Our Founder
James Cordier, Founder
Welcome to OptionSpreaders.com.
Whether you found us through a search engine, a recommendation from a friend, one of my books or simply because you’re exploring different investment managers, I’d like to personally thank you for taking the time to visit our website.
Choosing someone to help manage your wealth is one of the most important financial decisions you’ll ever make. You deserve to know not only how they invest, but why they invest the way they do. Since this company is built around my philosophy of the markets, I thought it only fair to tell you a little about mine.
I’ve spent more than forty years studying, trading and teaching options. During that time, I’ve written three editions of The Complete Guide to Option Selling for McGraw-Hill, appeared countless times on CNBC, Bloomberg News, Fox Business and in The Wall Street Journal, spoken before investment groups and panels throughout the country and had the privilege of managing money for high-net-worth investors from around the world.
After all of those years, my conviction has never changed.
I still believe that option selling is one of the greatest investment strategies ever developed for the sophisticated, at-home investor. In my opinion, it is the ONLY strategy that gives individual investors the opportunity to compete with institutions using outright probability instead of trying to predict where markets will be tomorrow.
I have not wavered from that belief. In fact, I believe in it more today than I did forty years ago.
What has changed is how I believe that philosophy should be implemented.
If you spend time researching my background, as I hope you will, you’ll eventually come across one chapter of my career that deserves to be addressed.
Nearly a decade ago, the firm I founded experienced one of the most public losses in the history of futures option trading. It was a painful experience for everyone involved, particularly the clients who had placed their trust in me. That experience, and the pain it caused others, will stay with me for the rest of my life.
I don’t hide from it.
I don’t make excuses for it.
I own it.
For more than forty years, I believed disciplined management of naked option positions was sufficient to control risk. The markets eventually taught me otherwise. They reminded me that no matter how experienced we become, the markets always have another lesson to teach.
That lesson changed my thinking forever.
Even if that risk presents itself only once in a thousand trades, or once in ten thousand trades, I no longer believe that fully uncovered option selling is a risk worth taking with someone else’s capital.
After spending decades teaching investors what I believe are remarkable advantages of option selling, I wasn’t about to abandon a strategy I still believed in. Instead, I began asking a different question:
“How can investors continue to enjoy most of the benefits of option selling while reducing the one risk that concerned me most?”
For me, the answer was so obvious it virtually smacked me in the face: selling option credit spreads.
Credit spreads preserve nearly everything I have always loved about option selling. Credit spreads allow us to benefit from probabilities, time decay and real-world supply and demand fundamentals while defining or partially hedging risk before the trade is ever entered. Of course, no investment strategy is without risk, but I believe hedged risk is preferable to completely unhedged risk, especially when you’re managing other people’s money.
That belief is the foundation upon which OptionSpreaders was built.
Some prospective clients will research my background and decide they’d rather work with someone whose record appears spotless.
I understand that completely.
I chose not to let a single chapter define a career spanning more than four decades. Instead, I chose to learn from it, grow from it, and continue teaching the strategy I have believed in throughout my professional life.
Today, I believe I’m a better trader because of that experience. Not because I experienced failure, but because I allowed that experience to permanently improve the way I think about risk and the way I manage other people’s money.
As you explore this website, I hope you’ll come away with an understanding of what we do, why we do it and the philosophy that guides every decision we make.
Then, whether you choose to work with us or not, you’ll be making your decision based on the complete picture.
Thank you again for visiting OptionSpreaders.com. My team and I wish you every success in your investing journey.
Sincerely,
James Cordier
Founder, OptionSpreaders.com
