The 25 Options Trading rules I wish I’d known before my first blown account

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Image from Pexels: Alesia Kozik

By DeltaGhost

(Special to Financial Independence Hub)


Most first accounts die the same way: one oversized trade. Not a bad strategy, not a market crash. Just one position that was too big for the account holding it.

I trade options and publish every trade, losses included, and I make the losses louder than the wins. That habit taught me more than any course.

What follows is not a system and not a list of things to buy. It is the risk-first rule set I would hand to anyone opening their first trading account, written for people who have never traded options and never want to learn these lessons the expensive way.

A quick definition before we start: “max loss” is the most a trade can possibly lose, worked out before you place it.

1. Size for the loss, not the win.

Before asking how much a trade could make, ask how much it could take. If that number would hurt, the position is too big.

2. Know your exit before your entry.

Decide where you get out, on both the wrong side and the right side, before you get in. An exit invented mid-trade is usually an excuse.

3. A strategy without a max loss is a bet.

If you cannot say the worst case in one number, you are not managing
risk. You are hoping.

4. You cannot hold an opinion and a position at the same time.

Once you are in, your job stops being analysis and becomes execution. Conviction after entry is mostly ego.

5. Size is the only thing you control.

You cannot control the news, the outcome or the fill. You can control how much you put on, so spend your attention there.

6. Being right pays nothing on its own.

You are paid for how much you risked when you were right. Small wins and large losses lose money even with a high hit rate.

7. Your best setup at the wrong size is a losing strategy.

An edge only exists relative to the amount risked. Change the size and you have changed the strategy.

8. Only add to a position if the add was planned.

If the extra buy was written down before entry, it is a plan. If it was not, it is a rescue, and rescues turn small losses into large
ones.

9. The trade ends when your exit level is hit, not when you feel better.

Planned exits and emotional exits produce very different results from the same entries. You are managing yourself as much as the position.

10. Liquidity is not volume.

Liquidity is how much you can trade without moving the price. A busy market can still jump straight past your exit.

11. Learn expectancy.

Expectancy is win rate times average win, minus loss rate times average loss. Positive is a business. Negative is a hobby with fees.

12. Win rate alone tells you almost nothing.

A low win rate with large winners can beat a high win rate with tiny ones. Anyone who leads with win rate is showing you one of four numbers.

13. Count in units of risk, not dollars.

Measure each result as a multiple of what you risked. It keeps you honest and lets you compare trades fairly.

14. Early profits prove nothing.

Over a small sample, luck and skill look identical. A first good month is often the most dangerous one, because it teaches confidence you have not earned.

15. You should be able to size a trade in seconds.

Risk per trade divided by the distance to your exit gives your position size. If it takes longer, you are negotiating with yourself.

16. Costs are part of the strategy.

Commissions and the gap between buying and selling prices add up fast, especially in options. Plenty of strategies that “stopped working” never worked after costs.

17. Your backtest is flattering you.

Tests on old data ignore companies that disappeared, can peek at information you would not have had, and assume you held through every drawdown. They cannot model you.

18. Watch drawdown before returns.

Drawdown is the drop from your account’s peak. A 50% drop needs a 100% gain just to get back to even.

19. Edges fade.

When enough people find the same idea, it stops paying. The skill is noticing when yours is dying, not pretending it never will.

20. Give a system around 100 trades before judging it.

Below that you are reading noise. The urge to rewrite everything after a dozen trades is its own way to lose.

21. Six related positions are one position.

If they all move together, you have one large bet on one theme. Measure risk per theme, not per trade.

22. Do the math on any paid trading challenge before you pay.

Model the fee, the pass rate and the reset cost. Often the fee is the actual product.

23. Ask how a signal service gets paid.

Subscription and referral revenue often do not depend on your results. The incentive can be to keep you trading, not to make you profitable.

24. Be wary of anyone who sells you the statistic and the cure.

“Most traders lose” is often quoted right before an offer. Judge the product, not the fear.

25. Real records are boring.

Ask to see losses, drawdowns and the full history, not croppedscreenshots. If the record has no ugly days, it is not the whole
record.

None of these rules will make a trade work. They exist so that one bad trade, or one bad week, does not end your ability to keep learning. Protect the account first. The rest is process, and process is something you can actually control.

DeltaGhost is an anonymous options trader who publishes every trade, losses included. Find him as @thedeltaghost on YouTube, TikTok and X.

Educational content only, not investment advice.

Sirens on the horizon

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Sirens like those depicted in Odyssey; image from Pexels/Alica AliNari

Fourth Quarter 2026 Strategy Report (Q4 2026)

By Bipan Rai, BMO ETF & Structured Solutions

(Sponsor Blog)

Both as an epic poem and as a summer blockbuster hit film, ‘The Odyssey’ offers many lessons. For those of us in the investment profession, the most important one is to appreciate the evolving risks and what they could mean for our base case scenarios:  lest we end up lost like our hero Odysseus. And to be frank, there are a lot of similarities between the beginning of Odysseus’s journey and where we are in the market cycle right now.

