The devil is in the details. My associate only writes put options, on one stock, and has been doing that for over a decade, profitable every year. The key is he writes only when conditions fit his criteria. The other thing I found, from experience, is if you need all the profits from trading to put food on the table, for living expense, you will not succeed. Drawdowns are a fact of life and the key to long term survival is generating a cushion during good time to soften the impact during bad, so the law of compounding is on your side. Finally, if you are serious, try to understand Kelly before you start.
Let's say I trade 60-90% win rate strategy and try to only trade when conditions are favorable (obviously gut feel), what is the maximum percent of total capital should I allocate? Assuming I am retail. Someone mentioned Options Alpha, I think Kirk is suggesting no more than 50%. If you tell me ZERO, please explain why!
I am just an amateur retail, so take my comments/method with a grain of salt: Win rate does not mean a thing. Calculate your expectancy. If negative, zero, if positive, allocate ~20%-30% capital, then calculate your Kelly and bet < 1/4 Kelly to start. The key is to lower your "risk of ruin".
Well that's the problem for me with options (or for any leveraged short gamma strategy), they all look good on paper and make sense in theory. I think your advice is good and I had 30% in mind, but I don't think its worth it then. It becomes more of a hobby.
Option is all about probability, neither buyer nor seller has an edge unless one side has a more accurate predictor of outcome. So, I don't know how any amateur retail like us can get 3%-8% a month returns consistently. However, compounding at a few points above benchmark is quite possible using options during a bull market. Here, the bull market (luck) is your edge. Have a good day.
I can backtest any system you like and show at least 20% per month profits- unless people show real trades in real time they should do one. I once had a share tipster do this- in the first week they lost 4%- I carried on profitably trading options my own way +40% last year. I reckon 95% of trading is plain luck derived from having billions of other people's money. Us retail players have to be honest- the rest of the industry doesn't have that requirement
I agree you need to get market direction right to make money in options. In the current market short term weekly credit put spreads have been working. You need to be able to figure out if a market dip is going to happen in the next one to two weeks. There are some good free sites (you do not need to pay the subscription to start). Jeff Augen has some good ways to use VIX to try to guess coming market direction and large moves. Sheridan option TV has twice weekly short videos that describe the possible trades. You need to find your own set ups. Always use spreads. I think with VIX down to 12 calendars probably make sense again.