For the newbie traders. Paper trading in TOS is intended for people to get used to the platform and practise entering and closing different orders and stragegies. The information is 20 min. delayed, so the prices are not at all accurate, what you could expect in real money trading. Plus they give you the mid price, which also is not accurate. There is also the risk factor, government by the emotional fear and panic factors in making decisions that make paper trading account in TOS not applicable to the real world. You can blissfully trade a 10 contract lot in paper trading, whereas the emotional, fear and panic factors in real time trading, would change your decision making tree and you will find perhaps only 1 contract is all you dare trade with of your savings. Once you have learned the entry and exit order system of the trading platform and you have opened a real cash account, you will get real time data, or as close to it as you can get. For paper trading, this is better for you to practise with, using a piece of memo paper, writing down the bid and ask numbers from real time data, to get a more accurate financial representation. On a per contract basis, your expenses per trade per contract run around .15 cents. The end costs will be somewhere between .12 cents and .15 cents. If you trade stocks, with wide bid and ask spreads between the prices, the costs escalate. If your trades are just .20 cents and .30 cents, you can see you are not left over with much. At the end of the year, you also have to give the IRS 40% of any total wins. So keeping a written record is necessary of your real money trades.
I didn't look at your trade until a few minutes ago. An aggresive move. A fly with a 5% breakeven when the stock was moving 10-20% after earnings consistently. What made you think to trade this?
Since QQQ is up this morning I imagine this is another security that is on your watch list and not an actual trade? You tool.
Was so nervous cuz I saw it opened just where we wanted but I was driving into work so I couldn't place my order and missed the first 15 minutes of action, but luckily I was still able to close for $.57 from $.18, so booked a 3x gain, good call! I kept the 15 calls but expect them to expire worthless. What were you able to sell for at open?
Yeah, nice going guys. Those are great but you can't play them large. Anyway, congrats on the 3-bagger.
Well I had a hunch on direction- which was nowhere for this specific earnings. Which is why I traded small. I believe scottandmo traded small too.. my max loss was at $350 ish.. Also, mind you, the expected move was around roughly a $1.70 when I made my trade yesterday- so trading the weeklies would've made me roughly break even (or maybe a $100 or so loss) under such a move in either direction. Made sense statistically to try and see if I could get lucky. And I did. But yeah, I traded small. It would've been quite a silly move to throw in anything more than 5% of your account on such a trade.
My close was $1.00 and change (closed the long 13 strike for $1.26 and 0.33 on the short 14 strike. The long $15 was at 0.03 so didn't bother selling that lol...) I didn't close the butterfly as a combo. I closed the short leg first and got lucky because the stock rallied a bit. So closed the long after the rally..LOL... I bought the fly for 0.2 So I had a 5x return. But only cuz I managed to wake up just in time. You did a 25 lot didnt you? I did a 20. So a G in profits. It's Friday. Gonna go party today like Rebecca Black!
I am not sure what is happening on paper trading in TOS The balance is fluctuating. At any rate, I thought I closed both Calendars ( my first time ) The March 68 and June 68 It says: Sold 1 Calendar QQQ June 12/March 12 -68- Call at $1.78 The March 67 Calendar QQQ April 12 March at .32 cents Does that mean that is the profit received on these two calendars? The reason I ask, is when I go to the TOS Monitor to get the running balance, it is less than the $100,000 paper account, but it is fluctuating, so I don´t know what that means? Maybe by tomorrow it will show a profit? When I ran the numbers jotting on a piece of paper The June /March 68 figured out at +$1.24 for the spread. The March April 67 spread showed + .83 cents. These figures may not be accurate as the price is changing constantly. I BELIEVE I MADE A PROFIT ON BOTH SPREADS, BUT SO FAR IT IS NOT SHOWING UP ON THE EQUITY BALANCE IN MONITOR. PERHAPS TOMORROW? I kind of get a little nervous about the entries, as a first time, I´m not at all sure I have it right?
"I made a G today. But you did it in a sleazy way Selling crack to the kids. Hey, I got to get paid That's the way it is."