Currently, we remain entrenched in the ‘reflation’ part of the macroeconomic cycle. That is when most leading indicators imply that economic growth remains firm while price pressures remain sticky. Recent data backs this view: with composite Purchasing Managers Indexes (PMIs) across the world’s largest economies still above levels that mark expanding economic growth (the notable exception being China).

The recent estimate for the September PMI reading in the U.S. indicates that businesses haven’t been this optimistic about future sales growth in years. That is also aligned to the strong U.S. data of late – including recent non-farm payrolls and retail sales reports – which suggests that the economy is expanding above its estimated potential growth rate.

This is the backdrop that we’ve operated in for several quarters, and it should continue to support broad risk appetite. However, we must also be mindful of the rising risks that are making this backdrop more precarious to those from prior quarters.

For instance, the conflict in the Middle East continues to complicate matters. It’s now been over seven months of below normal traffic through the Strait of Hormuz: with global shortages leading to a pronounced increase in the prices of both energy and refined products. That is directly feeding into producer and consumer prices such that central banks can no longer look past the second-round effects. Indeed, three of the ‘big four’ central banks have hiked policy rates over the past month (the Federal Reserve, or the Fed, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan).  There is also a very good chance that the Bank of Canada will end up hiking rates at one of its two remaining meetings this year. These are the main reasons why front-end yields have been rising across several markets.

Equally important are the moves in the long end, which are being driven by a multitude of factors. For one, there is increased competition amongst issuers, with U.S. corporations (hyperscalers mainly) looking to term out borrowing. (1)That is ‘crowding out’ sovereign bonds in the long end.

Second, the artificial intelligence (AI) boom is compounding the narrative of robust U.S. economic growth, which is raising market estimates of the long-run neutral interest rate: pushing up long-end yields (2) in the process. Finally, credibility risk is rising as few countries are seriously considering fiscal discipline at this point. All these factors are weighing on buyers in the long end, who are now far more price sensitive than they have been in years past.

Chart 1 – Long-term drivers for U.S. long-end yields

Source: BMO Global Asset Management, Bloomberg, as of September 30, 2026.

And remember that given its composition, the S&P 500 Index is effectively a long-duration asset. Sectors that are mostly made up of firms whose valuation depends heavily on distant future cash flows (like technology, communication services, consumer discretionary, etc.) make up around 60% of the index. That leaves them vulnerable to higher long-end yields.

Chart 2 – The majority of S&P 500 sectors are negatively correlated to U.S. 10-year yield shifts

Source: BMO Global Asset Management, Bloomberg, as of September 30, 2026.

Correlation: A statistical measure of how two securities move in relation to one another. Positive correlation indicates similar movements, up or down together, while negative correlation indicates opposite movements (when one rises, the other falls).

 

Another risk for markets is no longer a nascent one: the public backlash against AI. At the very least, this has been compounded by recent news that some frontier models had gone rogue, leading to a push within the industry for increased self-regulation or “pacing.” That compounds the lack of favourability of AI among the voting public that politicians are finding harder to ignore. For us, increased ‘pacing’ or regulation will matter given the heavy degree of capital investment we’ve seen go into the space. Any signs of waning demand or excess data center capacity imply a capex slowdown: a serious risk for both economic growth and for risk appetite. Continue Reading…

Before you Decide: Who should be your Executor?

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Image created by Steve Lowrie on ChatGPT

By Steve Lowrie, CFA

Special to Financial Independence Hub

Evidence over emotion. Process over prediction. Better decisions over better guesses.

Most financial decisions eventually tell you how they turned out. Choosing your executor never will.

You will not be there to see whether the person you named handled it competently, whether your children are still speaking to one another afterward, or whether the estate settled in eight months, three years or longer.

As I wrote in the first article in this series we judge decisions by their results almost automatically. Here no result is available to judge. The reasoning is the only thing you will ever have, which is a good argument for doing it properly.

What would have to be true for your choice to work?

Most people name an executor the way they would hand out an honour. The oldest child. The sibling who is good with money. The person who would be hurt to be passed over.

A better test is the one this series keeps returning to. What would have to be true for this person to be the right choice?

Three things. They need the time. They need the temperament to hold a position under pressure from people they love. And they need the willingness to pay for professional help rather than guess. Most executors are appointed without anyone testing a single one of those conditions.

How much time does being an executor take?

Estate practitioners commonly estimate 100 to more than 400 hours, spread over twelve to thirty-six months or sometimes longer. Treat that as practitioner judgment rather than a measured Canadian average, because no reliable average exists. At the upper end, 400 hours is ten full working weeks to fit around a job and a family, often while grieving.

