To be honest I’m not the biggest fan of credit spreads. If used alone, a credit spread is very directional and has a lot of embedded risk implanted into the trade. Although credit spreads mathematically have a high probability, they also have a very high probability of being stressful and extremely risky. However, even though this type of trade is high risk, there are still many option traders in the world that will continue to use them; so in this article we will talk about a very simple adjustment that one can apply to this strategy to lock in profits when it does work out as planned.

An Unbalanced Condor; this is a trade strategy that is not well known. I’m sure it’s been around for a while, but for some reason it hasn’t caught on as popular. I’ve been studying options for numerous years now and took many popular courses that can be found on the internet. I spent nearly $50,000 on my options education, but I find it intriguing and a little misleading that most option courses don’t teach this strategy.

You know, I’ve been trading options for about 10 years now, and during this long time endeavor to achieve success on the stock market, I’ve made a lot of friends along the way. I’ve met numerous option traders, probably somewhere in the hundreds, and the truth is, there has only been a handful that were making money. So I wonder why there are so many people out there investing in the stock market when most of them only lose their capital.

Let’s talk about the often misunderstood option Greeks. Beginning option traders only focus on the Greek known as Delta, and although Delta can tell us many things about our option position, there is more to look into. A good trader will focus a lot on volatility in the stock market.

When the IV of the market or the “volatility” is moving downward and the market is going up, you would think that this would be the right time to trade the “Iron Condor.” Because the “Iron Condor” is a negative Vega option spread, it works very well when the “volatility” is moving downward. If you do not know what Vega means when it comes to options, then you would really benefit by taking your time to visit www.sjoptions.com and watch their free videos on the Option Greeks.

I’m going to break down the complexities and differences between options and trading stocks. First off, stocks are simply one-dimensional trading vehicles, the dimension of “price movement”. For example, you can go long a stock if you forecast a rise in the price of the underlying asset. You, as the stock trader, don’t need to worry about time or changes in volatility affecting the outcome of your trade. You only need to focus on the asset’s price movements.