Now it's time to get started with the process of learning and experiencing option writing.  Here is what we're going to do:

The first thing you need to do is to read some basic information on options. You won't necessarily understand all of it the first time you read through it. And you will need to reread it at least two or three more times. But reading through the material will help you to understand the terminology and the basic concepts. You can access the first tutorial from the home page on the left side menu. During the next five months we shall release 5 more tutorials.

The next thing for you to do is to access the Double Your Yield Portfolio Monitor (DYYPM) program.

Read the help information from the Help Spreadsheet so that you have a good idea of how to use the program. Remember, if you have any questions about it at any time, check our FAQs where you might find an answer to your question or post a new question. We will get an answer back to you promptly.

Once you have the program operating on your computer look at “Merv’s Trades” to get an idea of how to enter some trades. That will give you a few sample trades to enter into the program. These first few sample trades will be the kind of trades that you will be learning about at the beginning. The first samples you should look at should be based on “covered call writing.”

From time to time watch the trades on your computer. The DYYPM program will automatically update the prices the values and the profit or loss on the trades every day. Just to make sure that it is properly updated, you should hit the “Refresh" button in the program Control Panel. By seeing how the option values change as the stock price changes you will begin to get a feeling for option pricing.

The Blogs will include reports about these trades and you can compare your analysis of what happened with my analysis. I will then give you my suggestions about what changes if any should be made in the options positions. Remember, the examples that I'm going to give you deal with 1000 shares of stock and 10 options. 10 options is the equivalent of 1000 shares of stock. But when you are actually trading for yourself, you can deal with as few as 100 shares of stock (one option) or any increment of one hundred. And of course, you can deal with more than 10 options at a time. Once you've become familiar with the terminology, have the Program up and running, and watched one trading strategy for a two-week period, you can begin to accelerate the learning process. First manipulate the original options positions (covered call writing) if appropriate, and then, two-weeks later, began to test out other option strategies.

I hope that writing options becomes as much fun for you, as well as lucrative, as it is for me.