Things are starting to look gloomy again. I had several options expiring worthless last Friday causing the NAV of my account dropping again to -12% since inception. I am reviewing the trades and, definetely, one thing I am lacking is patience. I need to wait for stronger reversal signals. Along this same line, I need also to increase the search space I can scan, so that I can look at more candidate trades to choose from.
Why don't you try this strategy: Use a random number generator to generate your buy/sell signal, backtest it for the period & instruments you traded and see if that strategy outperformed yours?
That's almost impossible, because I keep changing the algorithm almost every day! Just kidding. That sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to do, but I don't have the discipline to backtest or paper trade. Also, masked orders can significantly alter spreads, mining the overall test reliability. Anyway ,I see your point and I'll look into IB paper trade option, though I am unsure how they deal with masked orders.
My point is: When SPX is up more than 15% year to date and you are down -12%? Simply long SPX calls should give you positive outcome during this period?