@ironchef, you must be the most modest man on this forum. Every post you utter is downing yourself. Dude, you gotta cut yourself some slack and start giving yourself the props you deserve. Look at how far you've come, and remember.. when it comes to this trading shit at least I'm thinking the journey might be more thrilling than the "end" goal. Losing money is apart of any business, especially retail trading. Knowing this, an astute trader should focus more on risk management and position sizing, order entry and exit, the statistics of your system, knowing your system in and out, in every market environment (remember theres only 6 ways the market can move, I think) So yea, dude I lost money too, I always do, but I also make money. I started studying about stock trading when I was 19, I didn't risk one dollar until I had a years worth of studying under my belt, I wanted to be confident. Well, I'm 30 now, around 22-24 I started learning options and was blown away. I've traded on and off, and now I'm trading consistently. Am I profitable? It depends on your definition of profitable. I am ABOVE the zeroth law with commish and vig, so that must be a good thing.
Bro I'm sorry but this isn't going to cut it. The market just sold off 10 sigmas, you can't just roll down puts lmao, unless you can give me some details on what exactly your rolling? I can't even imagine how expensive that cheap short gamma became once the down move began. I'm sure convexity wasnt' messing around. So "just rolling down puts" just seems off.... it cant be that easy man, or can it? I don't trade naked puts as I don't have the type of capital to, I trade short put verticals all the time though.
I am not modest, just reporting reality. I lost money big time this year and Dec 2018 too. I am just upset with myself for being stupid, instead of stopped, kept trading. I only trade one way: bet on an up market with leverage using options, when the market goes up I go up more but when it goes down I go down more. The advantage is I am always in and won't miss any up market, the disadvantage is I am always in and wont' miss any down market. Since the market goes up more than it goes down, it is actually not a bad way to go. My goal here is to learn enough to be able to trade market neutral strategies. Perhaps butterflies, spreads??? You are a good person and seem very willing to learn I hope you will become a true ET one day. Regards,
Hi .sigma ... you asked and I answered ... there was no "show your work" ask (if there had been I probably wouldn't have clicked Reply) ... but glad it added some levity ("lmao") to your weekend Don't know about "easy". There are a number of smart people in my neighborhood ... but if I walked around started conversations about trading options, don't think many of them would respond "well that sounds easy". That said ... my experience has been that if you take a Put position and the underlying drops ~10%, you can make money. Helps to avoid a VIX spike that collapses. And to your point, also helps to avoid taking the position too close to ATM relative to time value. Easy enough to backtest this with EOD pricing to get a feel for it. No coding necessary. Helpful to have some spreadsheet skills if you want to backtest extensively.