Well, hello everyone. Welcome to Getting Started with Options. This is my favorite class, and I know we' re not supposed to have favorites, but this is my favorite class out of the entire series. And it' s the 12th one in a 12-week series. I debated on making this the first one, because today we' re going to talk about the seven things I wish I had known when I got started trading, or like specifically trading options. But this can apply to trading in general as well. So it' s a topic that warms my heart. It' As a topic that I wish that someone had covered for me, because I kind of learned through the school of hard knocks, if you will. And so without further ado, I' d love to dive into this.
I' m so glad that on this day, where I know many people are glued to the TV, because it' s the day of a presidential election, that you have decided to tune in and invest in your financial future by watching a webcast like this. So hello to Ray and Melissa and Backroad Bob. I love some of your handles. He' s talking about the Valley of the Sun. I don' t know if it' s sunny where you are, but I am seeing some of the first flurries of the year here in Salt Lake City. So, you know, hi to Lisa and Tony and Jim and Rice Bird and the rest of the gang. We also have Cameron May with us. You can find us in the chat. He is a veteran.
I have, you know, in the world of coaching, I' ve learned a tremendous amount from Cameron. So if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask. Okay. Okay. And I' ll be, you know, keep an eye on the chat as well. So I' ll answer questions as they come up as I can. If you are not following us in the land of X, my handle is barbarmstrongcs, Cameron' s Cameron May CS. And we are posting content there on a daily basis. That you think we think you will find helpful and informative. It' s another free resource for you to be able to take advantage of. And I hope that you choose to use it. So we will see you over there.
Know that with the world of options, there is a high level of risk and they aren' t suitable for all investors. You have to apply for option trading privileges. If you want to trade options with Schwab and not all will qualify. When we place exams, we use the paper money software application on the thinkorswim desktop platform. And it' s a brilliant place to learn. It' s where I learned how to trade. And it was by coming to classes like this. And as many of you know, I' m a product of this education. I started back in 2011. Watching the coaches like you guys are doing now. And mimicking what they were doing in my paper money account. And it looks like, smells like, feels like real money. There are some nuances and differences.
And if you' re new to trading options, you know, short options may not make sense to you. But short options will never be assigned early. And that' s a difference between the paper money account and a live account. And while we often look at charts in this class, you know, that is known as technical analysis. That isn' t the only means of investment research that is suggested in order to make an informed decision. So, what are we talking about today? Well, really the seven things I wish I' Known, you know, kind of helps address some common trading pitfalls. And allows us to set proper expectations. And then we' ll look at, once we' ve done that, you know, where we might want to go next. So, let' s get started.
Have you got your pens and your papers ready? Okay, so the first thing is, you know, why are you here? You know, why are you here? Why have you come to a class like this? And, you know, what are you hoping to get out of it? And, you know, once you start trading, what is your goal? Is your goal to beat the benchmark? What' s the benchmark? Well, for some people, they might say it' s the S &P 500. But why do you care about beating that? And why am I even bringing this up? Well, because if you don' t know why you' re doing something, it' s harder to be consistent and disciplined about it, you know. So, you know, with some people, they may say, like, ' I have worked for many, many years.
I' m now in retirement. And I have built a giant heap.' And my focus is on protecting it. So, I am looking to protect what I' ve got. And somebody, you know, else might say, ' I' m just going to change my color here.' You know, like, hey. You know, a giant heap. I wish I had a giant heap. I am just starting out. I am heap free. You know, I am heap free. And I am looking to grow. I am looking to grow my account. I am looking to create something worthy of protection, you know. And then a third party may say, like, ' hey, you know what? I have already built this.' I would like to continue to grow. But one of my priorities now is to generate some income.
Maybe I, you know, I have enough money for retirement. Or I have left a job that, you know, I really wasn' t happy in to pursue something that I love. But the thing I love doesn' t pay quite as much. So, I would like to be able to generate an extra $500 a month. Or I would like to be able to generate an extra $1,000 a month. Or, you know, maybe it' s $1,000 a week. Maybe it' s $5,000 a month. I don' t know what your financial situation is. And that' s not my job to know. But, you know, if you' re looking to generate income, it' s how much. And by when. And so, these are decisions you have to make.
