Paper trading is designed to test the platform - order entry, API, algos and all the various procedures, it was never designed to test the viability of a strategy. Besides trading options with 1MM you will affect the market and that's often a considerable expense.
Ok, the first day of live trading is over. If things go right then we'll have made 4+k in just a week (that's a whoppy 40+% of the initial acct value ), of course only if things go in our favour... Used effectively short strangle like constructs by using multiple call and put strikes to minimize the margin requirement...
And this is the status of the Sim-Account (Paper Acct) after market close today: The expirations will be processed by OCC in some hours. On monday I'll post the final status of this Sim-Account together with NAV-time series etc, as usual, and then I'll stop the sim-trading because of the live trading started today (cf. prev. posting)...
According to the multiverse theory, somewhere there's a doppelgänger universe in which there's an EliteTrader forum with a "hall of infamy", where it perhaps has a natural home ...
Net Asset Value (NAV) etc. of the Sim-Acct : Made almost 50% in a month using such a relatively big acct of size 1M. There are still some options open that expire next Friday. The rcvd credit from them is about 98k. Current Acct Status (now after the expired options have been processed by OCC):
What we can learn from this screenshot is that the received credit can immediately be used for new trades, esp. as collateral for margin requirement... Wait, this brings me to an interessting idea...
Why not? And how have I been able to fullfil the margin requirement of about 12k when the account had only 10k? Proof: https://www.elitetrader.com/et/thre...east-30-per-month.301450/page-35#post-4313889 None of the opened positions was closed yet.
Because it would be like margin on a margin. Similar to fractional banking. I am using TDAmeritrade and it takes a while before premiums from the sold positions show up, usually a day. Just try it and you will see. That is what the 10K real account is for...