I usually skeptical of skeptics when it comes to day trading, but 5-10x sounds unsustainable over a year, let alone a few weeks. Market has been unusually unidirectional the past 6 months or so, so unsure if that has an impact. Anyway, will read the rest of the thread tonight.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G925A using Tapatalk

This is rather small importance, but if you could stop using photobucket for uploading your images, we could actually see them and it'd be great you know. It's the worst uploading service there is in the internet, hands down.

A simple google search came up with https://imgbb.com/ and I could actually look and zoom at the image I uploaded, which prevented me from tilting on this fine morning.

So a quick update for July 2017. Last month's trips were awesome and I bought some food for some pups.

Photobucket disabled my account (I know it sucks anyways), because I got a notification that too many people had downloaded the images I pasted to this site (which was probably like 2 total persons, as I don't exactly have a lot of views) and Photobucket doesn't allow third party posting (unless you pay them money). So, I've still got the above photos, but I have to pay Photobucket a monthly fee to get access to them. So on to imgur....

July 2017: +$77,630.



My results from an $8k starting day trading roll on May 1:

May 2017: ~+$25,000
June 2017: ~+$50,000
July 2017: +$77,000

So, plus ~$152,000 in three months from an $8k start.

A side note is that I spent $2,500 in commissions this month alone (the above screenshot is my "net" after commissions). Just so it can be put in perspective--if I (or anyone) was to continue this amount of trading, my yearly commission cost would be $30,000.

Pretty damn impressive. Makes me want to learn about options!

Easily this thread's best post.

Idk dick about this but it sure seems impressive. Could you talk about why you think you might not* have an edge? Just trying to get an idea about the variance and probabilities here.
Either way, up or down, would be cool if you kept updating. No judgement. Congrats on the success so far.

Funny how the guy trading with $100 in the "mico stakes" thread is getting more love than this.

Sports -

1) How much are you risking and winning in the worst, average and best cases?

2) How do you expect to fare if/when volatility comes back?

Also, it'd nice to see what these winnings are as a percent of account if you don't mind sharing.

And do you broadcast your trading anywhere, e.g. twitch, youtube?

Yeah, I started the thread a bit douchey (with a douchey title) rather than trying to demonstrate how serious I actually take it and how much work, study and analysis it actually took to get here. That might have something to do with it. I should maybe restart the thread with a more serious undertone.

My risk is always fluid depending on what's happening. I posted earlier about a quick calc cheat sheet I develop before the day to determine where I'd like to be risk wise. My risk analysis also evolves during the day. At market open, both the swings and the spreads are huge, so I have to be mentally prepared for missed opportunities (often I think a stock will go down at market open, and it does, but the "put" price I'd like to enter gets blown way too high too quickly or the spread pricing is ridiculous). As the day progresses (and volitility slows), I have to be more cognizant of decay. In reality, an entire option position could be wiped out very quickly. All a very cryptic answer, but I calculate theta and delta based on various movement and volitility scenarios beforehand (so I have an idea in my head) when trading live. There are times when I've exited positions at a 30% loss, 20% loss, 5% loss and 1% loss. The same goes for gains. So my trading is fluid when live, but very calculated going in.


I actually require volitility in order to make money. The best days over my career have been the few days where the VIX has spiked (albeit small and far between spikes recently). I lost a lot of money on decay with some FB plays a couple weeks ago (I think it was 7/15) when FB traded in a bizarre and completely flat trend range the entire day. There was volume, but some makers were holding the price at 159.9 firm the whole day, no matter what. Thus my positions decayed.

Also interesting is that over the last month (even though the market was on a run) my positions were about 60% puts and 40% calls (if I get a chance I'll post a screen shot of the breakdown from my account).

I've been on the fence about doing something more public. This 2+2 thread was me "dipping my toes" in a bit to see how it goes. So far I've bombed a bit (plus, I may just be a donkey on a heater at the moment). But if my upswing continues, I may get more serious about it.

There is definitely huge variance in options. And as I posted above I have positions that lose a lot and positions that gain a lot. However over the last 3 months I've had about 90% "winners" and 10% "losers" over the multiple hundreds of trades I've made. Which is obviously not sustainable and I will in all likelihood "mean revert" at some point. But for now I keep a chunk of my profits in a separate account before that happens.

Very nice. Worst day from may until now?

Right?!?! Inexplicable... Maybe it's the fact that I'm doing it in Forex which just puts 98% of traders on tilt.

So I pulled up my records, and in the above post it was actually July 14 when FB did the super bizarre flat trade the whole day (not July 15).

Here is my July 2017 daily:

7/3: +4472
7/5: +2387
7/6: +4379
7/7: +2703
7/10: +2969
7/11: +3063
7/12: +1561
7/13 +3833
7/14: +1696
7/17: +3714
7/18: +1692
7/19: +6633
7/20: -6165
7/21: +6697
7/24: +2574
7/25: +7287
7/26: +2732
7/27: +14421
7/28: +4208
7/31: +6774

So, -6165 on 7/20. I also had a couple of -5k days back in May that were outlined above and a few -5k days in June. But on any given day, I've got multiple trades in play, so there have been days where I opened with a $6k loss and then reevaluated what was happening with the markets and changed some trades and end up with an overall 2k gain for the day. I believe that my worst single trade I exited with about a $5k loss.

Thanks. A lot of the knowledge and analysis you are applying in your forex trading transfers over to the options market, there are just a few more moving pieces.

