TOP 10 TRAITS OF SUCCESSFUL OPTION TRADERS.
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Have you ever wondered what sets the best options traders apart from the amateurs? Why is it that certain traders can consistently outperform no matter what the market cycle? Below is a list of the Top 10 Traits Of Successful Option Traders.
They Are Properly Capitalized – A very common mistake for beginner traders is not being properly capitalized. Beginners see the power of leverage option trading offers and think they can turn $2,000 into $20,000 in a matter of weeks. Before they know it, a couple of losing trades have completely wiped out their capital. I must admit I was also guilty of this. I was living in Grand Cayman and had just started options trading. I think in my first 6 months I broke just about every trading rule possible. I had a couple of small positions in the Australian stock market, one a utilities company and the other a REIT (real estate investment trust). Both of these positions had a low beta, meaning that the stocks did not move as much as the general market. So, through lack of knowledge and understanding I thought I would sell some call options on the main ASX index to hedge and protect my long positions. I obviously didn’t understand my net exposure was now hugely short as the short calls easily outweighed my stock holdings. Sure enough the market rallied, I refused to admit my mistake and take my losses and hoped and prayed that the position would come back my way. Next thing you know my capital has been completely wiped out and I had to send money via Western Union and have my brother deposit the money in my account the next day. Not a great experience for me, but one that I certainly learnt from!
They Have A Low Tolerance For Risk – Another important aspect of successful options trading is having a low tolerance for risk. The best options traders will only trade when there is a low risk high reward scenario. They want to have the odds skewed in their favor as far as possible. The best option traders will not try to hit home runs with every trade.
They Trade Only When The Market Provides An Opportunity – One quality all great traders have is patience. Successful investors will only enter into trades when the odds are stacked in their favor. They would much rather be the house rather than the average guy on the street trying to win big. They are focused on the bigger picture and are willing to wait and have the patience to only trade when the right opportunity presents itself. Some of the best traders often talk about sitting idle and just watching the markets, waiting for the perfect time to make a trade. Amateur investors find it very hard to not trade and are captivated by all the red and green numbers on their screen and feel like they are missing out on the action. Can you think of times in your trading when you have experienced this? Are you able to sit on the sidelines and just watch the market without jumping in?
Knowing what cycle the market is in, is key to knowing when to trade and which trades to make. The best resource if have found for knowing what cycle the market is in is Investor’s Business Daily. Each day they publish a Big Picture article which states whether the market is in a confirmed uptrend, the uptrend is under pressure or if he market is in correction. I have found them to be incredibly insightful and you would do well to follow their advice. Their advice is to only buy strong stocks when the market is in a confirmed uptrend and this has been a time tested method for market outperformance. While it’s still possible to make money on the long side while the market is in correction, the odds are stacked against you and you would only want to be buying leading stocks such as those in the IBD 100.
They Have A Trading Plan – Before opening an account, everyone should have a trading plan. This shouldn’t just be something in your head either, you need to write it down! By writing it down, it is clearly defined and you can refer back to it at any time. It will also be more real if you write it down and you’ll be much more likely to stick to it. Like anything in life, in order to be successful you need to have a plan and think things through rather than just flying by the seat of your pants. When I first started trading I would just place random trades based on how I was feeling at the time. I’d put on a bull call spread, then I’d try shorting stocks I thought were over valued and then I’d be making volatility trades. Needless to say I was not very successful during this time. While some of my trades were winners it was like I was taking 1 step forward and 2 steps back. All the great traders have a clearly defined trading plan. This is crucial to your success as a beginner options trader.
They Have A Risk Management Plan – Only trade what you can afford, don’t risk money you can’t afford to lose. Trade defensively, rather than think of what you can make, every time you make a trade you should be thinking about the worst case scenario. What could you lose and how you are going to handle the position if things go badly? Beginner traders have trouble getting a handle on how much to risk on each trade. When starting out you do not want to have 90% of your capital tied up in one trade. One thing for beginner traders to consider is to split your trading capital in half, place half in an interest bearing account and use the rest to trade. This way, no matter what happens, you will never lose all of your capital. Another good risk management rule is to set a fixed percentage of you capital as your risk per trade. A common method would be to set 5% as the maximum capital to risk per trade, but for beginners you could even make that lower. Once a trade is placed you need to continue to monitor risk levels, you can’t just have a set and forget policy, you have to stay on top of your positions and your total portfolio risk. Having a risk management plan is crucial to success as a trader and something that should be done before you start trading. Everyone wants to make a great trade and make lots of money, but you should never take risk management too lightly. What risk management rules fo you have in your trading plan?
