What is a good service that will allow me to practice options trading with a pretend-money account?
Try wallstreetsurvivor.com It gives you $100k of pretend money when you sign up, using which you can take various courses on the website. It will teach you how to buy/sell stocks and build your portfolio. I am not sure if they do have Options Trading specifically, but their course line up is great! Try https://sparkprofit.com/ You practice with real market prices, and it's free. Plus you can get real money pay outs if you do well. I earned 1 cent! hahaha I gave up trying to make money from it, but you get an idea of doing trades and how impossible it is to predict what the price will be. It has some tutorials and helpful things too. Try ThinkOrSwim by TDAmeritrade. It allows you to paper trade with a powerful trading platform. There's also a mobile app so you can trade on the go. Good luck!
"Banks have a financial, and regulational duty called ""Know your customer"", established to avoid a number of historical problems occurring again, such as money laundering, terrorism financing, fraud, etc. Thanks to the scale, and scope of the problem (millions of customers, billions of transactions a day), the way they're handling this usually involves fuzzy logics matching, looking for irregular patterns, problem escalation, and other warning signs. When exceeding some pre-set limit, these signal clues are then filtered, and passed on for human inspection. Needless to say, these algorithms are not perfect, although, thanks to financial pressure, they are improving. In order to understand why your trading account has been suspended, it's useful to look at the incentives: false positives -suspending your trade, and assuming you guilty until proven otherwise- could cost them merely your LTV (lifetime value of customer -how much your business brings in as profit); while false negatives -not catching you while engaging in activities listed above- might cost them multi-month investigations, penalties, and court.  Ultimately, this isn't against you. I've been with the bank for 15 years and the money in the accounts has been very slowly accumulated via direct-deposit paychecks over that time. From this I gather the most likely explanation, is that you've hit somekind of account threshold, that the average credit-happy customers usually do not exceed, which triggered a routine checkup. How do you deal with it? Practice puppetry! There is only one way to survive angry customers emotionally: you have to realize that they’re not angry at you; they’re angry at your business, and you just happen to be a convenient representative of that business. And since they’re treating you like a puppet, an iconic stand-in for the real business, you need to treat yourself as a puppet, too. Pretend you’re a puppeteer. The customer is yelling at the puppet. They’re not yelling at you. They’re angry with the puppet. Your job is to figure out, “gosh, what can I make the puppet say that will make this person a happy customer?”  In an investigation case, go with boredom: The puppet doesn't care, have no feelings, and is eternally patient. Figure out what are the most likely words that will have the matter ""mentally resolved"" from the investigator's point of view, tell them what they have to hear, and you'll have case closed in no time. Hope this helps." "If wire transfer through your bank does not work then perhaps one of the more popular money transfer services may be what you are looking for such as MoneyGram or Western Union. Now these rely on a trusted ""registered"" third party to do the money transfer so you need to make sure that you are working with a legitimate broker. Each money transfer service has a site that allows you to perform the search on registered parties around your area. There are certain fees that are sometimes applied due to the amount being transferred. All of these you will want to do some detailed research on before you make the transfer so that you do not get scammed.   I would suggest doing a lot of research and asking people that you trust to recommend a trusted broker.  I have not personally used the services, but doing a quick search brought many options with different competitive conversion rates as well as fees. Good luck." "To avoid nitpicks, i state up front that this answer is applicable to the US; Europeans, Asians, Canadians, etc may well have quite different systems and rules. You have nothing to worry about if you pay off your credit-card statement  in full on the day it is due in timely fashion. On the other hand, if you routinely carry a balance from month to month or have taken out cash advances, then making whatever payment you want to make that month ASAP will save you more in finance charges than you could ever earn on the money in your savings account. But, if you pay off each month's balance in full, then read the fine print about when the payment is due very carefully: it might say that payments received before 5 pm will be posted the same day, or it might say before 3 pm, or before 7 pm EST, or noon PST, etc etc etc. As JoeTaxpayer says, if you can pay on-line with a guaranteed day for the transaction (and you do it before any deadline imposed by the credit-card company), you are fine.  