And, like, for me personally, I am looking to do all three of these. And it' s not because I' m indecisive. I do have, you know, assets. Assets that I want to protect. But I still want to see growth. And, you know, maybe I' d like to be able to generate some income. This one isn' t as much on my personal radar yet. But it could be. You know, it absolutely could be. And so, you know, I think that So kind of the first thing that you want to decide is, like, why am I here? And, you know, what brought me to this in the first place, you know, not to overshare my story was, you know, I got creamed in the market in 2008 and 9. A lot of people did.
And I knew there was a way to make money as a stock was falling in value. I just didn' t know how. And I wanted to figure that out. Because I thought if we go through that kind of experience again, which we have done a couple of times, I wanted to know how to be able to profit from that. And when I found options, I was very excited. Because there are some option strategies. That can be profitable when a stock is falling. Okay, so that' s kind of what brought me in. And then I had to look at these numbers. Okay. And, yeah, and if you' re looking at income, it' s kind of like what is it for? Because, you know, one of the expressions, things that I love to say is that money has no value until it' s spent.
And some of it you' re going to spend on, you know, providing a home for yourself and your family. And other things. But, you know, some of it you' re going to spend on your future by investing it, by setting it aside. And this is an important component of, you know, what you want to allocate some of your resources for or what you might consider allocating some of your resources for. And, you know, if you want to grow your account, is it because you want to be able to retire by a certain age? Is it because you want to be able to buy a vacation property? And maybe part of that is because you think that investing in that real estate will grow. But maybe it' s for the memories.
For being able to have a place that you can bring all your family together and, you know, have a wonderful time. Create memories that will last a lifetime. You know, most people, when they get to the end of the road, they' re not wishing they' d spent more time at work. You know? So are you creating, you know, what is the money for? And somebody typed that into the chat. And I think that' s an excellent idea. Is it for vacation? You know, kind of what' s it for? And so that' s, you know, where we begin. And then, you know, and that was one thing that I had to think about when I really, you know, started getting involved in this.
And when I decided to dedicate one or two hours a day at least five times a week to doing this. I did a course. And there' s a course available. You have to be a Schwab client. And once you sign in, you can go to the learning center and access. There is a course on options. And in this series that I created, we talk about over 12 weeks, we talk about 10 different strategies. So we cover 10 different strategies. Okay? And so I kind of did this course. And, you know, we talked about buying and selling calls. We talked about buying and selling puts. We talked about credit spreads and debit spreads and protective puts. And I kind of thought, okay, well, I' ve done the course.
I should be able to trade all of these strategies. Yeah. No. That didn' t work out so well. That' s all I can say about that. So, you know, just because you' ve gone through this whole series and we' ve covered 10 different strategies doesn' t mean you' re necessarily competent in trading them all. And kind of the idea of doing this whole thing over the 12 weeks is to introduce you to all of these strategies so that you can pick which one you want to master first. You know, and notice I said one. Like two max. If you' re really spending a lot of time on this. But, you know, go through the course. Go through this series. Look at the various strategies. And then say, given the first page.
Am I looking to grow the account? Am I looking, you know, to protect it? Which strategy? And it depends on the size of your account also. Which one do you want to master first? And I mean master. I mean create a trading plan. Know what your plan is. And, you know, as I like to say, if I went to your house in the middle of the night, which is kind of creepy, but just work with me on this. And woke you out of a dead sleep and said: ' If the strategy you want to master. Is long verticals first. You know, when do you get in? When do you get out? Both if the trade goes for you and if it goes against you. How do you manage that trade?
How do you position size appropriately? Which rules in your trading plan are more guidelines? And which rules do you never break? You know, so, you know, make sure you understand it. And work at this daily. And, you know, like you can.' You know, take if you' re going to do five hours a week. Or ten hours a week. I encourage you don' t binge learn on a Saturday if you can avoid it. I think you' re better to do one hour a day. It' s kind of like going to the gym. You can' t just show up once a week and expect to end up in great shape. You' re going to get way further ahead. If you, you know, take an hour a day. If you can work that into your schedule.
And sometimes that can be when the market' s open. Some people never trade until after their kids are in bed at 8 or 9 o' clock at night. You know, they have a J-O-B during the day. And they can' t be on a live call like this. So they listen to the recordings. And they do it that way. But however you do it, you know, look at mastering one strategy at a time. Okay? Okay. I' m still on my pedestal. You know. Going, please follow these ideas. These are great ideas. You know, develop a set of rules. And, you know, sometimes people can develop a skill set where they don' t have to look at the trading plan anymore. You know, but when I first started, I created a checklist like nerd alert.
