Trading Ideas

SteadyOptions 2023 – Year In Review

Performance Dissected

Check out the Performance page to see the full results. Please note that those results are based on real fills, not hypothetical performance, and exclude commissions, so your actual results will be lower, depending on the broker and number of trades. Please read 2023 Year End Performance by Trade Type for full analysis of our 2021 performance. We have extensive discussions about brokers and commissions on the Forum (like this one) and help members to select the best broker. 

The 112% annual return was pretty typical, compared to our long term average annual return of 122%. We are very pleased with this return. We continue delivering the most consistent and stable performance 12 years in a row! It’s nice to call a 114% return “typical”. And the beauty of our trading philosophy is having different strategies in our model portfolio that compliment each other.   

As I mentioned in one of the discussion topics, our performance reporting is very conservative. We rarely have more than 5 trades open at the same time, but with 5 trades open, you are basically only 50% invested. If you made 10% on the invested capital, we would report as 5% return on the total account. No service is doing it, but this is the only correct way to do it. But it also means that members can invest more than 10% per trade on trades that are more conservative and more liquid. Also there are tons of unofficial trades that don’t make it to the official portfolio due to their size.being too large for 10k portfolio. If we reported performance like most other services do (return on investment and not on the whole portfolio), our reported performance would be 300%+. More details: How We Calculate Returns?

Thank you again to everyone for their support, and of course special thanks to our contributors @Yowster @krisbee @TrustyJules @cwelsh @Jesse and @SBatch

After 12 years in business, SteadyOptions maintains its position as the most stable and consistent options trading service, with 122.3% Compounded Annual Growth Rate. We proved again that we can make money in any market. As one of our members mentioned:

“I would rate the 3% profit for March 2020 as even MORE successful than the 25% profits for Jan/Feb. If someone can make a profit in a month when there was total carnage in the markets, then that shows resilience and security in the trading strategies. It shows that even during a black swan event, the system works, and the account will not be blown.”
 

Our strategies

SteadyOptions uses a mix of non-directional strategies: earnings plays, Long Straddle, Long StrangleCalendar Spread, BitterlyIron Condor, etc. We constantly adding new strategies to our arsenal, based on different market conditions. SO model portfolio is not designed for speculative trades although we might do some in the speculative forum. SO is not a get-rich-quick-without-efforts kind of newsletter. I’m a big fan of the “slow and steady” approach. We aim for many singles instead of a few homeruns. My first goal is capital preservation instead of doubling your account. Think about the risk first. If you take care of the risk, the profits will come.
 

What makes SO different?

We use a total portfolio approach for performance reporting. This approach reflects the growth of the entire account, not just what was at risk. We balance the portfolio in terms of options Greeks. SteadyOptions provides a complete portfolio solution. We trade a variety of non-directional strategies balancing each other. You can allocate 60-70% of your options account to our strategies and still sleep well at night. 

 

Our performance is based on real fills. Each trade alert comes with a screenshot of our broker fills. We put our money where our mouth is. Our performance reporting is completely transparent. All trades are listed on the performance page, with the exact entry/exit dates and P/L percentage.

 

It is not a coincidence that SteadyOptions is ranked #1 out of 723 Newsletters on Investimonials, a financial product review site. The reviewers especially mention our honesty and transparency, and also tremendous value of our trading community.

 

We place a lot of emphasis on options education. There is a dedicated forum where every trade is discussed before the trade is placed. We discuss different strategies and potential trades. Unlike most other services that just send the trade alerts, our members understand the rationale behind the trades and not just blindly follow the alerts. SO actually helps members to become better traders.

 

Other services

In addition to SteadyOptions, we offer the following services:

  • Anchor Trades – Stocks/ETFs hedged with options for conservative long term investors. 
     
  • Steady PutWrite  puts writing on equity indexes and ETF’s.
     
  • Simple Spreads – simple spread strategies like diagonals and verticals.
     
  • SteadyVol – Volatility based trades.
     
  • Steady Collars – our version of lower risk collar trades

We offer all services bundle at $2,995 per year. This represents up to 63% discount compared to individual services rates and you will be grandfathered at this rate as long as you keep your subscription active. Details on the subscription page. More bundles are available – click here for details.

Subscribing to all services provides excellent diversification since those services have low correlation, and you also get the ONE software for free for 12 months with the yearly bundle. 


We also offer Managed Accounts for Anchor Trades and Steady PutWrite.
 

Summary

2023 was another excellent year for our members. We are very pleased with our performance.

SteadyOptions is now 11 years old. We’ve come a long way since we started. We are now recognized as:

I see the community as the best part of our service. I believe we have the best and most engaged options trading community in the world. We now have members from over 50 counties. Our members posted over 125,000 posts in the last 9 years. Those facts show you the tremendous added value of our trading community.
 

I want to thank each of you who’ve joined us and supported us. We continue to strive to be the best community of options traders and continuously improve and enhance our services.


Let me finish with my favorite quote from Michael Covel:

 

“Profits come in bunches. The trick when going sideways between home runs is not to lose too much in between.”

 

If you are not a member and interested to join, you can click here to join our winning team. When you join SteadyOptions, we will share with you all we know about options. We will never try to sell you any additional “proprietary systems”, training, webinars etc. All our “secrets” are included in your monthly fee.