Well I keep signing the praises of my broker, thinkorswim, so I figured I might as well take advantage of some of their nifty tools. They offer this great service called “paper money”. Basically, it is a full featured, realistic paper trading platform.

I’ve decided that I’ll take the “starter” account of $100,000 and trade option strategies in the account, record my progress and hopefully you and I can learn from it. Of course I will continue to place my real trades, and I’ll continue to document my thoughts on the market. This will just be a complete open book strategy with the paper money account.

My goal, as with all of my accounts is to make about 10% a month return on the investments. I’ll keep an eye out for positions and post them as I go along. The fun thing here is that we can “play around” a little bit and try out new positions. Remember, this is always education only. I’m not making trading recommendations, and I don’t plan on making them

Make sure to read the disclaimer, it’s on every investment related post.

May 12 2006 – paper money account balance – $100,000. I’ll keep an eye out for a few positions that can be placed in the last week of the may cycle. As I find them, I’ll update this first article to reflect the opening positions.

Okay… here we go. I found a couple of good canidates that have minimal risk and a fairly hefty reward that we’ll start off with for this last week in May. Now the market has been moving around rather violently, so these may have to be adjusted in this last week – but I think we’ll be in good shape.

• Sold 30 GOOG May 2006 410/420 350/340 Iron Condor @ 1.06 Credit
• Credit $3,180, Commission: ($189.95)
• Margin $30,000
• ROI 9.96%
• Account Balance: $102,990.05

• Sold 20 SPX May 2006 1320/1310 1260/1250 Iron Condor @.99 Credit
• Credit $1,980, Commission: ($129.95)
• Margin $20,000
• ROI: 9.25%
• Account Balance: $104,840.10

• Sold 25 RUT May 2006 770/780 720/710 Iron Condor @1.67 Credit
• Credit $4,175, Commission: ($159.95)
• Margin $25,000
• ROI: 16%
• Account Balance: $108,855.15

• Total Margin: $75,000
• Cash Available to Adjust: $33,385.15
• Total Cash in Account: $108,855.15

Let the trading begin! Hopefully this first week will be a nice quick winner. Otherwise, we will have to adjust our way out of it!

Categories: Papermoney