Grasshopper Intro
Main Street beats Wall Street is a learning website. The site’s inauguration was on Jan 1st, 2016. The purpose of Main Street beats Wall Street was, and still is, to teach the people of Main Street, USA how to participate in the stock market with trading options. My mission is to show the people of Main Street, with my trading, that they can be as good as the Wall Street professionals.
Wall Street runs for a short eight blocks in lower Manhattan and is headquarters of America’s financial markets. But Wall Street is far more than a location, it has been adopted as a term to describe all U.S. financial institutions and U.S. economic power. It has been portrayed alternatively as powerful, hot-shot, corrupt, greedy, excessive, wealthy, fabulous, astute, imperial and bullish.
Wall Street’s historical reputation, along with it’s private language loaded with strange lingo, is very intimidating. The exotic and specialized terminology used by option traders often create the impression that the market is too high-level and advanced for the average investors who live on Main Street. Hopefully Main Street beatsWall Street, with this section, “Grasshopper Field” we can change this.
I started Main Street beats Wall Street with about $100,000 in my account. Since 2016 I posted every trade as I made them. I also posted as I exited the trades. I continue this transparency today. The readers see if I make money or if I lose money. Since its inception I have been very successful. And I continue to build my account everyday with complete confidence this success will continue.
So, what’s the problem? Why did I start this section, “The Grasshopper Field?”
Over the last few years my account grew to be very large. Which should be the goal of all traders. But I feel the site no longer accomplishes the mission it’s set out to achieve. I feel, with my much larger account my trades are too big and no longer a good teaching tool Grasshoppers can relate to and keep their interest. To continue on my personal journey to build my account, I must make bigger trades. If not I’d be making too many trades to grow my account.
To continue on the mission of Main Street beats Wall Street I developed the section,”The Grasshopper Field.” This section will start with a page explaining what a Grasshopper is. This page is called Grasshopper. Besides giving a description of a Grasshopper the page also lists the 10 worst mistakes a Grasshopper can make.
The next page will be “Grasshopper Trades.” This page will be very similar to my “Active Trades/Current Positions” page. The difference will be my “Active Trades/Current Position” page will contain all my trades I’m in that are active positions. The “Grasshopper Trades” page will only contain Grasshopper trades. These trades will be the type of trades I recommend for beginners. These will be smaller trades with lower priced stocks. Or very small positions with a medium sized stock. These trades will include Covered Calls positions and LEAPS. These LEAPS will be Long option positions. A Long position is when you buy an option. There will be no short term Long options. When buying options I only recommend buying with an Expiration Date of at least a year out. All Covered Calls will be held shorter term. I like to buy the stock and sell options on the shares with an Expiration Date out a week or 2. Once in a while I’ll go out a month or 2. When this is done the trade will come with an explanation why I want to hold the position longer. The explanation to any trade will help beginners learn my philosophy and strategy. It will also help Grasshoppers learn the lingo that comes with option trading. If you want to have a conversation with a trader you must learn the language.
The positions in the “The Grasshopper Field” will be real positions that I’m in. I will be posting them along with all my positions I enter. My hope is that a new trader will learn and develop my philosophy and strategy. My desire is NOT to have a new trader mimic my trades. My desire is to teach new traders how to find their own trades. Teach my philosophy on why I made the trade. Teach the strategy I’ll be using. Anyone can mimic a trade, and you can if you want, but finding the trades that fit into your philosophy, strategy and risk tolerance is what’s important. Having said that, I do believe my trades will be winners!
“The Grasshopper Field” section, as with the section “My Positions” will have trade history pages. These pages will contain all Grasshopper trades made in the current year. You will always be able to refer back to see past trades.
Another section you must read is “Options 101.” This section was also developed for Grasshoppers. This section is written by a contributing writer, my son, Stephen. I wrote an introduction page for Steve, you can read here.
Steve wrote three pages for “Options 101.” The first is Message to Grasshoppers. The next is A Little Inspiration for Grasshoppers. Followed by The Importance of Paper Trading. These are well written pages of Steve expressing his thoughts. I hope he’ll be adding a few pages to “Options 101” soon.
Steve
The Options Coach