They Can Control Emotions – Options trading is an incredibly emotional journey and one that you cannot fully appreciate until you have your own hard earned money on the line. The best traders are able to control their emotions not just when times are bad, but probably even more importantly when times are good. In my experience, and I’m sure this is the same for most traders starting out, some of my biggest losses have come when my confidence has been high. The best traders can keep their ego out of the equation and are able to stay grounded even in the midst of tremendous winning streaks. Also, when one of their trades turns out to be a loser, they are able to admit they were wrong and close out the trade. Great traders never get attached to a trade or a particular stock. A bad trade could turn out to be ok, but sticking to your pre-defined trading rules is crucial. You can be 100% right on a particular trade, but you also need to have the right timing. If your timing is off and your trade breaks your stop-loss you should always stick to your trading rules and keep your emotions out of it.
They Are Incredibly Disciplined – Successful option trading takes a great deal of discipline. Beginner option traders may find it incredibly difficult to just sit and wait for a good opportunity to trade. Waiting for the right opportunities may mean you don’t trade for a while, but trading out of boredom or excitement is one of the worst things you can do.
Having a money management and a risk management plan is one thing, but in order to be a successful trader, you need to have the discipline to stick to it. You also need discipline to stick to the types of trades you are successful with and not start trading strategies that you are not an expert in.
They Are Focused – For beginner options traders it is very easy to get carried away and get excited by all the green P&L numbers on their account statement. Keeping a level head is essential. Staying focused can also be hard when there is so much news on the markets and so many experts, each with a different opinion. The most important thing is to stay focused on your goals, your trading strategy and your rules. Don’t try to copy someone else’s trades or go against your trading rules just because of something Jim Cramer said. Get to know yourself as a trader as well, I have had a few periods when I wasn’t focused and that led to some big losses. I now can recognize those periods and I know those are the times when I really need to refocus my energies and review my trading plan. If you find yourself losing focus, or getting too distracted and stressed with everything going on, it can be a wise move to close out all of your positions and take break for a while. Sometimes that is the best medicine and will allow you to come back with a clear head, more relaxed and more focused.
They Are Committed – Options trading takes a great deal of commitment. Any time you have your hard earned money at risk, you should be trying to get the most out of your investment strategies and controlling your risk. You need to be on top of your game all the time. Any time you stop paying attention to the market, you will get burned. Not only do you need to keep an eye on your trading performance, you need to be staying abreast of the current news, market cycles and investment outlook. Some of the great resources I use, that allow me to keep up to date on the markets and take up the least amount of my time include:
Alpha Trends – Brain Shannon from Alphatrends is a market guru and author of one of the top 10 trading books ever written – “Technical Analysis using Multiple Timeframes”. Brian does a free video analysis of the markets a couple of times a week. In the first 5-10 minutes he goes through the current state of the general stock market and the various market indices. Watching this video only takes a few minutes each week, but you will receive expert analysis on the market from a trader with 17 years experience. Later in the video Brian goes through examples of specific stocks of interest which can be a great source of trading ideas.
IBD – Investor’s Business Daily is the news service the market pros use. It only takes a minute each day to read their Big Picture article to see what cycle the market is in as well as how the some of the market leading stocks have been performing lately. IBD is listed as the 4 th most visited site by Charles Kirk of The Kirk Report.
If you’re a beginner options trader and find you’re struggling with the commitment required to keep up to date with the market, or find you are suffering from information overload, try these 3 sites out. You will be able to get opinions from multiple experts and it will take you less than 10 minutes a day!