But, much like forex, with options you have to be willing to lose your position should a "black swan" event occur (like the Swiss debacle with forex back in Jan 2015 when a bunch of people ended up wiping out their balances when their positions tanked).

If one masters the content in "options, futures, and other derivatives" and "option volatility + pricing" (I assume options traders know these), then where does that put them on the learning curve in your opinion?

OP please forgive me if you have answered these questions earlier. But I am wondering:

Given your capital and results you are almost certainly going long premium. I assume your investment horizon is a couple of days to a couple of weeks.

Are you using a roughly consistent delta? Are all trades just a single leg (I assume so).

What is your risk reward like? It sounds like it might be roughly 1:1. Have you had any 10 baggers?

Thanks for sharing and GL. PS if my assumptions are right and you want to smooth out your equity curve I would look into selling weekly premium.

Yeah, when the CHF unpegged from the Euro. Thank god I was still on a demo account back then. And, yes, that event was even worse than just losing your position for some. There was zero liquidity on the bid side south of 1.20 so depending on your broker, stop-losses were rendered useless in a lot of cases. Entire accounts were wiped out in that debacle... Total carnage.

Some traders who were over-leveraged ended up owing a fortune. I remember reading about a school teacher who made 30K a year and was long Euro owing his broker over 200K when it was all said and done.

update?

Good thread, +1 for a mod to edit the title

Thanks. Yeah, the title should be changed to something like "Day Trading Options" with a caveat that it's "Extremely High Risk" since that's what this thread actually revolves around (if a mod is willing...)

Will do one soon. I did have two of my biggest losing days this month (both days were around -$15k each), but am still at +$5k overall for the month (which is still better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, as the saying goes).

This is BBV. There's no strategy, no real time posting, no verification, no posting of losses, just brags when you win.

Thread title should stay as it is.

Also, so far you've managed to turn $71K into $150K by trading options. Basically doubling your money. Your initial OP said this:
$71K is your starting point. You don't get to come here and claim you started with $8K. That's just nonsense and should be completely ignored. Why? Because of selection bias.

Take 100 no-skill people who try to trade options. All the ones that lose or go nowhere, don't start posts. They quietly slink away (as you do in this very thread on losing weeks). The ones that luckbox it up hundreds of percent are the only ones who will start a thread.

So, you started with $71K and now have $150K. Congrats, and I wish you continued luck, but you've basically experienced normal variance in options so far.

Ah yes, the resident mother hen.

Yep, no strategy, just close my eyes and fire at will hoping it turns in my favor eventually.

And you are also spot on--I did slink away for all of July because I was too embarrassed to post July's horrible, terrible and depleting results. Each week was worse than the last. I can't believe I made such horrible trades.

As for the last two weeks in June, should I be required to post trip photos for those two weeks in order to satisfy the mother hen? Do I need a photo of me and the sig other on the beach with a time stamped dated photo to verify the vacation? How about a verified photo of the passport stamp?


In reality, I did not post at any time in July, because I had waivered on the fence about whether to continue posting at all. Posting that I made $70k in a month can be the type of thing that gets some people's &$&% in a wad (and mother hens to starting mothering) and gets some people to maybe try gambling more than they should. However, I followed a guy who posted about his run day trading options on the old TradeKing forums (which have since been taken down after Ally bought out TK--I've tried to find his thread, but it's not there any longer). He made and lost a bunch of money. But his story was interesting in that I had never thought about the prospect of day trading options. He didn't post trades in real time, but did give "screen shot" summaries as it progressed (much like I did above). As a result, I studied options like crazy. It expanded my way of thinking about the market, and I absolutely would have never done it had that guy (TreeHampster, I believe was his name) not posted about his results on the TradeKing forums. He did eventually post his individual trades on a google docs ledger after he was done with that particular journey, and I think it may actually still be out there somewhere in the "google docs" universe.

So, for those interested, take the above results with an obvious grain of salt, but maybe also evolve your thinking a little about the different types of trading that are available in the markets.

Thanks,
Sportsfanx1.

Just keeping it real. You've turned $71K into $150K. A huge congratulations, but that's all you've done. Your claim of $8K to $71K is pure selection bias. We've had guys like you before, doing the same thing (posting for the first time after a heater). We've NEVER had someone post "I"m down 70%, trading options, this is my thread". It's pure selection bias, and makes everything before the OP worthless. Surely you can see that? So why the mother hen comment?
What I mean is that you post no strategy, so this is just BBV. I'm sure you're following one of the paid options clowns, who are so talented they give their picks away for free and cost themselves money.

I'm just saying you only post wins, not losses. This is standard. If you lose all your money, you will disappear, and we will have no update.

Everything I have said is completely reasonable unless you're so wedded to your lucky results you think I'm slighting you and getting your panties in a bunch as a result.

Nothing wrong with your results or posting your trades, but you've achieved nothing so far that's not stock standard normal variance. You've turned $71K into $150K. That's wonderful and I congratulate you, but it's as much of a nothing (in terms of saying anything at all about your skill) as a poker player doubling his initial buyin. So don't start thining you're a guru and we need to change the thread title from your (very humble) BBV attitude to something else.

By the way, we had another clown do this before (Zeek, a youth pastor). Like you, he posted after a heater, got his panties in a bunch and didn't quite understand the concept of selection bias (you do though - you're a smart guy unlike him).

Then he did far better than you from the date of his post, racking up win after win, he made about 300% vs your 100% so far. Then lost everything and disappeared without even an update. It's stock standard for options. He was relying on one of those option picking services as well

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/30...highlight=zeek