hyper_critical

I just skimmed the thread to this point, because most if it wasn't worth reading. What's clear is many expressing their opinions, if they've picked up Misbehavior of Markets, let alone something from SSRI, they gave it a 5-minute skim TOPS looking for something that looked like a trading indicator and missed what couldn't have been much past chapter 2: Markets are self-affine, NOT self-similar. And that's all I have to say about that.

Full agreement. If you can't tell me what a conversion/reversal are and don't have a grasp on synthetics, you're setting yourself up for disaster, at the very least a career of inefficiently expressing your views on underlying direction/volatility. Far too much risk for sub-optimal returns. Just do the work - yes it takes more than five minutes - but DO THE WORK before you trade another speculative option or spread again, and I promise it lead to a level shift up in the expected future trajectory of your trading career. Something like 90% of options traders lose money over the long-run, including and perhaps especially professionals speculating in them, because they don't have a firm grasp of what they're dealing with (and because a certain percentage among us are degenerate gamblers and there's just nothing we're gonna be able to do about that). "The market takes no prisoners. It simply kills those who do not have enough knowledge." Never been more true than now given recent developments in market structure. It's also never been easier for you to get out and find that knowledge. If you don't, you're making the conscious decision to get up from the poker table after putting in a good, profitable 8 hour session, and putting a quarter of your winnings on black. Every time. Develop your edge. Hone it. And when the opportunities present themselves, strike ruthlessly and with precision. It's a zero-sum game.