They Have Back Tested Their Strategy – Backtesting is a key part of developing your trading plan. This involves evaluating your trading strategy against the historical performance of the market to check the past performance. Of course past performance does not guarantee future performance, but it will at least give you an idea of how your strategy has performed in different time periods and market conditions. The average investor may not have the capabilities to run these calculations on their own but there are a number of software providers out there that will be able to perform backtesting. In addition, most brokers such as TD Ameritrade have backtesting software that is free to account holders. Backtesting allows you to evaluate the pros and cons of your strategy and also provides scope for improvement or tweaking of the strategy. However, a few things to consider are:
Make sure you are using an appropriate time period – If you are testing a long only strategy between 1995 and 2000, you are likely to get some very favorable results. The same strategy may not have performed so well between 2007 and 2009. It’s a good idea to test a strategy over a long time period. Take into account sectors – If your trading strategy is solely focused on a particular sector, your backtest sample should be taken from that sector. However, in all other cases it is best to use a large sample size from all sectors. Take into account commissions – commissions can seriously erode your returns, so you need to adjust for this expense, especially if your strategy involves frequent trading. Past performance may not be a good guide to the future – While your chosen strategy may have worked in the past, there is no guarantee it will work in the future. A good idea is to paper trade for a month or two, just to make sure your strategy still works in the current environment.
Some great resources for backtesting can be found at tradecision and amibroker. While I have not used these resources personally, they come highly recommended from other industry professionals.
So, those are my Top 10 Traits For Successful Options Trading, what do you think? Can you think of any other important traits required for successful investing?
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24 Comments.
no comments huh…ive read everything i can ould ever get my hands on about becoming a successful options trader and this article right here is priceless. Top ten traits….might as well be the ten commandments.
haha, fantastic comment Dustingedney! Thanks for the positive feedback.
Great advice. Thank you.
Thankyou, good info for first timers.
Great article! Thank you .
Thanks Alan, glad you liked it.
great post, I learned a lot from this one.
WOW! just what I needed (as a beginner and for some confidence)
Fantastic! Glad it helped you!
You mentioned a risk management plan, can you provide an example?
As a real beginner, every new insight brings new questions. For example what does it mean to be properly capitalized? How do you evaluate risk? How do you know when the market provides opportunity? As you see I have a lot to learn. Thanks for the good beginning.
every trader must follow this rules.
You should also have mentioned that successful options traders are net sellers of options.
Very true G Guy. Good comment.
thats not true at all.. i trade credit (& debit depending on what im looking at) verticals, naked isnt such a good idea but selling credit spreads is very lucrative.
but i was going to comment and say these 10 traits apply to trading anything, not just options.
Solid round up of the attributes.
Written by someone who has observed success but never experienced it. Right? Or experienced it marginally?
This is almost exactly like the list I wrote for myself when I was analyzing why I was not doing as well as I wanted to. It makes logical sense, but parts of it are not possible to follow without massive changes in the trader’s beliefs. For example, patience follows belief. Patience cannot be pulled out of the arse or willed into existence. But, as the writer accurately says, patience is essential to success.
To be a successful trader long term I knew I had to be disciplined (like it says above). But discipline didn’t start to happen consistently until “I believed I must be disciplined.” When I saw it as the only path to success I started doing it. The better question for someone just starting out is “How can I come to believe (in my heart) that I must be disciplined?” “What do I need to believe in order to have patience?” “What do I need to believe in order for my tolerance for risk to become low?” Where do emotions come from and how do I need to think in order to limit their impact on my decisions?” Etc… Then reinforce those beliefs so that you become like the successful trader characterized above…not through discipline or intention, but through nature.
Sir, I am from India, I want to learn Option-Trading and trading in Indian Market, can you guide me?
Thanks for the article. Really informative and with extra info on top of your No B******* books.
The Fast Money Review site doesn’t seem to work anymore.
all points are very relevant.
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The Greatest Trades In Wall Street History.
Every day thousands and thousands of transactions are done between investors around the world, but lets face it, most of them will never be remembered.
For that reason, among others, the trades that do become a part of history have to be incredibly epic.
And it can't just be that they netted someone an incredible amount of money, great trades are even more than that.