The value of the estate tells you less than you would expect. An organised portfolio can be easier to administer than a modest estate with awkward complications. A family member or other beneficiary may need to be located if you have lost contact with them. One living outside Canada brings legal, tax, currency, and cross-border considerations. Property abroad may require local legal and real estate expertise. Complexity comes from family circumstances and where assets sit, not from the size of the balance.

The unpredictable demands are harder still. One beneficiary wants the cottage sold, another wants to keep it, and your executor referees while explaining why nobody is being paid as quickly as they expected.

Can an executor be personally liable?

Yes, and this is the part most people never hear before they agree.

If an executor distributes estate assets without obtaining a clearance certificate from the Canada Revenue Agency, and tax remains owing, the executor can be personally liable up to the value of what was distributed. That includes amounts assessed after the money is gone. CRA does permit distributions before a certificate is issued if enough property is held back to cover the liability, so an executor needs advice on how much to retain.

Picture explaining to your siblings that part of their inheritance has to wait, even though the investments are sold and the cash is sitting in the account. From where they stand there is no visible reason for the delay. Your executor confirms the estate’s tax position anyway, and absorbs the resentment while doing it.

This is why temperament matters as much as financial knowledge. The person needs to be comfortable keeping records, explaining decisions, and saying no to people who will not enjoy hearing it.

Is your executor paid for this work?

They are entitled to be, and that is worth knowing before you compare options.

Ontario uses a long-standing guideline of 2.5 per cent of capital receipts and 2.5 per cent of capital disbursements, with the same rates on revenue in and out, plus a care and management fee of up to 0.4 per cent per year on the average value of the estate. Add those together and you arrive at the rough five per cent of estate value that people usually quote.

It is a guideline, not an entitlement. Courts assess what is reasonable against the size of the estate, its complexity, the time and skill required, the results achieved, and the responsibility assumed, and they can award less. A family member may waive compensation. Many do not, and they are not wrong to claim it, because the work is real.

Estate administration tax, still widely called probate fees, belongs in the same conversation. In Ontario there is nothing payable on the first fifty thousand dollars, and roughly 1.5 per cent on the value above that. It drives both the cost of settling your estate and the timeline your executor will be defending to impatient beneficiaries.

Should you appoint a professional?

It is a reasonable option, particularly where wealth is passing to the next generation, and interest in it has been growing.

There is more than one way to do it. A trust company can be appointed executor outright. Firms also act as agents, handling the administrative work while a family member stays the named executor, which keeps your family in control of decisions while removing most of the paperwork.

Be clear eyed about cost. Fees are generally a percentage of the estate and can look startling next to a family member doing it for nothing. The honest comparison is fee against fee rather than fee against free, since a family executor is entitled to compensation too. What you are buying is experience, fewer expensive mistakes, and someone absorbing conflict that would otherwise land on your children. Pricing and scope differ meaningfully, so compare before committing.

What about your power of attorney for property?

The person you appoint under a power of attorney for property manages your financial affairs during your lifetime, and that authority ends when you die. An executor deals with your estate afterward.

The same person may suit both roles, but assess them separately. Managing bills, investments, and care costs can mean years of continuous decisions. Someone willing to settle your estate may not have capacity for that.

Is there an estate decision where you do see the result?

One, and it deserves more attention than it gets.

If you have wealth beyond your own lifetime needs, giving during your lifetime is a real alternative to leaving a larger estate. Once affordability and the tax position are worked through, money given while you are alive arrives when the people receiving it can actually use it, rather than decades later when they may not need it at all. Continue Reading…

Ed Yardeni’s market outlook: Roaring 2020s Base Case Update, Revenge of the Bond Vigilantes, AI and more

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By Hamilton ETFs

(Sponsor Blog)

Ed Yardeni: Image courtesy Hamilton ETFs

Hamilton ETFs recently hosted renowned Wall Street strategist Ed Yardeni in Toronto for a discussion on his outlook for markets, the economy and the risks facing investors.

With more than 40 years of experience forecasting economic and market trends, Yardeni has built an impressive track record, perhaps most notably for his “Roaring 2020s” thesis, which he introduced in August 2020.

