Best Options Trading Alert Services - Based on Research

The Mindful Trader options alert service is run by Eric Ferguson. He’s a legitimately nice and caring person, which is a breath of fresh air in this industry. (And a bonus is that he’s so fast at responding to emails!)

Eric did years of research on stock market price tendencies. And he translated those into an options trading strategy. So when he sends an options trading alert, it’s because he knows from history that the trading strategy has historical odds in its favor.

That’s a big difference from most other trade alert services, who make trades based on gut instincts rather than historical evidence. It’s a more scientific approach to trading than flying by the seat of the pants.

His trade alerts are for swing trades, which means that most trades last several days. And he normally sends about 5-10 options trading alerts per week, although it varies.

Once he picks an option he wants to alert, he gives you all the information you need.

Stoplosses and profit targets are assigned upfront and there is a time limit indicated for each trade. He also specifies the exact ticker symbol, including the expiration date and strike price. His alerts take all the guesswork out of options trading.

So once you see the alert information, you can set up everything for the trade at the start. Then you don’t have to worry about it anymore until the time limit hits (which is also alerted as a handy reminder). It’s a set-it-and-forget-it type of trade alert service and typically only takes a few minutes to set up each trade once you get used to it.

One downside to the service: he doesn’t send actual texts or real-time alerts. He simply publishes the trades on his website, which is his way of alerting subscribers. He says most trades show up in the first 15 minutes of the stock market opening each day. He points out that if you want real-time alerts, you can enable them using a third-party service.

What we love most about Mindful Trader, aside from the fact that there’s so much intelligence that’s gone into his trade decisions, is that this guy is just totally transparent and honest.

There are some periods where his trades don’t do well, but he doesn’t hide that. He puts his trade performance out in the open for everyone to see. And he doesn’t make a secret of the fact that there are periods of strong profits and also periods with no profits or drawdowns.

With some other options trading alert services, they claim to make endless profits without ever losing. In our experience, that’s just not possible, and we’ve tried a lot of trade alert services. So when one of these services makes it clear up front that there are periods of losses, that’s appealing to us because it reflects the type of candor we want from an options alert service.

He’s a little more aggressive with his position sizing than what we would prefer, but he gives you a calculator so that you can calculate how to do half his position size, which is just about perfect for us.

Mindful Trader has just one single price for everything they offer: $47 per month. That keeps things simple. And you don't have to worry about him hounding you with upsells after you sign up. It's not his style.

Overall, Mindful Trader is right for someone who is looking to generate long-term wealth, is willing to commit about 15 minutes per weekday to managing trades, and wants to be educated by someone who takes a very academic approach to trading.

Mindful Trader is not right for you if you’re looking to day trade, if you want to be looking at the stock market all day, or if you want overnight riches. You’ll see below that there are other options trading alert services we’d recommend if those are your objectives.

The Swing Trading Club is a service that uses a discord server as a trading chat room. As you can imagine, this service doesn't focus on day trades. It stays in one lane, and that is the lane of swing trading.

The alerts for options trade opportunities come from within the discord chat and are provided by the community members. They have channels within the group specializing in options swing trades.

There are a wide variety of options trading alerts that you'll see in their group chat. Some are for deep-in-the-money options and others are for affordable out-of-the-money options with homerun potential but lower odds of success.

We joined the service and checked out the option trade alerts. One user posted this in the chat room: "Bought PANW 182.5 April 14 calls at 9.55. Will take profit around 14." We liked how the alert included all the relevant information: underlying stock ticker symbol, strike price, expiration, cost of the option, and profit target. That's all the information needed to follow the trade yourself.

We checked the price of the option when we saw the alert, and it was about the same price, so the timing of the alert was effective. And sure enough, seven days later it hit the profit target.

We noticed that the participation levels in the chat room seem to vary. There are hundreds of members, but at times the activity is minimal. At other times the chat room is hopping. Activity levels seem to correspond with the state of the stock market.

In addition to the trade alerts, they also offer a trading course that teaches a lot of swing trading chart patterns and indicators. We didn’t find the course to be particularly extensive.

The Swing Trading Club is the most affordable of all the services on our list. It’s only $19 per month.

Trade alerts from this service are only sent during market hours, just like most other options alert services, so if you are not available to monitor your trades throughout the day, you may miss some potential profits.

This service might be the right fit for you if you are looking for an affordable way to get your foot in the door with options trading alerts. It’s also good for you if you like the idea of joining a community that’s eager to collaborate.