Of all the many option trading strategies available, the Credit Spread is quite possibly the most popular, most discussed, most utilized – and most DANGEROUS strategy of them all.
The problem is that way too many new option traders slap down significant money and start trading credit spreads immediately upon discovering them without first equiping themselves with the proper knowledge and skills needed to trade them properly. They are so captivated by the stories and claims of ten percent months and 90 percent probabilities that somehow they don’t stop to think about what they are going to do if their trade doesn’t go exactly as planned.
And it seems that a good percentage of them – if not most of them – promptly wind up getting their groins kicked in, their heads ripped off, their eyes poked out, and getting hurt really, really bad.
Now wait –
Before you start to get the wrong impression, please, let me clarify something here.
I LOVE credit spreads.
And yes – I really do think it’s a great and dependable way to trade.
And yes, I absolutely believe all those stories and claims you hear swirling around about credit spreads generating ten percent plus monthly returns and providing trades that have the probability of winning somewhere in the range of eighty to ninety percent. In fact, I KNOW those stories are true because I see it happen all the time in my very own trading account.
The big problem is that there is some very important information being left out of those credit spread claims and stories. Information that I’m sure would keep alot of rookie option traders – who frankly just don’t know any better – from blindly making that ‘over-confident’ leap into the credit spread abyss.
See, while it may be true that the credit spread and iron condor strategies can kick off yields of over ten percent monthly and that they favor the trader by offering high probabilities of winning (in some instances as high as 80 and 90 percent) – what isn’t being talked about is the risk to reward ratio of these trades – which can be as high as 10 to 1.
That means that while trading these trades you are putting at risk 10 bucks for the chance to make just 1. Or – in reality, in the instance of say a standard ten lot index iron condor, you are risking ten thousand dollars for the chance to make just one thousand dollars.
And as my dear old mammy used to say: ‘that smells a lot like an awful bad egg’. Which in fact it is. That risk to reward ratio is nothing but a low down, no good, smelly rotten deal!
Because once you do the math you find that even with those glorious monthly returns with 80 to 90 percent probability of winning – all it takes is just one problem month to come along and cause a loss that will completely obliterate the 8 to 9 wins you’ve managed to rack up – as well as potentially the rest of your entire account!
However…
There is still hope…
Like I said before, I LOVE the credit spread trade.
Over the last ten years it’s been extremely profitable for me.
So clearly there must be a way to profitably trade this strategy without allowing that awful risk to reward issue to get in the way.
And yes, there certainly is.
It all revolves around how you go about handling the trade.
As soon as you discover the ‘right way’ to place these trades initially – and then how to properly go about managing and adjusting them – that risk to reward dilemma instantly vanishes and goes away.
Once you possess the correct credit spread trading knowledge and know how – and understand how to apply a couple super easy to implement adjustment tricks – you’ll know exactly how to exterminate any problematic market threat that comes your way, allowing you to experience the Credit Spread strategy for all that it’s ‘actually’ cracked up to be.
To learn a much ‘better’ way to trade the Credit Spread trade for monthly income, visit this Credit Spread training website for simple step-by-step instructions on how to correctly place, manage, and ADJUST credit spread trades.