You should ask yourself why are you hedging? if you were long spy for the next 40 years, does it really matter if you have a drawdown for a few months every 8 years. How much of your returns the other 7.5 years are you willing to pay for that hedge?
I agee the probabilities are on your ( our) side, you can’t asure the next drawdown will be different from the ones before. We only have a finite dataset
Because having an extra 500k for example while the world around you seems to be ending is really comforting. I had a really rough time personally last year when covid was just starting and when the indices started dropping 5-10% per day it was nice not having to worry about the portfolio. That’s worth a ~1% annual fee to me…
and how much protection did that offer you in that sell off (which btw was the fastest selloff in the history of the modern American stock market)
What caused you to go flat? I was also in cash but that was because my system gave sell signals for individual stocks.
I think it comes down to abilities of reading charts when markets are poised for pullbacks or reversals. So you want to hedge open profits, but at some point you might want to lift hedge when pullback offers charting pattern of return of existing trend. Options are not the only kind of hedge you can use, you can hedge using Index futures whether the Mini's or Micro's and with the Emini's you can hedge those if no pullback happens. But if you are knowledgeable of hedging...exiting might be best?