lystn

Hey guys. Welcome back. On today’s daily call, I want to answer the question – “Can I trade options in my IRA or a retirement account?” The simple answer to this question is – Yes, of course you can trade options in your retirement account or IRA, but only (this is the asterisk that you usually find at the bottom of a page and it’s like, “see defined print”) if your broker allows it. You will have to check and make sure that your broker or whoever you’re using for your IRA or a retirement account actually allows the ability to trade options. Now, there’s a lot of brokers out there. I just used the word “broker” but it’s really just an investment firm that don’t allow you to do it. They either place a restriction, they don’t have the capacity to trade them, so it’s just a function of having the technology available to actually trade options in that account. For example, like my wife’s 403B account that she has through a local provider because she’s a teacher, they just don’t even have the capacity to trade options. Is it possible? Yes, it’s possible, but they don’t have the capacity to do it, so we’re restricted in that we can’t trade options in her teacher’s retirement account. But you should be able to in your brokerage account. The one thing you will have to check is your option trading approval level. That might be something that you might want to work with, with the brokers. There are various different levels. Usually, there are about four different levels and you’ll have to either work your way up or prove that you have completed some education or have some training in options, have some experience in options trading. I honestly don’t think it’s that hard to work your way through the levels, so that you can get higher trading approval. That’s something that we talked about on our weekly podcast. If you just search either the website or our weekly podcast for option approval levels, you’ll find that. We give you some great tips about how to get your approval level increased even if you’re new and just getting started. The other thing I would say is – If you want to go to a different broker, that’s probably the best solution for you. There are a lot of brokers out there, preferably Thinkorswim, Tastyworks. I know that Interactive Brokers, they’re not incredibly hard to actually get higher approval levels and they do offer various types of retirement accounts, so it’s not just one standard one. You have IRAs and ROTHs and SEP IRAs. There’s a lot of different choices out there, so it might be worth an investment in your time to actually spend time transferring your account, moving it over. I know it’s a lot of paperwork. I know it’s sometimes a headache. But ultimately, if you get to an investment firm or a broker that has a lot more capacity to trade options, it’s obviously going to give you more choices and more ability to steadily grow your account without having to always trade just stock. Hopefully that helps answer the question. As always, if you guys have any other new questions or different questions you want me to answer on the daily call, please send me an email, shoot me a text or a tweet, post on our Facebook page, get in contact with me somehow, someway and we’ll make sure we get those added to our list going forward. Until next time, happy trading!