Great thread and excellent work. What type of money management system are you using Neke? 5% of total equity per trade? How has your risk management changed since you started this thread? thanks J
have you considered going prop remote and using the extra leverage to trade the underlying directly instead of retail and options?It seems to me that you overpay for the movement on the stock plus the usually unhealthy bid ask spread, prop would get more bang for the buck for being right about the direction but maybe im wrong
Amazing results! I just have a hard time understanding this, "Really tried to buy the follow on fall in the market on Friday in the early morning, scooping up BIDU options, and selling for 17K after about an hour later. Came back in the afternoon and thought surely the market must rally to the close, buying GOOG 680 CALLS. Saw a paper gain of 12K before the market sold off precipitously at end of day, handing me a 25K loss to end the week. Add back that amount, and I should have finished the week on an even more spectacular fashion" How/why did you let this trade turn 37K against you on a friday afternoon during a market panic? I dont know your exact style or method but having a hard time imagining being up 12k on a trade and not taking a partial of the table and and atleast trailing a 50% stop on the rest. (Or breakeven at worst) I've followed this tread a bit and can tell your risk tolerance is greater then probably 99% of traders but its just hard to understand that scenario. What finaly convinced you to dump the position and take a loss? 3:59PM?
Yes I think my risk tolerance is greater than for most folks here. For that particular trade though, I made up my mind to exit when the option was trading at about $11.50 (would have lost only 3K). I put in a limit order close to the bidding price, it was not taken. Tried that for like two more times before I hit the bid and exited. Normally I do not place market orders on options because of the spread. In that case with a bid of 11.40 and ask of 12.10 I figured I could get a fill by putting a limit order to sell at 11.60. But the market was collapsing faster than i could type in my order. Obviously I would have fared better placing a market order in this instance. In general I do not place a stop market order on options. How much loss would you allow? 5%? Even on great trades that type of fluctuation will come even without the stock moving! I enter and exit by my own judgement.
It hasn't crossed my mind to go there. First I think the leverage would be suicidal to my account. Second, I do not trade a lot of round-trips like so many folks I see trading 600K shares a day. I know the options do cost, but when the opportunities are compelling, I do not mind paying the spread.
with regards to the leverage, all I'm saying is you could use the extra prop leverage to structure the trade to be equivalent as if you were using options, losing 5% if stopped out per trade, thats hard to do with retail 2-1 overnight but can be done prop, if you could calculate the extra cost your paying for using options you could be amazed how much your spending. asfar as volume goes im sure there are remote prop firms(that means online) who dont demand high volume