$15K on a SPX Condor plus $5K on an NDX snipe

Discussion in 'Options' started by Safilo, Nov 10, 2013.

  1. Safilo

    Safilo

    This was my second week of day trading. I've had good luck with stocks and decided to try my hand at options.

    I dropped a short condor on SPX last week and grabbed a $15K profit; was a bit nervous with the 2% dip in the S&P which thankfully didn't happen on the 8th, and my low wing didn't close ITM on exp.

    With NDX, I managed to snipe $5K by doing a simple ATM short put right before it closed on the 7th.

    Some less impressive trades included $1,200 profit from AAPL during what I call the morning hump, which starts at open and fizzles out around 10-1030am. SPY seems to have a morning hump thing most days and I was able to get $900 profit from one of those.

    No major losses yet and I currently have a few open long condor spreads on AAPL and SPY.

    Upon review I think I'm going to apply a simple principle - the market only crashes down - and bias my spreads to have more cushioning on the downside.

    I also feel like most pure option strategies are gambler oriented. The benefit of trading stocks is that as long as you stick with well-established companies you can never really "lose everything".

    With options, you're playing with fire while wearing gasoline-soaked underwear...so in the interest of not posting $20K per week losses I may simply limit my options trading to covered calls on stock I want to sell and short puts on stocks I want to buy.