Like for every single strategy that I had. And I would go through and look at it and go, okay. I want to buy a call. Is the stock uptrending? Check. Is the sector it' s in uptrending? Check. Is the market overall uptrending? Check. You know, how many shares a day does this stock trade? Does it trade a million shares a day or more? Check. What do the options look like? You know, are they heavily traded? You know, and I would literally check them off my list. So, but have a plan that you can follow. And that' s repeatable. And we' ve started creating some example trading plans. And I have put these in the trade management mini session folder. You know, what to trade, when to trade, how much to trade, and when to exit are kind of the four basic components.
And it just gives you a framework from which you can create your own trading strategy. Okay. And it helps us manage our emotions. You know, which can be tough. You know, I thought, you know, there was a session one time when I went to an investor conference, you know, held by this company. And they had a whole presentation on the psychology of trading. And, you know, if you can' t manage these four inches between your ears, you know, it' s going to be tough sledding. You know, so it helps us deal with the emotions. So that we avoid emotional trading. So, somebody is asking where that folder is. And let me just take a minute to show you. Okay. So, I ve just brought up, you know, kind of a blank page.
And if you just go to, you can start by going to YouTube. If I could type, that would be handy. Or you can just type. Type in Trader Talks right from the get-go. And this is something, you know, here' s my, you know, segue to say there' s a button in the bottom right corner of your screen. You' re going to want to subscribe to this channel. It' s free to subscribe. And then when you first come in, you' ll see whatever is coming up next or whatever is currently being taught. So, it' s getting started with options. Then we' re going to come to playlists. And we' re going to come down to trade management management. And we' re going to come down to mini- sessions.
And I have these grouped into three categories. This first category, and they' re in order by the order we teach. I' m teaching these strategies. So, we have one on long calls. And eventually, there will be probably 15 different trading plans. And then we have one on short put verticals and short call verticals. So, the vertical family. And then long call verticals and long put verticals. But these are all in blue. And then the ones that are really mini- sessions talking about specific topics or follow-ups on trades we' ve placed in our trading a smaller account class. They Re in this clementine type color. And then the ones in sea blue, Mediterranean blue. These are all quick and dirty, you know, tips on thinkorswim.
How to customize a watch list or the monitor tab, or how to do an OCO order, or how to use notes. You know, how to customize a chart. All those. And these tend to be around 10 minutes long. But these example trading plans are all up here at the top. Okay? Okay. So, how many have we gone through on our list? We' ve gone through three. Okay. So, what' s the next one? Well, the next one. I just. I really wanted to highlight. And that is to practice. You know, you can' To get good at anything without practicing. And sometimes when we first start, we feel like we' re really lousy at this and we' re not good at it. And you' ve got to be lousy first.
If you want any chance of getting to be mediocre. And then if you want to graduate from mediocre. To good. And eventually end up great. There' s only one way to do that. And that is practice. And you' ve got to practice. Practice. Practice. And I love that. I don' t know of another company that has. Or another platform that has a paper money account that looks like, smells like, feels like real money. Where you can practice. You can add to that account the amount of money. Or a similar amount of money to what you' re going to actually be managing yourself. And then take it seriously. And so, you know, I practiced. You know, when I had a strategy that I wanted to practice. I practiced it every day.
And if I couldn' t find a setup, I' d place a trade anyway. And I' d put something in the notes to say, well, I wouldn' t actually have placed this trade for this reason. But here' s why I thought it was my best, you know, opportunity. And if you' re practicing a strategy, you know, you could pick long verticals, say. And that could be both long put and long call. So that if the market' You' re moving bullishly, you can do bullish trades. And if it' s moving bearishly, you can do, you know, bearish trades. And I' m not suggesting that this is where you start. But if that is where you chose, you know, you' d have both a bullish and a bearish opportunity.
