Following the Trades

You don't need to be an options expert to follow a trade. You need to know these ten words.

A stock alert is simple — ticker, entry, stop, target. An options alert has more pieces because every contract has a strike and an expiration. Miss one and you're in a different trade than me.

Every alert I post looks like this:

The first line is the contract. It has four parts and all of them matter:

• NVDA = the ticker. The company.
• Dec 19 = the expiration. The deadline.
• $150 = the strike. The price it's locked to.
• Call = the direction. Call is up, put is down.

The other lines tell you what to pay and when to get out: entry is the price to pay, contracts is how many, stop is when to bail, target is where it's headed.

The most common way people lose money following alerts: they buy a slightly different contract. A different strike, a different expiration, "close enough."

It is not close enough. A NVDA $150 Call and a NVDA $160 Call are two completely different trades that move at different speeds. If the alert says $150 Dec 19, you buy $150 Dec 19. Same four pieces, every time.

The number one mistake new members make is copying the contract count instead of the percentage. The alert says "2 contracts." That does not mean you buy 2 contracts.

When I post "2c" that's sized to my account. Your account is different. Copying my contract count blindly is how people blow up.

• 2 contracts at $350 each = $700.
• On a $5,000 account, that's 14% in one trade. Way too much.
• On a $50,000 account, that's 1.4%. Reasonable.

Same alert. Completely different risk depending on your account. So you never copy the contract count. You copy the percentage.

Keep each options trade to a small slice of your account. Figure out your dollar amount first, then buy however many contracts fit that amount — even if that's just one. One contract that fits your account beats two that don't.

If one contract is still too expensive for your size, you skip the trade. There's always another one. Blowing up your account means there isn't.

Two people can follow the exact same alert and get completely different results. The difference is how they enter and exit.

When an alert drops, the contract price can spike for a minute as people pile in. If you market-buy into that spike, you overpay.

• Use a limit order near the entry price in the alert, not a market order.
• If the price already ran past the entry, wait. It often comes back. If it doesn't, skip it — you don't have to be in every trade.
• Never pay way above the listed entry just to get in. The trade was planned at that entry for a reason.

When I post a trim, that's the signal to take some profit too. The whole point of trimming is to lock in gains while keeping a piece on for a bigger move.

• When I trim, you trim. Sell roughly the same proportion I do.
• What's left after trimming is the runner — house money. Let it ride toward the target.
• If you only own one contract, your "trim" is just deciding when to sell the whole thing. Taking profit at a solid gain is never wrong.

The alert has a stop — the premium level where the trade is wrong. Honor it. If the contract hits the stop, you're out. No hoping, no holding, no "it'll come back."

The members who lose more than they planned almost always do it the same way: they ignore the stop, hold a loser, and watch it go to zero by expiration. Set the stop when you enter. Every time.

If options feel like too much, you don't have to trade them. Almost every options alert is a bet on a stock. You can just buy the stock instead.

• No deadline. A share never expires. You can hold as long as you want.
• No premium decay. Options lose value over time even if the stock sits still. Shares don't.
• Smaller swings. Shares move slower than options, so a bad day hurts less.
• Simpler. No strike, no expiration to match. Just buy the ticker.

The trade-off is smaller gains. Options move faster in both directions. Shares are the calmer, slower version of the same idea.

Take the same sample alert: NVDA Dec 19 $150 Call. The options trade is a bet NVDA goes up by December. The stock version is simple:

• Ignore the strike and expiration. Those are options-only.
• If the alert is a call (bullish), you buy shares of the ticker — buy NVDA.
• If the alert is a put (bearish), that's a bet the stock falls. With shares, you'd simply stay out or sell what you hold — don't try to short unless you know what you're doing.

Stocks are safer, so you can size a bit bigger than options — but still keep any single position to a sensible slice of your account, not your whole stack.

For exits, follow the same idea: when I trim or call a target, take some profit. The big difference is you're never forced out by a deadline, so there's no pressure to panic. A share can wait.