Getting Started

14 July 2014

Hello!

Since this is my first blog entry, I figure I'd better start at the beginning.

On a cold night in December a few decades plus ago, I was born....  Oh wait.  I don't need to start at the beginning of my life.  Let's start at the trading-relevant part.

I've been trading for about three months now.  Paper trading only though. Nothing yet with real money...

(Pause) Strike that and reverse it....

My husband and I did a bit with stocks several years ago, attempting to actively trade, but we (read me) wound up choosing poorly and losing probably more than 1/2 the value of that account (which was relatively small to begin with).  That was demoralizing, let me tell you, which made it easier and easier to just quit doing it.  About the same time, we set up a second account specifically for options trading, but we really haven't done too much beyond that.  

Then grad school happened, and then I worked towards and completed a professional certification, and then a kiddo joined our family.  :)  And, you know, life in general.  The account I was actively attempting to use to build wealth and all those kinds of things stagnated from lack of attention.  We sold off all our positions, and it's been sitting relatively useless except as a holding account for a relatively small pool of money that we figured, eventually, we'd get back to and figure out the whole investing thing when we had time.

My husband has been interested in options trading for a while and has been paper trading a lot longer than I have.  My parents have also been trading options and stocks, and talking about what they've been learning and doing has been interesting.

I finally dove in about 3 months ago and went as a guest of my parents to a basic options class.

It was overwhelming and exciting all at the same time.  I'm definitely intrigued by the potential.  Now we just need to figure it out.

Three months later, and I'm actually somewhat cool with our status of breaking even.  We're just barely net positive in my paper money account, though I have factored out some paper trades that went inexplicably good.  One trade was an Iron Condor on JCP that somehow netted us over $800 (paper money).  It was only one contract as well!  We can't quite figure out what happened, let alone try to duplicate it, so I'm just chalking that up to a fluke and not counting it.  However, breakeven isn't good enough yet for me.  I want to be doing better.  Then, when I have a positive track record, I want to be doing well in our real, albeit small, money account.  Eventually, that account will grow, and we'll have more money than we do today!

And that brings us to today.  Today, we're still learning.  I've got some paper trades going on right now, which I'll talk about in another post.  I've started this blog as a way to track what we're doing, what we're learning, what's working for us, and what's not working.  Hopefully people will find things I'm saying and doing interesting and maybe even insightful -- even if it's in a "what not to do" kind of way.  Maybe people will even want to discuss more fully what's going on.

So basic options trading and the Confessions of a Novice Trader.  Here's to the upcoming adventure!

Thanks for joining!
Dani