And then, you know, and this was just my journey. It doesn' t have to be your journey. But this was the one time I broke my position sizing rule. When I finally went over to my live account. You know, maybe I should have done 10 contracts. But I did one. Just do like, you know, just do one. Like risk a very small amount. And then treat it like you' re. You' re, you know. Position size, you know, the way you would be if it were in your, you know, if it were position size. So, you know, I' d be risking like 100 bucks. And at some point it was like, okay, I have to get out of paper money like the kiddie pool. But I took baby steps.
But at some point, if you' re not practicing. Like you can. Knowledge is not power, my friends. It' s potential power. And if you don' t do anything with it, it won' t help you. If you want to learn how to swim at one at some point or another, you' re going to have to get wet. You know, you cannot just watch me doing laps in the pool. You' re going to have to get in and actually get wet. And so this was how I got wet. You know, I started here. Moved here to a very small position size, a very small amount of risk. If you do, you know, some trades, you know, you might be risking $50.
And then eventually work yourself up so that you understand that strategy and you understand when to get in and when to get out and how to position size and all the things. Okay. So that' s that one. Practice. Now, I' ve talked a bit about position sizing. And this is kind of like the Pink song where she says, you know, the morphine is making me itch. I look at these trading account examples. And this is examples of what not to do. Okay. So one isn' t going to risk 10% on one trade. So we' re going to cross that out and make it. If you have, let' s say, at the beginning of each year, we start our trading a smaller account. We start with $20,000.
And we are risking 2%. And some people might think that' s too much. But at 2%, we can risk $400 on one trade. In that account, we' re now up to 500. But the account' s grown pretty substantially. You know, so, you know, when we' re looking at this, it' s not just about the one trade. There' s a coach. His name is Scott Thompson. He' s now a manager, actually. He said, ' What is your sleep number?' And by that, he' Saying, if you had five trades in a row go wrong or six trades or last year, I mean, we opened the account November 1st. We were crushing it. Like, we were just crushing it. We were up an insane amount in the first two months.
Is that typical? No, it is not. And then the first week of January hit. I went to Maui. I couldn' t even access the account. And we were down $2,700 in one week. We had 10 trades take a max loss because I wasn' t out there to get us out at a 50% loss. You know, so, it can be humbling. You know, we had 10 trades in a row all at once go sideways. So, when you think of this, go, oh, I' d be happy. I' d be cool with 10, you know, one trade going wrong. How about five? How about more? You know, so, this is really important that you' re comfortable with this because otherwise, you' re going to let those pesky emotions get in the way.
And then you' re going to make poorer trading decisions. Well, what if you had a million-dollar account? And I' m going to update this before we come around in this series again. What if we had a million-dollar account? You might say, there' s no way I' m risking 2%. I' m not risking $20,000 on one trade. Maybe you' re willing to risk half of 1%. And half of 1% would be $5,000. Or you might say, like, are you new? I' m never going to risk $5,000 on a trade. I could end up down. If I had 10 trades in a row, I could be down $50,000. You could. You know, but you get to this point.
Or you might say, I want to make it a third of 1%. So, instead of decimal 005, I' m going to make it decimal 003. So, I' m willing to risk up to, you know, $3,000 on a single trade. And you might just say, you know what? I' m going to make my number $2,000. You can make it whatever you want. But be consistent. You know, and if you have a larger account, you' re, you know, the percentage you may be willing to risk is lower. We chose this in part because we wanted to be able to, there were trades we just couldn' It takes unless our risk was a little higher. And then our max position size, you know, we might say our max position size in our trading a smaller account was $5,000.
And some people might say, like, are you insane? That' s 25%. That' s 25% of your account. Well, if you had a million-dollar account, you may not want to put a quarter of a million into one stock. And we get that. But we wanted to be able to do buy right covered calls and to be able to buy 100 shares of something that was $50 or less. So, it gave us a little more latitude. But as the account has grown, have we changed our, you know, position size? We have not. You know. In here, we might say, well, here are max position size. We may want that to be 5%. That' s still a, you know, might not allow us to buy 100 shares of some stocks like Meta or, you know, which is now several hundred dollars a share.
But you don' t have to be able to buy 100 shares. Maybe you just want to buy, you know, 25 or 50. You know. But have this laid out. And then this is one rule. You know, when I talked about rules that are kind of guidelines and rules that aren' t, this is one you don' t break. Because one of the things that I have seen some people that I have met do is they' ve had trade after trade after trade after trade go swimmingly. And it' s a winner. And it' As a winner, winner, winner, chicken dinner. And so, they think, oh, this position sizing stuff is for mere money. It' s for mere mortals. It really doesn' t apply to me because I am obviously a trading goddess.
