It's your thread. Do what you wish. If by some means, magical or other, you managed to survive last week without a serious loss in your account, I'm all ears to learn how you did it.
He could have simply rode it out. There is no haircut on a vertical, other than the risk-debit. However, there was an inference that he did cover or performed a magical roll.
Howard Use a BLOG. Nobody here has any advice to give you if you are convinced your system is working. On a BLOG you can ruminate all you want without the backchat. I think the usefulness of any backchat has passed the point anyway. I´m interested in what Arabian Nights has to say, from his years of scalping. There HAS to be a wealth of useful tidbits he could contribute there, that have no actual technical basis, just based on gut intuition on market reading. THAT interests me. Had a good morning and in my funny money account am UP to 197% in 4 and a half months. My cheque went out and now I await an account number with TOS for REAL MONEY. Now that is a different dish and those algorythms used in funny money are not going to work anymore for FILLS. I´m VERY curious how real money trading will be effected? On a different note, threw in an extra OEX trade and it did fairly well on the jump this morning. My only curiousity, is will this work in real money trading? The SPY did okay too, held over from Friday for $2740. Still funny money. I´m working on a 4 day trade as background for a short term intra day trade idea. If it fills, OKAAY- If not, I have backup with some extra days available for things to happen in SPY. Testing the idea.
Here is an equidistant strike risk-reversal quote. Long the call, short the put. You see the premium at $0.58 (midpoint on highlighted row) related to the put over the call. That is the skew in dollars as the position is nearly neutral delta. Close enough for illustration. You sell the put at $0.58 over the call. The deltas are in the 50-60 range. If you trade a two lot you're trading 100 SPY long. You're long convexity on a number of greeks, so your deltas will rally along with SPY. You're long the vol surface and short the vol-line. It's not necessary to understand that, but realize that you will earn incrementally from a drop in volatility. It's monetized by that $0.58 premium in the put over the call. SPY is up 2.07 RR is up 3.04 (118*2)+(34*2) RR is up 50% more due to the fact it was an ATM strike on Friday. I use it to illustrate a currently neutral RR. Friday's neutral RR would have been up 25% more than the SPY long shares.
Early in the thread Howard specified a routine (not completely clear) for closing positions "in jeopardy" or rolling them. If he followed that, then there were transactions last week made on a harsh volatile environment. Many of them not pleasant nor profitable. That is what I was asking about. edited out Q for atticus...
I don't trade ES (although I am considering doing it around roll time etc.... first I want to get FTSE over rolls sorted though). I trade STIRs... won't give my pnl figures for last year but you're in right ball park, shall we say. As for how I do it, just look at my sig on t2w and view the "serious thread", which I am adding to slowly over time. NEXT!
Howard, I've always given you the benefit of the doubt, even when it strains credulity... please extend me the same courtesy It's a shame you intend to move to a place where you can censor all criticism. That doesn't sound like genuine intellectual inquisitiveness to me ya know...
I'm a little surprised the matching thread in T2W was locked. Did HC get wiped out by the Japan situation?
well really i just wanted to say hi, if you know the trade to win forum then its obvious who i am. hello everyone