Hello Friends, Today I want to reflect on my journey from a FAANG engineer to options trader. I am still working and not retired yet but have been an engineer all my life (been at a FAANG company, won't get into the specific company for privacy). I have been long term investor but never really looked beyond buy and hold of ETFs. I dabbled in options (buying calls etc) earlier but it was a mixed bag. My journey started when I came across Eric's video on Youtube on how to make 30% per year and joined this community. I have been voraciously researching about options trading, backtesting strategies, finding growing success day by day. While my long term portfolio is playing how the market plays (it was down in November as QQQ was down), my options trading has been quite lucrative. I started in July and so far I had no losing month. Each month I'm getting better and better. My goal is to consistently make income every month so that I can eventually retire. Hope we all will be able to achieve our goals. Wish you all success on your chosen path. Happy to be part of this wonderful community.

Friends, I want to share my learnings on how to enter into high probability trades based on technical analysis and trade selection criteria. This is what I personally try to follow myself. Stock Selection: From the top 30 SPY stocks (based on market capital), set a filter to identify stocks that are: a) oversold on RSI: Which means their RSI is below 30 (you can choose below 35 to get more) b) MACD Bullish Crossover: The MACD indicator of the stock is showing a bullish crossover (MACD line crosses the signal line). Showing a reversal c) Stock's business and fundamentals are still intact d) There is a strong accumulation of the stock (i.e., even though stock is falling it is being accumulated or bought more) Trade Entry: When all the above filters are met you can make any of the below trades a) Sell a 365DTE put on the stock at 50 delta setting a 25% profit target (my favorite and has 90%+ chance of success) b) Sell a 30-45DTE put at 30 delta with a 50% profit target c) Sell a 30-45DTE put spread with the short leg at 16 delta and long leg 5 or 10 points below. 50% profit target

As most of us are going on holiday, I would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and happy holidays! 2025 has been a volatile year from tariff wars, AI bubble to the semi-santa rally. I've spent the year revising and refining my research framework through each bearish wave, learning something new each time. 2026 will be an interesting year as I launch new ventures and expand into the hedge fund space with my machine learning investing strategy. I believe the key success factor to achieve your goals is to continue to try and hack away at a problem until you are there. So I wish you Merry Christmas and happy holidays. Here's the Christmas link to join Investing Accelerator directly. Cheers, Eric ----- Eric Seto Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) Chartered Investment Manager (CIM) Founder of 5MinInvesting.com In December, my goal is to help 20 people without a financial background to master investing through Investing Accelerator. Investing Accelerator is designed for people without a financial background. The goal is to achieve 30% return per year. In the first phase, you will learn long term investing and targeting 30% for tax free compound growth. This will help accelerate your overall wealth. In the second phase, you will learn monthly passive income to provide a more predictable cash flow (target 30% per year) which can cover your expenses. This will help accelerate your retirement goals. Here's a step by step guide on how to join Investing Accelerator for free: https://www.skool.com/invest-retire-community-1699/how-to-join-investing-accelerator-for-free If you are interested, then let's hop on a call to see if you can benefit from the strategies in Investing Accelerator and get target 30% per year. During the call, we will map out exactly how you can achieve target 30%, what you are lacking, how you can improve.

I had trouble understanding calendar trades until recently. I would like to share my new insights into these trades to see if it helps anyone. A Calendar trade has two legs just like any spread trade. For a regular spread trade, you sell a put or call at a strike (say 110) and buy at another strike (100) both expiring the same date. For a calendar trade you sell and buy the same strike at different dates. This is where it was confusing for me. Here is how I understand it now. Let's say you buy a stock and write a CC (covered call) on it. If the stock price rises, you limit your profit and let it be called away. If the stock falls, the CC will become profitable (and you can close it) and wait for the stock to bounce back to make more gains. This is a pretty safe strategy but requires capital to buy the stock. A lower cost but similar strategy would be PMCC (Poor Man's Covered Call). Here you would buy LEAPS (longer dated calls) instead of stock and then sell CC on it. A calendar is exactly similar to PMCC. You buy a longer dated call (or put) and sell a shorted dated call both in one transaction (unlike PMCC where you sell the shorter dated calls periodically). So a calendar trade is a more protective way of buying calls. You limit the downside risk by selling a shorter dated call and benefit from the premium received. You also limit the upside profit (due to the shorter dated call). Calendars are a safe way to buy calls (if you are bullish on a stock). They are also neutral trades in that the stock price has to expire within a certain range for the trade to be profitable. They have the benefit of doing well when volatility expands (there's fear in the market). In those cases, calendars profit range widens and they become even more profitable