My bank allows me to write ""electronic"" checks on its website, but a paper check is mailed to the credit-card company. The bank claims that if I specify the due date, they will mail the check enough in advance that the credit-card company will get it by the due date, but do you really trust the USPS to deliver your check by noon, or whatever? Besides the bank will put a hold on that money the day that check is cut. (I haven't bothered to check if the money being held still earns interest or not).  In any case, the bank disclaims all responsibility for the after-effects (late payment fees, finance charges on all purchases, etc) if that paper check is not received on time and so your credit-card account goes to ""late payment"" status.  Oh, and my bank also wants a monthly fee for its BillPay service (any number  of such ""electronic"" checks allowed each month). The BillPay service does include payment electronically to local merchants and utilities that have accounts at the bank and have signed up to receive payments electronically. All my credit-card companies allow me to use their website to authorize them to collect the payment that I specify from my bank account(s). I can choose the day, the amount, and which of my bank accounts they will collect the money from, but I must do this every month. Very conveniently, they show a calendar for choosing the date with the due date marked prominently, and as mhoran_psprep's comment points out, the payment can be scheduled well in advance of the date that the payment will actually be made, that is, I don't need to worry about being without Internet access because of travel and thus being unable to login to the credit-card website to make the payment on  the date it is due. I can also sign up for AutoPay which takes afixed amount/minimum payment due/payment in full (whatever I choose)  on the date due, and this will happen month after month after month  with no further action necessary on my part.  With either choice,  it is up to the card company to collect money from my account on the day specified, and if they mess up, they cannot charge late payment fees or finance charge on new purchases etc.  Also, unlike  my bank, there are no fees for this service. It is also worth noting that many people do not like the idea of the credit-card company withdrawing money from their bank account, and so this option is not to everyone's taste." What is a good resource to learn about options trading strategies? Options are a quite advanced investment form, and you'd do well to learn a lot about them before attempting to dive into this fairly illiquid market. Yale's online course in financial markets covers the Options Market and is a good starting point to make sure you've got all the basics. You may be familiar with most of it, but it's a decent refresher on lingo and Black-Scholes. How can I use options to establish some cash flow from long standing investments while minimizing capital gains expenses? This question seems designed to get people to talk about covered calls. Essentially, you sell call contracts: you let people buy things you already have at a price in the future, at their whim. They pay you for this option, though usually not much if the options aren't in the money. You can think of this as trading any return above the call option for a bit of extra cash.  I don't invest with taxable accounts, but there are significant tax consequences for options. Because they expire, there will be turnover in your portfolio, and up front income when you take the sell side. So if you trade in options with close expiration dates, you'll probably end up with a lot of short-term capital gains, which are treated as normal income. One strategy is to trade in broad-based stock index options, which have favorable tax treatments. Some people have abused this though to disguise normal income as capital gains, so it could go away. Obviously the easy approach is to just use a tax advantaged account for options trading. An ETF might also be able to handle the turnover on your behalf, for example VIX is a series of options on S&P500 options. A second strategy I've heard of is buying calls and puts at a given strike price. For example, if you bought Dec '13 calls and puts on SPX @ 115 today, it would cost you about $35 dollars. If the price moves more than 35 dollars away from 115 by DEC '13 (in either direction), you've made a profit. If you reflect on that for a bit, you'll see why VIX is considered a volatility index. I guess I should mention that shorting a stock and buying a put option at the market price are very similar, with the exception that your loss is limited to the price of the option.  Is there ever an instance where options investing is not speculative? The term 'speculative' is not well defined. For many people, the answer is no. It's very easy to just buy put options and wait for prices to fall, or call options and wait for prices to rise. Moreover, the second strategy above essentially gives you similar performance to a stock without paying full price. These all fall under the headline of increasing a risk portfolio rather than decreasing it, which I figure is a decent definition of speculation. On the other hand, there are ways to use options minimize risk rather than increase it. You can buy underwater options as portfolio insurance, if your portfolio drops below a certain amount, you still have the right to sell it at a higher one. And the Case-Schiller index is run in part, on the hopes that one day there might be a thriving market for real estate options (or futures). When you buy a home or lend money to someone to buy one, you could buy regional Case-Schiller options to protect you if the