Option Trading Meetup (Part 1)

I wanted to report on a new option trading Meetup I attended in December.

I was excited to finally attend a Meetup dedicated to option trading not sponsored by any financial company. I have attended Meetups sponsored by a trading newsletter, a trader education company, and a financial planner in the past and every time I have encountered a potential/likely conflict of interest. While I got little/nothing out of those Meetups, the organizer always found some potential customers. That did not seem to be an issue here although reading that their November presenter was CFA at a “wealth management” firm did arouse suspicion.

With the CFA not present in December, I thought I might have a good opportunity to network with “like-minded” individuals.

This was clearly a beginner’s Meetup with the intent to teach people how to trade options. The organizer herself and husband both said they were just learning. While I don’t feel this is necessarily a problem, who was going to teach on this night?

The one like-minded individual for me to meet was a guy [I’ll call him DY] who had supposedly traded options for 30 years. He also said he trades options amounting to seven figures per week.

DY was a “know-it-all” (sound familiar?) who stepped into the expert role almost without being asked. I say almost because the organizer did seem to defer to DY for answers a few times and I surmise that was based on how things went at the first meeting in November. Outside three instructional videos shown by the organizer, a few questions were asked and some discussion was had. Involved with every exchange was DY who at times seemed to stumble over his own feet rushing in so fast to provide what he believed to be the correct answer.

I’ll continue next time.