just curious, how successful are you scalping/daytrading options on the qqq's??? anyone? ive tried futures and stocks, but everytime i get my ass handed to me, i go back to the qqq's (options) and trade them to get back up again. Im starting to think that that is what i should do period. Im just a small swinger with IB but playing the options on qqqs is really interesting, if the move is setting up for somehting i can see the bids/offers dissapear giving me a decent entry most of the time. Im just curious if anyone else is daytrading the options successfuly or am i fighting a pretty tough battle here? I guess i just wanted to get something going here on the qqq's. if anyone has something helpful to say, fire away. thnx
the options onthe qqq's are very tight, spread wise, always .05, at least the ones in or at the money. thus if i see that the qqq or NQ are setting up for a move i can usually see the bids or offers disappearing and still have time to usually lift the offer or hit the bid and hopefully get in at the turning point, provided that the set up i saw gets played out to my expectation. If not i either offer out at the buy price or if it just doesnt feel right i hit the bid which usually costs me that nickle. I guess thats how ive been trading it, and like i said, i have had more success with this than the NQ. i think i'll just stick with this and increase size, which the qqq options are very liquid, especially the front month at the money. very nice flow. anyone else do something similar???
Janko, Sounds like we are running parallel lives. I too daytrade the QQQ options in the same manner as you thru IB. I'm trying to find my groove with trading the e-mini nasdaq futures thru pattern recognition, support & resistance levels, etc. So until I can do that profitably, I will trade the options to test my methods. The QQQ options will only cost me a nickel or dime (like you said) if I'm wrong on the underlying direction, and not get spanked with a fast loss on the futures if my timing was off. I'll usually trade 1 strike in-the-money with a few contracts. Sometimes if I'm feeling really good about an impending move in the nas e-mini future, I'll trade the e-mini future and hedge with some QQQ options. That way if I'm still wrong on the future, at least I'll make a few bucks on the options. Good luck.
I've traded "QQQ" options extensively for almost a year now scalping 10 to 20 cents where possible. The "MM's" make the spread too wide lately on the calls, but today was a gimme.
trajan- well like the previous post, the reason why im going into the options rather than the underlying is the fact that the NQ proved too much for me for my act size. i was not comfortable trading it! everytime i saw the setup i would start thinking -ohh man i hope i make money, i cant have another stop out. that kinda thinking was not a good thing when youre trading. heck i even tried to get just a half a point on the nq today, and i couldnt even get that. if its possible to get a 2.5 point stop taken out and not catch a point, well then there was a problem on my entry, and i think id much rather just watch teh nq for now and trade the options. Obviously my trading in the nq was not beneficial to me and my act. options give me less of a hit if im wrong, and dont have all the funky prints like the qqq. the spreads are fine, like i said, its usually a nickle, which is great. Of course im talking at the money or one or two points out or in the money. , current month. So that is why i choose the options rather than the nq or qqq. One big factor also was the PDT, but apparently that started applying to options as well. Bummer
So it was the mechanics of trading the futures and not the inability to discern direction. ok. Sometimes people need to move around and find a product they can trade. For the amount of capital you have, it is difficult to execute a strategy beyond directional trading or scalping. I have scalped the qqq options. They aren't too bad. Has everybody put the PDT rule in effect for options?
I just reread your original post. You were doomed with that line of thinking. My last job trading, I was paranoid every time the phone would ring in the pit that it was my boss calling to ask what was happening to the position. I would always kick ass whenever he went on vacation. If you are afraid to lose, you will. If you are sitting on a position based on hope, trade out of it, start over. What size are you trading? A nickel on ten contracts is only 50 bucks plus commissions. If you are worried about losing 70 dollars, then you don't have enough capital to do it for a living. Dumping a position that is giving you angst is a great liberator of the mind. Commision are low enough, especially at IB, that they shouldn't factor into whether or not you hold onto something.