For longs (low prob with high reward), I would recommend watching these videos. It's based on Unusual Options Activity with a twist. https://www.youtube.com/c/OptionsGeek/videos For shorts(high prob with low reward), assuming you don't want to do the Wheel, I would take a look at what Tasty Trades does - sell premium when vol spikes to high levels. Basically, you need to find some edge if playing long, and be selective(patient) when playing short. The combination of the two should provide steady growth with possibility of occasional home runs. Just my $0.02.
great reply thank you for posting that. I tend to gravitate away from day trades...because i suck at it lol. 95% of the time i place a day trade i lose money...I love the action, but I lose money too frequently and avoid unless i see something i just cant stand passing on. I usually buy 3m-1y options to give my theory some time to mature...look for big swings to exit but most of the time theta kills me lol. "trick is when to take profits" truer words have never been spoken at least concerning my mistakes...I recently let a $100k profit evaporate down to roughly $5k before exiting...sickening man.
Man I'd puke. I puked when I blew up an account. Had a friend had a good philosophy with his crypto stuff. Once his account doubled took out his original investment put it elsewhere now it takes the emotional stress off of trading going forward with the winnings because it he knows bitcoin goes to zero he still has his initial investment safe somewhere else and it's all risk capital. I don't know something to think about.
I have two trading journals now from different time periods with big huge words written in bold that says "SELL AT PEAK EXCITEMENT!!!" twice now i have done this...the first time I let a $50k gain evaporate to zero then turn into a $20k loss (last spring holding puts refusing to believe the V-shaped recovery that was taking place before my eyes)...then the most recent fiasco with meme stocks I went in with options realizing the bullishness but held too long...and let that $100k dissolve to almost nothing. Im getting better I guess...if going from horrendous to terrible is improvement.
I started with swing trading, then naturally moved to day trading. Now I have added options directionally only. I am subscribing to the OptionsGeek service (but you don’t have to, he explains his method). I also run a variation of the Wheel (which I treat as swing trading with options).
Being over leveraged is the main cost you pay not margin interest. Hence it is irrelevant whether you buy options to avoid paying margin interest or whether you buy stocks and borrow capital. The cost of margin is immaterial in the context of being overinvested and not having an edge. If the main reason why your account is bleeding is being overleveraged then you need to reduce size. If you can't fund properly sized positions then you have no business trading (yet) unless you want to lose even more. It's really that simple.
I will throw this out there as an idea. My father made a living trading commodities for large grain houses and in the end for his own accounts managing some private money for a few years. He always had a trading partner. They traded different commodity groups. One the softs one the grains energies etc. They had a trading plan and came up with what seemed to be a viable solution. A different trader was in charge of the exits. So if my dad traded the grain portfolios putting on positions in the soy complex, corn, wheat, they had pre-determined exits. It was then turned over to one of the other partners to manage the exits. Took the emotion out of it. There is something I feel that in trading alone is dangerous and empowering at the same time. But I default to the position that we are social creatures and trading with partners is a better idea if doable.