We experienced another glitch recently that took out our option chains again. Options trading is back now ... we apologize for any inconvenience!

Dear all, I apologize for not having been too active on the site lately. With the current markets in such turmoil there is much to distract our attention and a lot to ponder over. Well, I am not immune. I hope I will find the time in the near future to write an extensive update about the developments with Tipping Monkey, but I wanted to thank all the loyal members who continue to visit or otherwise support this site.

But first things first, I wanted to let all of you know that Options trading - which is one of the key differentiating features of Tipping Monkey - is back! The main change is that now we've embraced the "@" prefix for option symbols as our quote provider had changed their system. I think this is long overdue and better, since it eliminates the confusion between stock/option symbol clashes, and allows for quick visual disambiguation between stocks, options, and FOREX symbols.

We now also have commodity symbols (denoted with a "/" prefix) that people can "trade" (i.e. buy and sell only). We will be looking at updating the trading engine to see what additional support we need to add for more comprehensive commodities activity. We will be rolling out incremental changes in the next few months. Stay tuned!

Recently I came across a question regarding playing straddles around earnings in anticipation of a wild swing one way or another. People have been reporting mixed results and were wondering why. I summarized some of my thoughts below.

If anyone has any comments or sees flaws in my reasoning, please feel free to point them out. I`d rather be corrected than continue to be igonorant...

PS: a straddle is an option play where you buy both a call and a put, typically around the same strike price. This play will yield a profit if the stock price goes wildly on either direction, and loses money if the stock does not move far enough.

My take on Straddles:

IMHO, the issue with Straddles is that you are committing capital up front to buy two opposing positions. If you track the options premiums before earnings releases, you will find that the premiums are relatively high, because everyone knows that the stock will swing one way or another. This very knowledge causes the implied volatility of the near-term options to abnormally high levels in comparison to some further-out options.

Apparently a lot of traders are interested in Intraday Charts so they can see the behavioral trends of a stock within the trading day. Options traders are just as reliant (if not more reliant) on being able to spot these intraday trends and movements. However, many finance sites actually do not offer intraday option charts, and most options traders are forced to use the underlying stock charts as a trend indicator.

One of the cool things here at Tipping Monkey is that we actually offer a variety of option charts. Just enter an option symbol directly in the "Get Quotes" box, or get the quote of any underlying stock and click on an option symbol from the Option Chain, and you will see a chart for that option. The default duration is one-month, but you can click on the little tabs underneath the chart to see other periods, including Intraday prices if you click on ...

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Tipping Monkey seems to attract a lot of options traders, and they range from beginners to more seasoned investors. We just received an email from a member inquiring about margin requirements for writing (selling to open) options positions. And after responding to this member`s email, I wanted to write a follow-up article about writing options on Tipping Monkey, and how we calculate margin deposit requirements, since perhaps some of you might be wondering how we compute the margin requirements for writing options.

First of all, I would like to talk about the 4 basic scenarios of writing (sell to open) options:

1. Covered Call Write

Covered Call write refers to selling call options against underlying stock that you already own. For example, you have 100 shares of AAPL, and if you write 1 Call contract against the 100 shares, it is considered a Covered Call Write. It is covered because if the Call option contract is ASSIGNED, you will have the shares available for delivery. This is considered a yield-enhancing move, which places an artificial cap on your upside potential. In general, Covered Call Write is generally considered to be a low-risk hedge because it risk is similar to just holding the stock outright, and if the stock goes down, your actual losses will always be less than just holding the stock.