A really great trade is something that happens when a trader uses all their cunning and intuition to find just the right moment to strike — sometimes when everyone else thinks they're out of their mind.
Think about it: John Paulson shorted the U. S. housing market when almost everyone else on Wall Street was bullish. Jim Chanos held on to his Enron short even as the stock was shooting up.
That takes intelligence, conviction, and grit.
Business Insider has compiled a list of traders throughout history who've used all those qualities to execute some of the greatest trades of all time.

Greatest option trades

I have been blessed in that I have worked for and had clients who were Billionaires. But there is one Billionaire I met during my hedge fund days that I will never forget, because he was one of the best options traders I have ever seen.
He had a 5 Step system for trading options that I use for my all my options trading today. I am going to share this with you today and I call this ” The Billionaires 5 Rules of Options Trading”
1) Never ever buy an Option (a Put or a Call) unless there is a catalyst or event. This means you only buy an option when there is an event that will dramatically move the price of the stock up or down. These events or catalysts can be anything from: Earnings Announcements, Fed Meetings, Economic Releases, an Activist Hedge Fund buying a stock to any type of corporate change, CEO, sale of a business unit, merger or acquisition. The key is to buy the option before this event occurs, you never ever want to buy an option after the catalyst or event. So in summary only buy an option when there is catalyst or event that will dramatically alter the price of the stock.
2) This Catalyst or Event must occur before the option expires. An easy example of this is Earnings, you only want to buy an option that expires more than a week after the earnings date. Again this means when you buy an option make sure you leave yourself enough time so that your option does not expire before the catalyst or event occurs.
3) The Option must be Cheap. This can be hard to measure but I like to keep it simple, I personally don’t like paying more than a $1 for any option. But if its a high priced stock, I will only buy the option it gives me at least 25 times leverage or more on the stock. Meaning divide the price of the stock by the actual option price. For example if the stock of XYZ is $100 do not pay more than $4 for the option on that stock, that’s the easiest way to make sure the option is cheap.
4) Only buy options in stocks that have low volatility. This means you want to buy options on stocks that have moved sideways of flat for months at a time. Look at a chart if there has not been a significant uptrend or downtrend in the last 3 to 4 months, there is a good chance that the volatility in the stock is low and the options are cheap. Also if you have options software, you can compare the stock and its options implied volatility and underlying volatility to its historical implied and underlying volatility. This may sound confusing but its the same premise value investors use, they buy stocks when they are cheap in comparison to what they historically sold for, so you want to buy options when the volatility is low or lower than what it historically has sold for.
5) Only buy options if you can make 200% or more on the option. This is very important, too many people buy options with no exit plan or profit target. You have to set a goal or sell point when you buy an option and to make it worthwhile from a risk reward standpoint. The option should have at least a 200% or more upside. Why 200%? because there is a good chance when you buy an option, you will lose the entire value or premium of the option (or 100% of your investment in the option) therefore to be rewarded for that risk you need to be able to make 200% or more in that option. Simply stated only buy an option when you have at least a 2 to 1 reward to risk scenario.
Now I will give you a real life example of an options trade I just made, where I only followed 2 of the 5 steps and it cost me dearly on my trade.
About two weeks ago I purchased a large quantity of put options on Silver, (The Silver ETF, Symbol SLV), that expired on June 28th. The option was very cheap I paid .$50 cents per option. So I followed steps 3 and 4, in that I purchased a cheap put option ($.50 cents) whose volatility was low, so the options were cheap not only in price but also cheap in terms of Silver’s historical volatility as well.
My big mistake though was not having the proper catalyst, I thought Silver was going to drop in price but I just wasn’t exactly sure why? I thought initially it would drop because the Job Numbers that were released 2 weeks ago would be strong and therefore would cause Silver to sell off. Also I thought Silver had broken a huge downward consolidation pattern and therefore it would drop 10% in the next couple of weeks.
Well the Job Numbers were good, and Silver sold off and I was up 100% on my Silver put options in 2 days, but instead of following the Trading Rules my Billionaire friend taught me, I took my 100% profit and went home.
