Trading With The Geek End of Year Recap 2017
Another year has gone by if you can believe it, and there has been a lot of change in the binary options world.
The Year Binary Options Got A Wake Up Call
2017 is coming to an end if you can believe that. Another year filled with ups and downs, successes and failures, lessons learned and lessons taught. If there is one thing I can say to describe the year I would have to say it is the year binary options got its wake up call. Regulators have been hounding scammers and fraudsters for years but it was this year that their efforts began to bear fruit. Unfortunately, the efforts have had some collateral damage, namely creating conditions in which many of the once-trusted brokers could not operate forcing them to shut down. Now, we still have lots and lots of binary options fraud and a lot less regulated brokers.
Another major development and more specifically for us here at ThatSucks (former BinaryOptionsThatSuck) was the shut down of our trusty demo platform CommuniTraders. The decision was hard but came down to one thing; serving the community best. Because there is/was so much variation between brokers with assets, expiries, and types of options it was impossible for us to mimic them all. Instead of trying to accomplish an impossible task we instead decided to focus on what we do best; building community among traders and promoting trader education.
Trading with the Geek Moves to NADEX
What does this mean for the Geek? It means I completely gave up spot style binary trading in favor of NADEX. My Tips From The Geek are still useful for spot style traders but they are written for NADEX with target prices for entry, strike and expiry on 4 of my favorite assets. You may have noticed that I said 4 assets. I used to trade 5 but cut out the USD/JPY because I was too exposed to the dollar with gold and the EUR/USD. What I mean by too exposed is that in week in which I was wrong on the dollar I could easily lose three trades and those times were putting a real drag on my account.
I am still listing tips each week on Monday morning and placing them all in my NADEX demo account. I am also updating the trades throughout the week in the Geek’s NADEX Thread, my NADEX specific trading diary located in the NADEX forum. I make trades on four assets; US 500 (S&P 500), Gold, Oil and the EUR/USD. I use a mix of technical signals and fundamental outlook to make my decisions. I am targeting for the most part strikes that are close to ATM but also sometimes those deeper OTM and sometimes I use straddles.
The straddle has been a good position for me when the timing is right. To set one up buy a call and sell a put with prices to offset each other. The best set ups are when larger moves are expected but the direction is uncertain due to news etc. Also, I always look to see that potential profits in one leg of the trade are more than enough to offset and overcome losses in the other. I have, on more than one occasion, been able to close both legs at a profit when volatility is high.
Ending the Year with 5% ROI
To date, I have been able to remain profitable but it has been a rocky road. While NADEX provides an opportunity to profit far above the 85% you see with spot prices it is hard to achieve. Safe trades can make far less than 85% while risky trades may make 500% or more. The trick with either is to sell when the profits are showing; if you wait too long even good trades can go bad. I have learned that lesson many times. As of this writing, I am positive in my trading with a running total of +$978.50 net of commissions. That’s about 5% of my starting total over the course of 6 months.