| I would not be telling people to start making money off of shorts as their first few trades. Shorts are much more riskier than holding good amounts of selective monitored companies. Most people should hold about 5-6 stocks that they can keep track of, but those 5-6 stocks should be well thought out bought on good opportunity timing with good metrics. Calls and shorts are just for quick bucks. They can make you a lot of money with the right timing, or you could lose it all. It's important to read up and know what your doing before you decide to play with options. I could have made a lot of money off of amazon when it went from 300 to like 360 or so in a day from the last quarter's earnings based on a call if I made it, but some bad news could have equally made the stock not reach as high as it did. Instead what I did do was buy and sell the stock like 3 times or so before the earnings report making money each time, because amazon was hitting relatively noticeable support levels at around 300. I was also under the impression that they might make the earnings report but it may be on bad management or something which can result in stocks being devalued. Amazon is a stock that has good potential revenue in many developing sectors, but it has not made net income greater than it's growing debt in 20 years that it has been on the market. It is a growing anomaly in the world of modern day trading but is an amazingly futuristic company. Hedging is also something you only really do if you are heavily invested. Like buying a put on the S&P 500 if you have a large portfolio(large as in good % of your money) but you are worried about a stock market crash. |