And so, they double or triple or quadruple their position size. And then this happens. And it' s nightmare. And they' re, it' s horrific. And they blow up their account. And they' re experienced traders. It' s, you know, don' t be a greedy guts. You know. So, this is one rule that you may say to yourself, this is one rule, this position sizing rule that I' m not going to break. You know, and take yourself out to the woodshed when you start thinking like you should. Yeah. It' s funny until it happens. So, when you start thinking these thoughts, you know, you can say, ' Oh, Barb told me I was going to go through this phase where I thought this way.' You know. And I have been warned. Yeah.
She told me this was coming. Yeah. And, you know, when we have a plan and we have rules that we have for ourselves that are not negotiable, it helps us keep our emotions in check. Because, oops, got a little ahead of myself. We' re on six. So, we' re almost there. Whoops. Let me shake my Etch-a-Sketch. So, words like hope. Hope is a four-letter word in the land of trading. Hope is not a strategy. Yeah, it really is a four-letter word. Here' s another one. FOMO. Don' t go there, guys. FOMO. Fear of missing out. So, you position size inappropriately. Or you take a trade that doesn' t meet your other rules. Because it just looks delicious. But, you know, it only trades 5,000 shares a day.
And there' s no volume on the options. And you could drive a truck through the bid-ask spread. Like, so, yeah. And sometimes if there' s no trade, sitting on your hands and waiting, like Riceburg said, it can be difficult to do. But sometimes no trade is the best trade. Or putting a conditional order in. And if it fills, you feel brilliant because you planned ahead of time. And if it never fills, you feel brilliant because you avoided taking a trade that would have turned out not to be successful. Okay? And here' s another one. Probably the biggest one of all. Fear. So, a lot of times we' ll make decisions out of fear. And that' s never a good idea. And so, how do we avoid all of this?
Well, we do the, you know, we have a trading strategy. Okay? Okay. Shake the Etch-a-Sketch. And last but not least. Oh. And I can. If you want, you know, how many of you have hobbies? I have a, like, I like to ski. And I know that' s not for everybody. But I do really enjoy skiing. And you know what? I spend a fair bit of money skiing. You know, because I buy a pass every year. And it' s not that it' s such a big deal. You know, but, you know, I' m spending money. I' m buying gear. I bought new skis last year. Thank you very much. They' re doing just great. But you spend money on hobbies. So, if you want this to pay you like a hobby, which means it' s going to cost you money, then treat it like a hobby. But you want to treat it like a business. Oops. You want to treat it like a business. Because you want it to pay you like a business, right?
I don' t know if I can blame the keyboard on that. I think this is me. And how do we do that? Well, we are disciplined. We are consistent in how we apply our rules and how we approach our trading business. We have routines. Again, I love hobbies. I think hobbies are great. My trading, it' s not a hobby. I don' t treat it like a hobby because I don' t want it to pay me like a hobby. I want it to create another income stream for me. And you know what? Maybe that isn't an issue. But I want it to have the potential to do that. And if you' re just saying like, hey, I' m doing this for my future self so that my future self will be grateful.
And if it S ended up costing you money, then your future self isn' t going to have a lot of extra money to be able to do things with. And one of the things, you know, that you may want to consider if you' re not doing it already is having a trading journal. Okay. And then using it and tracking. So if you' re saying, well, I tend to trade these five different strategies, which one has been the most profitable for me? And not just this month, but this year. And then maybe you notice like, hey, when it' s going well, it' s going really well. But when it goes wrong, you tend to take a max loss. So how can you kind of button up your discipline in trading these?
Or maybe you need to alter your trading plan a little bit. Okay. But you won' t know that if you' re not tracking. So, you know, you need to be tracking your results. Tacking. You know, and I like to use either McDonald' s or Starbucks as an example. Do you think that when you go into McDonald' s, they think, you know, today, I think we' re going to mix it up with the Big Mac. Like, I know they' re doing some kind of chicken Mac thing. But basically from. And this was drilled into me. From high school because they had an ad campaign. A Big Mac is to all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on the sesame seed bun.