regional market tanks. But in all of these cases, it's required for someone else to take the opposite trade. Risk isn't reduced, it's traded around. So technically, there is a speculative element to these as well. I think the proper question here is whether speculation is present, but whether speculation can be put to good ends. Without speculators, the already very thin market for options would shrivel faster. Over the long run, you can expect to do about as well as the market itself. Depending on what time period you view, the stock market has typically provided returns of approximately 10%. Some years it is up, some years it is down. You may think you can get better returns, but you are mistaken. You may be able to do better over a short time period if you take on vastly more risk, but you won't be able to do so long term. In order to make $2000/month, then, you will need approximately $240,000 to invest. And even then, you won't make that kind of return reliably. Some months, some years, you'll make more. Other times, you'll lose money. If anyone tells you they can double your money in a month (which is what you are hoping for), walk away. Because it is either illegal or a scam. The only way your plan can work is if you are reliably able to predict stocks which will go up by 10% in the next two days. You cannot do this. You can't even predict which stocks will go up by 10% in the next year. You would appear to be a swing trader, like myself. I have been trading futures and futures options for 29 years, and have both made and lost a lot of money in that time. My trades last hours, to days, to at most a few weeks. From my experience, the most important skills are: 1) Money management - keeping trade size small in relation to total capital. I typically risk 2-3% of my capital on a trade, so a loss is fairly immaterial. 2) Risk management - limit your loss on every trade, either by using stop orders, options, or a combination of these 2. 3) Emotional discipline - be prepared to exit a position, or reverse from long to short, or short to long,  on a moment's notice. The market doesn't care where you entered, or whether you make or lose money. Don't let your hunches or the news influence your decisions, but follow the market. 4) Methodology discipline - test your analysis / trade entry method to ensure that it is objective, and has a reasonably good probability of success, then stick with it. Variation will inevitably lead to indecision or emotional reactions. 5) Flexibility - consider trading anything which can make you a profit, but ensure that there is a lot of liquidity. I trade 30 different futures markets, as well as various option writing strategies in these markets.  Feel free to reach out if you want to discuss further. I have about 500 (yes, 500) trading e-books as well, on every trading subject you can think of. "For personal investing, and speculative/ highly risky securities (""wasting assets"", which is exactly what options are), it is better to think in terms of sunk costs. Don't chase this trade, trying to make your money back. You should minimize your loss. Unwind the position now, while there is still some remaining value in those call options, and take a short-term loss. Or, you could try this.  Let's say you own an exchange traded call option on a listed stock (very general case). I don't know how much time remains before the option's expiration date. Be that as it may, I could suggest this to effect a ""recovery"".  You'll be long the call and short the stock. This is called a delta hedge, as you would be delta trading the stock. Delta refers to short-term price volatility.  In other words, you'll short a single large block of the stock, then buy shares, in small increments, whenever the market drops slightly, on an intra-day basis. When the market price of the stock rises incrementally, you'll sell a few shares. Back and forth, in response to short-term market price moves, while maintaining a static ""hedge ratio"". As your original call option gets closer to maturity, roll it over into the next available contract, either one-month, or preferably three-month, time to expiration. If you don't want to, or can't, borrow the underlying stock to short, you could do a synthetic short. A synthetic short is a combination of a long put and a short call, whose pay-off replicates the short stock payoff.  I personally would never purchase an unhedged option or warrant. But since that is what you own right now, you have two choices: Get out, or dig in deeper, with the realization that you are doing a lot of work just to trade your way back to a net zero P&L.  *While you can make a profit using this sort of strategy, I'm not certain if that is within the scope of the money.stachexchange.com website." "Yes, Interactive Brokers is a good source for live data feeds and they have an API which is used to programmatically access the feeds, you will have to pay for data feeds from the individual data sources though.  The stock exchanges have a very high price for their data and this has stifled innovation in the financial sector for several decades in the united states. But at the same time, it has inflated the value and mystique of ""quants"" doing simple algorithms ""that execute within milliseconds"" for banks and funds.  Also RIZM has live feeds, it is a younger service than other exchanges but helps people tap into any online broker's feeds and let you trade your custom algorithms that way, that is their goal."