If you are keen to learn, you should post your trades. I am sure you will get feedback (some positive, some questionable ...). anyway no harm posting your trades.
Can you tell us more about your option trading strategy? It is possible to pick the correct trend direction and still lose money when trading options.
Bruce, I have three things I am pursuing: 1. writing covered calls with the intent of making 1.5% a month 2. selling premium in a neutral fashion (I'm not yet doing strangles or straddles, but rather iron condors). These I do on bigger ETF's 3. directional plays On the directional plays, let's say a positive trend, I am looking for a. simple fundamental indicators (I do not do my own research, I look at a summary of analysis as listed on one of my brokers) b. major trend: I want it to be in a strong weekly trend c. minor trend: I wait for a pullback the bottom of the range to finish to find a good moment to step 1 d. I check RSI to see if we're near or in oversold territory. I've also noticed that stock like to bounce of the 50 e. I step in, either with naked calls or with a spread f. I look at williams fractals for my profit points or exit points. I have started using Ichimoku to more clearly see the trends. I go in very small to keep my learning fee low. I intend to keep the options for about 5 days to 3 weeks. I've started learning about hidden divergences, but not yet using them. -- Some quick examples: Bought puts on EEM 9/18. TTM was negative, it was below the cloud, there was a pullback. This is when i stepped in. Same reading on GE so bought puts. Both went up instead of down. HPE I also bought puts because of ichimoku saw a tenkan crossover and EMA 20 crossover. But I realized later it was all happening above the cloud so I realized I wasn't following my 'major trend' rule. WEC - I was so convinced this would keep going up. All confirmed to my rules, but gapped down huge. XLU - calls. Again i was super convinced this would keep going up, so I stepped in around 9/10. Gapped down on 9/19 Later realized that the perhaps the problem here is that there was not enough of a trend defined, it was more somewhat rangebound, and I should have been waiting for a breakout.
To answer your question and set you on the right path it would probably take a 50 page response. I'll go ahead and suggest that if you are trading options you should start learning about option pricing. Using lagging indicators to try and predict what the market is going to do and where it's gonna go is not the best way to make a living.
fair point - I understand the technical meaning of the greeks and I understand the importance of IV. I do not know how to make money with that; do you mean centering strategies around profiting around IV crushes?