting- the ability to easily transfer your data into Tax Software or Excel Spreadsheets for further analsis.
Recommended Options Trading Programs
- Essex Trading Company, Ltd
Home of the award winning Option Pro and Futures Pro trading software. Voted “Best Option Trading System” by S&C Magazine two years in a row. - Opportunities in Options Bookmaker 2.0.
Unique option strategy analysis program that calculates the probability of profits of options positions and ranks trades as to strength. - Optionstar
Option Analysis Software Optionstar for Excel provides complete options analysis (valuations, greeks, pl graphs, probabilities, volatilities) for all options and spreads (stocks, indexes, and commodities). Datafeed is FREE (no monthly fees). Optionstar will display the best spread combinations. - OptionVue Systems Int’l.
OptionVue 5 is the most powerful options analysis software ever developed. It will help you find profitable trading opportunities and manage your positions with unprecedented speed and accuracy. Compatible Internet data also available.
More Options Information here
Hope our info on options trading helped you. More to come.
