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Personal Finance 2019: Day 7

       After yesterday's day out with our presenters, we spent today presenting and discussing some of the topics we learned about previously. I presented my investing presentation with two other members of the J-Term, and I took the section related to stock exchanges, stocks, and options. Most of the class was fairly familiar with stocks, but options were something new and confusing to many (including me). I had done some paper trading on investopedia.com with stocks and options, but I hadn't done too well. The concept of trading a contract for the movement of an underlying asset (derivative) is a bit confusing– we learned how the mortgage backed securities crashed in 2008 due to complications with these derivatives. Trading options is actually quite exciting, due to the potential for huge growth and limited losses. I've had some great luck and also misfortune with paper trading options, but the growth outweighed the loss due to the function of the option contracts. It's almost like betting on a horserace, but with the proper practice and skills, options traders can capitalize on the huge growth potential and the fact that the general population isn't as involved with options trading as they are in the stock market. I've learned a bit more about increasing my likelihood for profit with options, but it isn't anything close to guarantee. Since you are generally trading on the short term movement of the underlying asset, you might want to avoid trading mid/late day (barring any news announcements), as the price will often level out or fall. This is the technique I used (placing multiple call and put options in the morning based on various market movements and news announcements), which, in some instances, have netted 500% returns within an hour, even though the movement of the actual underlying asset was a few percentage points. My loss, on the other hand, would have been limited at the amount I paid for the option.

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