I can help you, the beginner/failed/amateur/new trader, with general trading wisdoms and philosophies and lessons -- But I won't divulge my exact technical blueprints on Area 51 technologies, or where Atlantis is, or where the Holy Grail can be found on earth, and other desirable mysteries. You seem so angry, maybe jealous, that a successful person won't teach you exactly what he knows and discovered. If someone is giving you, sharing with you, offering you free trading information...that's because that's all it's worth, Whooooopie~....the Secret to make 8% a year, or whatever meaningless small number. If someone truly had knowledge, experience, know-how...on how to make millions a year in the market...they would definitely keep that a secret, and exploit it themselves. You would too! If you knew how to make a killing in the market...Would you be talking about it on a forum, revealing the exact process to everyone out there,
Since I'm not an options guy, I know you're dying to hear my suggestions. lol And looking at your position, earlier today, you were down 85 points, still down 70 points as I write this. Where is your threshold for pain? Seriously, though. I trade MES, as well, and in my near future, I foresee holding over the weekend. So I have been looking into how to implement a "simple, straightforward" weekend hedge as insurance should something happen over the weekend that causes the bottom to fall out at the Sunday afternoon/evening open. For overnight, during the week, I'll rely on my stop. The only way I know to do it is, if you're long, buy MES OTM Puts with a strike at your threshold for pain (the price where you want to stop the bleeding). One Put for each MES contract. There are only three options possibilities for MES: Quarterly, Monthly, and Friday-Weekly. Quarterly is American, the other two are Euro. For a weekend hedge, I was thinking the Weekly would be best. Buy a Put on Friday afternoon with expiry the following Friday (assuming IV hasn't jacked up the premium). Assuming a calm weekend, sell it Sunday evening (ES/MES options trade whenever ES/MES trades). If IV has jacked up the premium, then just keep my fingers crossed, or go into the weekend flat, and work back in Sunday evening. For you, since you hold so long and don't seem to use a stop of any kind, I think it's going to be more complicated. Where you are right now, if you wanted to, you could stop further bleeding, but which puts would be best for you, depends on how you want to structure the hedge and how long you want it to last. I believe those Greeks are going to get involved, as well. lol Maybe someone who knows will offer some suggestions to help us both get a better handle on this type of insurance. This is Ken's thread, but I don't think he would mind, and he might be interested in this, as well.
You answered my question in a way and solved my dilemma. What to do is a question that I asked, and SPX could not answer the question. But someone here who doesn't trade options at least HAD AN IDEA.
All you are doing is guessing a direction, but with options instead of stocks or futures. You do what I do!
We're All guessing, gambling, on the future direction. That's a Given, fact. But what if someone was killing it in that process, above and beyond everyone else. Greatly. What does that person possess, did he sell his soul, was touched by God...what's his secret. This is ET...I want to discover and dissect the Top 00.20% of traders in the World. And Historic traders are irrelevant, if they blew up their account and committed suicide. It's only a success story if they died rich, not broke.
You're in another league. You just don't know where you place in the hierarchy. You act like $400K is all the money in the world. I made $330K last month and there are at least two guys in my chat that made multiples of that in Aug.