I am sure brokers do earn their commission. I would learn nothing by doing it that way. This whole process has been fascinating to me. I would not have learned 1/10th as much had I just asked a broker to do this stuff for me. Plus, it's much less expensive to do it this way. I have not made any mistakes yet in terms of hitting wrong buttons or getting into or out of positions that I didn't understand. Of course I've had the market go against me, but I understood the risks going in and the margin calls I experienced were exactly what I expected to happen.

If any of you learn by actual application and are hesitant to jump in to something like this, I would say go for it. If you treat it with respect, (same way I treat my 480 volt pivot panel with respect when I'm working on it even though I'm not an electrician), you will learn a ton without serious injury. There will be things like this where you run into something that you don't quite understand, but regardless of whether I hit the month I intended to or not, the calls are doing what I wanted them to and that was to protect myself against the market having a short term extreme runup.