There is nothing so disastrous as a rational investment policy in an irrational world – John Keynes

Trump’s victory surprised even the most well-informed financial analysts and bloggers. A quick scan of the headlines leading up to the elections showed endless articles which pontificated what a Hillary presidency would mean for markets. And those few articles which did venture a guess at what a possible Trump aftermath would look like seem even more ridiculous now in hindsight:

• Barclays – 6% fall in the S&P 500 before a partial recovery by year-end
• Citi – 5% drop in S&P 500
• RBC Capital Markets – 10% to 12% fall in the S&P 500
• Wolfers,an economics professor at Dartmouth College – 12% off the S&P 500

In the first part of this article, I briefly discussed a rather painful early trading experience during the financial crises in 2007/2008. I was short and still somehow killed my account.

I let my emotions dominate my trades earlier in my career. My self-worth was tied to each dollar made or lost. I was many things back then. Too eager, too risk-loving, too young.

Eventually, learned that my trading career is like a war that never ends. Every minute of trading is a battle with others trying to separate me from my money. If we fail to manage our emotions, we become easy targets. After blowing up my account multiple times, I learned some very painful lessons.

As promised, I will share with you my framework to keep psychologically sane while trading and also what to do when off balance.

I was 24 years old and it was July 2007. I was sitting on the fixed income trading floor of BNP Paribas at the time and was just itching to take a big short on the stock market. Equities had been rallying in the face of a crashing fixed income market. It was like smiling into the fist of a much younger Mike Tyson.

I finally pulled the trigger after months of waiting and shorted as much high beta stocks my margin would allow. After all, that’s how the legendary Jesse Livermore used to do it right? I doubled my money in a matter of weeks and was on an emotional high. I truly believed I had found my calling in life.

http://www.advisorperspectives.com/articles/2016/12/05/the-compelling-opportunity-in-emerging-growth-stocks

Trump, Buffett and Greenspan are correct, according to Kelton. Too much debt could have its consequences, but it is not a financial crisis along the lines of what Greece and other countries have faced. As a sovereign nation with complete control over its currency, the U.S. can always make good on its debts, on time and in full – and that includes its Social Security, Medicare and its other dollar-denominated obligations.

Interesting read on the false concept of the US facing a debt crises. Article argues for aggressive fiscal policy.

In our new version, we have changed the principle of pricing models setting. Now the model is defined as a pair of a computation model (Black, Black-Scholes or Cox-Ross-Rubinstein) and volatility model. You can create multiple models for each series of options and customize them in different ways.

In the volatility model settings, you can specify custom volatility values. Also, we have added a user-defined model line on volatility skew built from custom values in the pricing model settings.

Also, there are a few small changes in the positions table, technical support form, etc.

The term “day trading” assumes that a trader opens and closes positions within a single trading session and doesn’t take positions overnight.

Also, when talking about day trading, people generally think of instruments such as – equities, ETFs and futures. Not options.

However, let’s analyze whether we can use options for day trading and, if so, we should consider how to adjust trading styles and which nuances to focus on while trading options within such a short time frame.

Some users might encounter the following issues after installing Option Workshop update 16.11.1268:

• incorrect notification display: the expiration of the license or a notification about available updates;
• incorrect price range calculation for the Strategy charts;
• an error with incorrect position type when moving positions.

We apologize for the inconvenience and have fixed these issues. You can download a new version 16.11.1273 on our website.

Release 16.11.1268 entirely devoted to fixing errors and improving the functionality of the program. We have corrected more than 30 issues: interface customization, the functionality of the Positions and Fills table, formatting of the data exported or copied from Option desk, etc. We thank you for your valuable feedback!

You can download our new version here.

The question considered in this article might seem too obvious, and one might say that there is nothing to discuss. But our user support experience tells us that often people who are entirely new in options spent excessive time on trying to figure out options payoff profiles. Having a well-developed skill of reading options risk profiles (alternative terms are P&L profiles, payoff function profiles) is essential to successful options trading.

For sure, sooner or later everyone will understand all the details, but we think that with this article we may accelerate this process.

The main change of the new version is an ability to customize the line styles for the volatility skew: model lines and markers. Also we continue to improve the functionality of Option Workshop and fix some bugs.