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Hey everyone, welcome back here. It’s Kirk here again at Option Alpha and in today's daily call, I want to talk about being bullish, bearish or neutral and answering the question, “Does it really matter for traders?” I’ll answer this question in two parts which is yes and no. You’re probably thinking to yourself, “Well, Kirk, that really doesn’t help.” But let me explain why I answered yes and no to the question, “Does it really matter?” Ultimately, I believe that it does not matter what direction you trade the market. When it comes to options trading, it doesn't matter what direction you trade the market because you can build an option strategy with the same probability of success and the same general risk parameters in any direction. Let me explain. If you are bullish on a stock, you can sell a put credit spread with a 70% chance of success and now, you are bullish on that underlying stock. If you're bearish on that stock, somebody else could come in and sell a call credit spread and be bearish on that stock and setup that call credit spread to have a 70% chance of success as well. If somebody else is different and comes in, now this third trader comes in, they could setup a neutral iron condor that has a 70% chance of success where they don’t really care where the stock goes as long as it goes within their range. The same stock, three different expectations of where the market might go, bullish, bearish or neutral, but yet, with options trading, you can setup generally the same probability of success, the same risk reward parameters in any direction. We’ve done tons of videos on this, so if you want to see another video on this, just search the website or search YouTube. We’ve actually gone through and priced these out and you can see it’s very, very similar, like very, very small differences in pricing, but you can set them all up for about a 70% chance of success, same general ability to make money versus risk, etcetera. On that end, it does not matter on an individual trade by trade basis whether you’re bullish, bearish or neutral. What I always tell people is just pick a direction. It doesn't matter whatever technicals you want use, use technicals. If you want to use moon signals, smoke signals, whatever, your kid’s sleep schedule, whatever you want to use as your reason for being bullish, bearish or neutral, it ultimately doesn't matter as long as you’re setting up a high probability trade, you’re selling options, doing everything that we teach at Option Alpha. On an individual trade by trade basis, it doesn't matter for traders what direction you choose. Now, where it does matter… This is why my answer to this question is two parts. It does matter when it comes to your portfolio. If you have an entire portfolio built of all bullish trades, that puts you at a greater risk than if you had a portfolio that is built with a combination of bullish, bearish and neutral trades and this is not something that’s theory. If you think about it logically, if you have let’s say an entire portfolio built with bullish trades that have a 70% chance of success, everything in your portfolio has a 70% chance of success, but is bullish, then that means that when the market rallies, you do very well, but you put yourself at extreme risk that if, God forbid, the market had a dramatic move down and all of your positions are one-sided, meaning all bullish, there is that opportunity where all of your positions at the same time could go bad and that is not a good recipe for long-term consistent income trading options. What I suggest people do is make sure that their portfolio is built with neutral, bullish and bearish positions. If you want to be bullish on one thing, that’s fine, be bearish on something else. If you want to be neutral on something, fine, just be neutral in the context of your portfolio. Have an understanding of where your overall portfolio is situated. Are you too bullish? Are you too bearish? Are you neutral which means you can afford to take a bullish position here and there? I mean, look. That’s the fun of trading, is being sometimes bullish on something and bearish on something else. That's part of it. You love Tesla, you hate Tesla. You like Facebook, you don’t like Facebook. It doesn't matter on individual trade by trade basis, but as long as the overall portfolio has some pretty good balance. Hopefully you'll see now that my answer although may have upset you initially and you’re like, “Kirk, come on, man. Don’t answer yes and no.” But hopefully you understand why I did that here initially in the beginning of the show because I think it's really important. If this helps out, let me know. Shoot me an email. Shoot us a message on Twitter or Facebook, etcetera. If you think that this is helpful for others, please share it. Let everyone else know. Share it with your friends or family, maybe somebody who’s always a bear, always bullish on something. This might be a good episode for them to get started and start this options trading journey here with us at Option Alpha. Until next time, happy trading!