And you don' t go in one day and they' Re going, yeah, we decided to get away from that. You know, to all beef patties. We' ve just gone down to one. Well, yeah. No, you don' t mess with the recipe. You treat it consistently. If you go into a Starbucks, I can guarantee you that they have a routine with which they both open and close down the store and that they can tell you how much their sales are of cold beverages versus hot of the items they sell on the display case. The food items they' re tracking that stuff versus, you know, the mugs and stuff you buy that are on the shelf. And they know how much profit each one of those components is bringing to their business.
And that' s just part of being, you know, a solid business person is knowing these numbers and tracking your results. And then I know this is our last one. So I' m going to throw in, you know, this is an expression, you know, that came, you know, from my childhood. You know, somebody would say, don' t be a greedy guts. You know, like every trade does not have to be a home run. Does it? You know, small wins over time. They can add up. And sometimes when we have that fear of missing out, you know, and I talk about the long vertical strategy for a long time. Like, if I spent $250 to get in, I wanted to earn $250. And I wanted to earn all of that $250.
And I almost never did. It was so frustrating. And finally, I had a light bulb moment. And I said, well, what if I had a 50% target instead of 100%? I wonder how often I would be successful. The answer was a lot more often. So I thought, well, I' m going to change my rule. I' m going to change my goal with this strategy. And it really helped increase my success rate. And overall, it helped me grow my account. So, you know, I love it. And I would like to say that base hits can be a beautiful thing. And I know that grand slams are awfully exciting to watch. If anybody is a baseball fan and they watch the World Series, we saw both the Yankees hit a grand slam.
And we saw the LA Dodgers, who eventually, you know, won the whole thing, do the same thing. But base hits can be a beautiful thing. And don' t overestimate their power. You know, we have had a lot of base hits. And, you know, you earn, you know, in your small account $100, $150, $89. You know, and you keep doing that, it starts adding up and starts to look and smell like real money. And I wanted to show you one other thing. I' m going to bring this up because we have a few minutes. And then we' ll go out and we' ll look at some potential setups.
So I m going to bring up this calculator and just to show you the power of things over time. Now I' m going to go to MoneyChimp, but you can use any other calculators out there in the market. You can pick any one you want and we' re going to go to a compound interest calculator. And so when you click on this, let' s say you' re starting with, you know, let' s say we' re starting with our $20,000 and you' re 20 years old. Yeah, somebody said you can' t hit a grand slam if you don' t have people on base to begin with. And you' re certainly right about that. So let' s say we' re starting with our $20,000 and we' re not even going to add any more money, but we just We just want it to grow.
And if you look at the, the S& P 500 on average, it' s returned about 11% a year over the last 50 years, the NASDAQ has returned about 13 and a half over, I think the last 30 years. And let' s say we' re going to give this, if you' re 20, 47 years to grow, I' m just making stuff up here. But if you could average a return of a hundred dollars a week. You know, that' d be $5,000 over a year. That' s 25%. And that' s a lot, but let' s say we could just do a 10%, you know, and 10%, if we' re investing, that' s not even, you know, beating the benchmark, you know, we might make it 11%, you know, so that' s basically achieving the benchmark.
And when we have 47 years to grow. That would turn out to be $3. 4 million. You know, and I know you' re saying, well, I' m not 20 anymore, but if you have people in your life who are graduating from college, and if you said, well, if I' m starting out with nothing, I just graduated. I am broke. In fact, I' d like to be broke. I' ve got a little college debt and I' m going to save $5 a day. So if I take $5 a day times 365 days a year. I' m going to do $1,825 a year, I' m going to start putting in. I' ve got my first, you know, grown- up job, I' m going to, I don' t feel like I can really do anything, but I can come up with $5 a day, surely.
What would that turn into? And I' m starting with nothing. Now, my hands never leave my arms here. This is not magic. And you can go out and, and run these numbers yourself. That would be $2. 8 million. Now, if you could average 1% higher, sorry, I meant to make that 12. And the other thing that this highlights, you go from $2. 8 million to $4. 1 million is that if you think that expense ratios don' t matter, they do. But what I encourage you to do is just go in and play with these and look at where you are now. And, you know, how much could you set aside and what kind of growth might you expect if you were disciplined and consistent and what might that turn out to be?
