M. Contrarian

I suggest you read a couple of excellent books: - "Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom", by Van K. Tharp - "Trading for a Living", by Dr. Alexander Elder These two books will give you a good start on both the techincal and psychological aspects of trading. Good luck! M.C.

By all means respect your stops when a trade doesn't go the way you expected. When you set up a trade, setting up a fixed stop loss AND a trailing stop loss will help reduce your losses and protect profits. Once you hit your profit target (or if market conditions warrant), you can tighten your trailing stop and continue the "ride" with all, or part of your position. Set your stops carefully, based on support/resistance levels and trading ranges, and then don't second-guess them -- let your stops take you out of the trade.

JPx2, the TCK example is not a straddle, but rather a bullish vertical call spread, as both your long and short calls are out of the money. Importantly, you CAN lose in this trade if TCK closes below 7.50 at expiration. However, if you SOLD the 7.50 call strike and BOUGHT the 10.00 strike, you'd make money if it stayed below 7.50, and cap your losses at $250 minus collected premium on the spread between the two strikes. The spread as you've outlined it only makes money once the underlying stock exceeds the 7.50 strike by the amount of net premium you paid for the spread. http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/images/smilies/2c.gif