Another one bites the dust.

I have not named services for a variety of reasons. One was that if I mentioned a service that appeared to be a good deal and turned out to be not so good...well, if anyone actually signed up based on anything I said in here... I just skipped names.

I made one exception for the Optioneer service as I had faith that their trade selection methodology would be as sound as the theory behind the trade style. Iron Condor option trades can have a sound application if used correctly. It turns out that the Optioneer model is not as sound as it would appear.

Now, I still feel that it could be a good service if traded with a more conservative approach, longer time frames on the trades with the plan to exit the trade earlier, perhaps when the value of the trade exceeds the initial time value. This can increase the overall returns to a degree.

Having said that I have had a number of trades lose money, enough that recovering from the loss would be a longish process. The nature of iron condors is that the amount of cash at risk is much higher than the potential profit. One short falling was I was not aware that certain trades that I made were not going to fall under the terms of the performance agreement which means that the overall agreement timeline was too short to enable me to place all the trades necessary to meet the requirement. If I worked the trades to the minimum times right now I would be short by one trade. Given that having trades filled is less frequent than having them not fill means that it is unlikely that I could pull it off. Besides, even if I did the chances are that I would make the minimum profit requirement and not get to cash in on the refund.

The long story turned short is that I would be wasting my time with daily returns of one tenth of what I am returning right now in my Questrade account. So I will be shutting this service down, taking my lumps of the loss and the up front setup fees and putting my money to better use.

Could I have made it work over the long term? Sure.

Do I want to? No.

Do I regret mentioning the service by name here? Sort of.

If I decide to dabble in spread trades again I will do it either in my Questrade account or with an option specialty broker that does not attempt to make money off of services other than the commissions. I didn't begrudge the "other than commission" fees but perhaps I was too quick to get into this service when I could have setup something similar through someone like OptionXpress for very good commission rates... commissions only.

So, another one bites the dust and I should have done more homework in advance of signing up... or at least before making the main commitment.

Jeff.