You know, it' s just, I found this fascinating when I, when I first found out about it. And if you go to the trading a smaller account, there is a resource column when you go to that on the Schwab page. In fact, I' ll bring that up. Okay. And then we' ll, we' ll wrap Schwab. So if you go to schwab . com, Schwab coaching, you don' t even have to be a Schwab client to have access to this actually, although I don' t know with all the free resources they offer you, why you, why you wouldn' t be, I have been so incredibly impressed with this, with this company. But if we look at the calendar and I teach trading a smaller account on Mondays and Fridays.
And so if you click on this trading a smaller account, and I think it' s on the short vertical class also under resources, there' s this trading journal. And so you can click on that and, you know, there are other trading journals out there, but you, I would say you need to be consistent about it and, and keep it updated on a daily basis. And you may want to break it into, you know, I' m investing in this stock for dividends. Or I' m investing, you know, we have 10 different trading strategies. So you may want to put the short verticals in one group and long verticals in another and long options in one. And if what I' m saying is kind of Greek, because you aren' t familiar with all these strategies yet, just keep coming back, just keep coming back.
Okay. And so, you know, I very seldom ever teach a class where we don' t place a trade, but this is getting started with options. And today is an election day. And although over the longer term, that doesn' t tend to have as huge an impact on the market, there can be some short-term volatility. So what I am going to do is to just say, you know, there are often opportunities, both bullish and bearish out there. And so if you are familiar with some of these strategies, you know, and you wanted to go out and practice, you might want to look at something like American Express. Oops. Let me just. Let me just type that in again, which has been expressing itself pretty bullishly this year.
It' s up over 40%, 47%, and, you know, we' re on the other side of earnings. It seems to be kind of sitting on a shelf here. But moving up today, up almost 2% today. How about Autodesk? Sponsored by the letter A, I guess these, you know, just these ideas are. Here' s another stock up 20% year-to- date. It' s in the tech sector. And for those who are familiar with technical analysis, and Cameron May teaches a class, you know, later today on that two hours from now, you know, where we have this kind of bull flag set up, do you see that?
And then it' s bouncing. So we have a close above the high of the low day. For those who know what that means, sorry for the yellow, yellow smell, I' ll change it if I decide to write anything else. So we could look at that if you' re looking for bullish opportunities, you know, the market has been strong and today it That strength is continuing, you know, the S&P 500 is up 1% and close to an all- time high, you know, up over 20%, you know, and, you know, on average, you know, in an average year, when you consider all the ups and downs, you know, the S&P is, you know, somewhere between 10 and a half and maybe 11%.
So an extraordinary year that we' re having, if you wanted to continue on the bullish side, we could look at Visa, we could look at Amazon, you know, and that shopping season, and we have this technical pattern, this cup and handle pattern. If you wanted to look bearishly, now there may not be as many opportunities, but one in the makeup space, Estee Lauder, it' s like fell off a cliff there after earnings and continues to be rolling on down the hill down 55% almost year-to- date. So just a few ideas if you wanted to practice. And like I said, you know, pick a strategy and practice daily. So you know, have a goal. Pick a strategy, have a trading plan, practice daily, position size appropriately, plan for those times when you' re not going to have a successful trade, manage your emotions.
And remember that to treat this like a business if you want it to pay you like a business. So my friends, that' s a wrap for today. We' ll see you back for the top of the series next Tuesday. Up next is Mr. Ben Wattenberg. I' m your host, Dr. Carol A. Watson, talking about trading flag patterns. If you haven' t hit the like button already, I' d appreciate it if you' d hit the like button. It' s a chance for you to do a favor for a random stranger without leaving your house because it helps move this up in the YouTube algorithms. It also, as Cameron May likes to say, it sounds like applause to Cameron and I, shows us that you found this content valuable.
Hit the subscribe button if you haven' t done that already. And then don' t forget to follow us in the land of X. Cameron May, my name is Carol, and I' m on the X-Campus podcast. Cameron Macy S, and Barb Armstrong CS. Thanks to Cameron for hanging out in the chat with us. I saw you kept him busy. And thanks to the guys behind the scenes, without which this webcast would not look nearly as professional. So, and thanks to each and every one of you for continuing to show up week after week. So, you can get the past webcast by going to that Trader Talks from Schwab Coaching on YouTube. That' s where you find that. Okay, have a great day, everyone. Bye for now.