Because of this I did not follow the 200% or more profit rule and I did not have the right catalyst, which turned about to be the Fed Meeting I therefore missed out on one of the biggest moves in Silver’s history, its 7% decline today.
By not following my Billionaire friend’s 5 Trading Rules for Options, I missed out a huge trade. I would have made 400% on my Silver Puts today instead of the 100% I made two weeks ago. So I learned first hand how much it can cost you by not following each and every one of the 5 rules above.
So my lesson to you is not only are these 5 Rules for Trading Options important, but even more important is that you make sure before you buy an option that you have followed each and every one of the 5 rules I stated above. Meaning do not buy an option unless it meets each and every one of the 5 rules.
To make it easy for yourself print out these rules and then before you trade an option make sure that you can check off each rule before you buy the option. If you do this I promise that not only will you greatly improve the success of your options trading but you will make a lot of money in the process as well.

The World's 10 Most Famous Traders Of All Time.
There are several famous former traders who moved on to different careers, such as John Key (Prime Minister of New Zealand) and Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia). However, this list is made up of traders famous for being traders. The lives of the world's most famous traders are colored by both triumph and tragedy, with some exploits achieving mythological status within the industry. The list begins with legendary traders of history and progresses to those of the present day.
Jesse Livermore: Jesse Lauriston Livermore (1877–1940) was an American trader famous for both colossal gains and losses in the market. He successfully shorted the 1929 market crash, building his fortune to $100 million. However, by 1934 he had lost his money and tragically took his own life in 1940. William Delbert Gann: WD Gann (1878–1955) was a trader who used market forecasting methods based on geometry, astrology, and ancient mathematics. His mysterious technical tools include Gann angles and the Square of 9. As well as trading, Gann wrote a number of books and courses. George Soros: Hungarian-born George Soros (born 1930) is the chairman of Soros Fund Management, one of the most successful firms in the history of the hedge fund industry. He earned the moniker “The Man Who Broke the Bank of England” in 1992 after his short sale of $10 billion worth of pounds, yielding a tidy $1 billion profit. Jim Rogers: James Rogers, Jr. (born 1942) is the Chairman of Rogers Holdings. He co-founded the Quantum Fund along with George Soros in the early 1970s, which gained a staggering 4200% over 10 years. Rogers is renowned for his correct bullish call on commodities in the 1990's and also for his books detailing his adventurous world travels. Richard Dennis: Richard J. Dennis (born 1949) made his mark in the trading world as a highly successful Chicago-based commodities trader. He reportedly acquired a $200 million fortune over ten years from his speculating. Along with partner William Eckhardt, Dennis was co-creator of the mythical Turtle Trading experiment. Paul Tudor Jones: Paul Tudor Jones II (born 1954) is the founder of Tudor Investment Corporation, one of the world's leading hedge funds. Tudor Jones gained notoriety after making around $100 million from shorting stocks during the 1987 market crash. John Paulson: John Paulson (born 1955), of the hedge fund Paulson & Co., rose to the top of the financial world after making billions of dollars in 2007 by using credit default swaps to effectively sell short the US subprime mortgage lending market. Steven Cohen: Steven Cohen (born 1956) founded SAC Capital Advisors, a leading hedge fund focused primarily on trading equities. In 2013, SAC was charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission with failing to prevent insider trading and later agreed to pay a $1.2 billion fine. David Tepper: David Tepper (born 1957) is the founder of the wildly successful hedge fund Appaloosa Management. Tepper, a specialist in distressed debt investing, has made several appearances on CNBC where his statements are closely watched by traders. Nick Leeson: Nicholas Leeson (born 1967) is the rogue trader who famously caused the collapse of Barings Bank. Leeson served four years in a Singapore jail, but later bounced back to become CEO of Irish football club Galway United.
The dramatic and varied life stories of the world's most famous traders have made compelling material for books and movies. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator , a fictionalized portrayal of Jesse Livermore's life, is widely viewed as a timeless classic and one of the most important books ever written about trading. Rogue Trader (1999), starring Ewan McGregor, is based on the story of Nick Leeson and the collapse of Barings Bank.