When we first set up this virtual portfolio on April 10th we set out to utilize $100,000 as safely as possible in a well-hedged and well diversified set of stocks.
Although we deployed very little capital (less than $20,000) in our first month due to a fairly unstable market outlook, we did manage to cash out positions with $4,340 worth of profit so far. As 22% in a month is considered a decent return, a lot of new members are very impatient to jump on these trades but I would urge them to go back to the basics we discussed back in April. We have a "New Member's Guide" which pretty much lays things out with these standard assignments:
- If you are new to options, read Sage's Book
- Read 1 full month of my posts and all comments, you will get a good feel for the site, the kind of trades we do and also get to know a bit about the people in chat. Knowing people's various expertises and understanding their market philosophy and position makes the next live comment they make much more informative...
- Read Option Sage's articles under his tab, many were co-authored by me that highlight various option stratgies with real-world examples.
- Watch The Man Who Planted Trees, a short video about that characterizes a solid investing (and life) philosophy.
AFTER you do those things, then we are ready to talk about setting up a virtual portfolio, the design of this virtual portfolio is to allow us to track trades weekly with a minimum of fuss, selecting trades that do not require a lot of babysitting during the week. Ideally, as long as you maintain some of the master hedges, the positions we use here should be valid for new entries - even if you missed the earlier positions as we attempt, at all times, to keep a fairly sensible balance.