From his updated 2020s forecast to the return of the bond vigilantes, here are six of the most interesting takeaways from the conversation:

Roaring 2020s Case lowered to 70% Probability

  • Ed Yardeni’s base-case Roaring 2020s scenario draws parallels between the 1920s and 2020s (both began with pandemics, recessions and pessimistic outlooks and saw great economic prosperity). He predicts technology-driven productivity gains will drive economic growth throughout this decade, which will end without a recession and the S&P 500 index at 10,000.
  • With just over three years left to go in the decade, he has lowered the odds of his Roaring 2020s scenario from 80% to 70%, raising the probability of a bearish outcome from 20% to 30%. He also lowered his S&P 500 target for the end of 2026 to 7,900 from 8,400 and moved his 8,400 target to mid-2027.
  • The main risk has shifted from the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices to rising bond yields and their potential impact on price-to-earnings (P/E) multiples. He cited the bear market in 2022 as an example of how falling multiples can drive shares lower even when earnings hold up.
  • Nevertheless, he sees stocks as long-term investments and pullbacks, corrections and even bear markets as potential buying opportunities.

Quote: “This Roaring 2020s story is basically productivity based. Productivity-led economic growth keeps inflation down, boosts margins, and actually boosts real wages. Wages rise faster than prices when productivity is moving.”

 

Reasons for Bullishness

  • Yardeni believes the current bull market is being driven by “FEMO” (Fabulous Earnings Momentum) not “FOMO” (Fear of Missing Out) and points to rising analyst consensus expectations (see chart below) and the Q2 2026 earnings year-over-year growth rate being around 25% even after excluding unrealized gains on equity investments held by Big Tech.
  • He says if the U.S. economy is resilient, earnings will be resilient, and the economy has shown resilience in the face of several shocks (the pandemic, supply chain disruptions, inflation, Fed rate hikes, war, high oil prices etc.). The reasons for this are mainly strong consumer and capital spending.
  • Although consumer confidence has taken a dive, this weakness isn’t reflected in retail sales. He says consumer spending is supported by the retiring baby boomer generation spending from their record net worth. Capital spending is supported by the AI boom. (see chart below).
  • He also acknowledged the U.S. economy’s resilience has been in part due to significant fiscal stimulus. This is a weakness in his bullish argument.

 

Revenge of the Bond Vigilantes: How High is Too High? Is it Time to Buy?

  • Yardeni, who coined the term “bond vigilantes” in 1983, said their influence was suppressed during years of quantitative easing and zero interest rates that kept yields low. They may return for “revenge” as bond markets operate more freely and interest rates get back to normal, demanding higher yields in response to the large government debts.
  • He sees several forces pushing yields higher globally, including government deficits, tightening monetary policies, inflation, strong economic growth and the unwinding of the yen carry trade. He’s watching the Bank of Japan’s actions closely as it faces pressure to strengthen the yen by raising interest rates, which in turn impacts bond markets. Continue Reading…

Before retirement, check how much of the same company you own

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Image AI generated by Jenna Lofton with OpenAI

By Jenna Lofton

Special to Financial Independence Hub

A Canadian equity ETF, a dividend ETF and a few bank stocks. That sounds like a bit of variety, doesn’t it? Open the funds’ holdings lists, though, and you may find you’ve bought the same company three ways.

Before adding another fund to a retirement portfolio, I like to answer one basic question first: how much of this company is already in there?

Start with your accounts

Decide which accounts go into the math. If your savings are spread across an RRSP, a TFSA and a non-registered account, looking at just one can hide part of the picture. This discussion of home-country bias makes the case for treating your accounts as one portfolio.

Use current market values, put everything in one currency and include your cash. That total is the number you’ll divide by.

One easy mistake to avoid: the stocks inside your funds are already counted in the funds’ value. Add them again and you’ve double-counted the same dollars.

Follow one company through your funds

Here’s a hypothetical C$100,000 portfolio: C$40,000 in the iShares S&P/TSX 60 Index ETF (XIU), C$20,000 in the iShares Canadian Select Dividend Index ETF (XDV), C$5,000 in Royal Bank of Canada shares and C$35,000 in cash. Treat these as market values on the holdings date below. This is an arithmetic example, not a suggested retirement allocation.

XIU tracks a large-company Canadian index, while XDV focuses on Canadian dividend payers. The funds have different mandates, but both hold Royal Bank.

BlackRock’s holdings files dated Oct 5, 2026 put Royal Bank at 9.48% of XIU and 8.61% of XDV. Multiply each fund’s value by that weight:

XIU: C$40,000 × 9.48% = C$3,792

XDV: C$20,000 × 8.61% = C$1,722

Direct Royal Bank shares: C$5,000

Add those up and you’ve got an estimated C$10,514 of exposure to Royal Bank shares. Divide by the C$100,000 total and that’s about 10.5% of the portfolio.

So that 5% in direct shares is only part of the story. Include the funds and your exposure more than doubles.

Tempted to add 9.48% and 8.61%? I’d put the calculator down for a second. Each percentage has to be scaled by how much you actually have in that fund.

What the number tells you

Finding overlap doesn’t mean you’ve made a mistake. You may want that exposure. I’d just rather discover the total while reviewing the portfolio than after that company has a rough week. Continue Reading…