never suggested that, i was talking in general. personally i have found trading out of shocks to be the most rewarding.
I really don't know where to start and it's not my intention to berate you. Some of your posts are just factually incorrect and some of them I can't even determine what you are implying. It's possible you understand a concept but just lack the ability to communicate it. I don't know. I would start with trying to understand the fact that using past data to build a forward estimate of anything is a very tricky process. This is why most people try to forecast the distribution of future prices vs price itself. You seem to not understand the uselessness of historical volatility or realized volatility whatever you want to call it. And you are not the only one, most people on ET that are premium sellers have little to no knowledge of math or statistics and rely solely on confirmation bias to make future decisions. Bobby is also a victim of this. Really most people are so it doesn't mean you are stupid. But it does mean you probably should not be trading options.
Perhaps I should redo my quantum mechanics courses and should have stayed in the world of atom transfer radical polymerization instead of finance. I think we can certainly disagree on our views of historical volatility.
Not that this information means anything, but I did find it interesting. I've been putting on a trade almost daily since April 5. 14 of those trades were closed as losing trades. 58 trades were closed as winners. Total profits/losses on all closed trades is $5,465.63. This all occurred with me carrying negative deltas for the majority of that time while the market has continually gone up. Nothing to extrapolate here. I just found it interesting. Now let me duck while the hateful comments commence. Happy trading! Bobby
Bobby, I hope grad school works out for you. The negative deltas were immaterial. You were short vol in an environment where vol did nothing but go down. If you run a monte carlo simulation with 1000 random entries doing nothing but selling vol, you would not outperform it meaning your results are simply by chance given the market environment you are in. In fact, the actual index you are trading has outperformed 2 to 1. These are not hateful comments but facts. Given the risk you were taking (by your own admission you were levered to the hilt in short gamma to the point you couldn't even add anymore), you should have made a lot more money then the S&P 500. Anybody can generate returns by adding beta, the goal is to generate risk adjusted returns. You are suppose to learn this in grad school. Maybe next semester...
I've been in a similar boat. My main position is short ES and short ATM puts in a 2-to-3 ratio--so a synthetic ratio straddle. Still profitable since Brexit. The key for me is duration to help manage gamma. If I have any doubts, I'll roll the puts out. I like my overall theta to be 0.3-0.4% of my portfolio.
Why? He's negative delta. If the SPY grinded lower, he would have outperformed the index. One can't outperform a benchmark in all scenarios. One has to make a choice. One of those choices is to decide which risk(s) to leave oneself exposed to.
You'll have to show me those periods where we "grinded lower". LOL. The selloffs have been swift and short. The rallies have been slow and grinding. When we do get that selloff, I assure you, he won't be outperforming anything. Premium sellers are suppose to outperform on the upside because they are vol sellers and vol is going down. They are not suppose to be underperforming 2 to 1 especially fully leveraged.