Rafiki - hopefully I'm in it for the long run and don't bust my haymaker investment fund quickly! Also have enjoyed reading your posts before I decided to stop lurking.

Nice fee structure. CBOE take liquidity charges alone are larger than that for retails like me, although I rarely trade SPY apart from playing around for tiny money (no real edge most of the time).

130 contracts = $130 in spread minimum, plus $130 fees = $260 dollars flushed down the toilet before you even start. On what, $10K worth of exposure? That's a huge hurdle to cross. I contend only the high edge trades are sufficient to come out ahead on that, and it's impossible to beat with 5 trades/day; that many edges just don't exist in the few instruments you're trading.

Let me put it this way. Do you have a 3%/day edge? Because you're paying 3%/day at least in flushed money, before the trade even starts counting. How large is your daily edge, do you think? It can't be larger than 6% or so or you'd be making 50,000x your invested money per year.

Just my opinion though. Lovely to see you here and please keep posting.

edited to add: you didn't have $21K overall. Entering and exiting the same position only gives you that exposure. If I enter and exit SPY 265 puts 100 times in a day for $1K each time, I haven't bought $100K of exposure. I've bought $1K of exposure that day, so my fee percentages and spread loss are properly based on that $1K.

This year is the first year in a couple where I have trader's remorse on equities, cryptos, you name it. I thought I was actually better than this, but not yet it seems. Most of my missed opportunities were because I wasn't smart enough at the time tbh.

I think that's always the worst kind of failure. It's not the market or some evil force, it's just your plan on an investment not really making sense when you add it all up later on. Canadian Marijuana and some other sectors really being near the top of that. I can't recall who said it, but a hedgie mentioned recently that it's when there is a bubble that you really want to get your chips in. You can ride a bubble for many months and still get out with plenty to spare. Yeah you miss the top 20-30%, but you may be talking about 80-100% more gains knowing when the volume wave is one to ride.

So 2018 my biggest area of self improvement is to consider those mistakes sunk. But the sort of personal improvement one needs to maybe stare bitcoin 100k in the face is something that to me at least, will prove I've conquered most of the petty human emotions that keep us up at night. Seems like a challenge worth facing.

Definitely not 6% or 3% per day or even close. Agreed that there are few edges in the major ETF options, but it is what I can do. I also will write contracts in low volatility environments.

Let me think about how I want to respond, but should have something to do with even though I have $10k of dollar exposure the options lever that to significantly more. This will also happen after I look more into the $1 per contract spread minimum.

Also, had $20k worth of exposure throughout the day so not sure if you agree that would lower the % from 3% to 1.5%.

Hmmm this is exactly why I wanted to get off the sidelines and post - actually make me think.

If you're only trading 1 delta you're not getting any leverage on your options

Added more CZR calls today, sweepers non stop over the past week & sitting under weekly resistance at $13.5. Having an insane week, crazy swings.

Yeah - you're right, but a 1% movement in stock does not cause a 1% movement in option price. So maybe leverage might not be the right word, but return is a multiple of the underlying.

I am using this as a point as I don't need to have a 3% edge on the underlying to be profitable. I may need a very small edge on the underlying to outperform the 3%. My thoughts are still jumbled as I work through it, but that was my thought process.

Basically saying if I have a small edge on underlying and use options to increase returns/losses it is more pronounced. Just need to see if that is after fees/spread/etc..

strong push on VLO today. Bought BOJA yesterday. To me it looked like semiconductors SMH dragged the Nasdaq down the other day.

I guess the amount of risk your broker allows you to take on options might be greater than the margin they will provide for stock, but your return proportional to your risk should be identical. So if you're playing deep options I'm guessing you need to push risk a lot to make the higher fees worth it, otherwise might as well just use stock.

Gonna do a lot in energy over the coming days. I think there's a big rotation coming...

Call it medium term thinking, but there's gonna be money long in energy here. Don't think it's too hot a take since it's been my position for a few months now.

any chance theres a quiet afternoon?

ok, apparently that question has been answered

Wow - 0 to 100 very quickly! Busy day... when to buy the dip?

Edit: Guess that answers that. For now

Were you still holding? And yeah, you hit what, 200% profit from yesterday? Screenshot?

Nice way to start the weekend ynewt

As someone who primarily trades VIX ETPs, I am proud to say that I didn't murder anyone today.

VIX didn't even break 15

edit:
Oh I get it now, you were looking for more...

Should there be a separate thread for the tax bill?

At the very least to dilute the crypto thread concentration?


I am a proud long time holder and even I think they are excessive now

Any recommendations for books/articles/blogs or any other sort of reading to become a better trader?

Trading is very simple and you can pick it up in an hour of poking around, it's way simpler than poker. On the other end, the market is highly complex (far more complex than poker which involves just being less of an idiot than the next guy), and no one shares their alpha.

Books are worthless imo. Alpha in trading is the art of ruthlessly rational situational analysis. There's a reason the most successful trading hedge fund ever (by far), Renaissance Technologies, hires physicists and mathematicians and not finance grads. Alpha comes from first-principles analysis and the intelligence to do it; books are pointless if you have it and worthless if you don't.

In fact I'd even argue that books and blogs are net harmful and should be avoided entirely; I remember arguing with some cuck some years ago here about his stupid technical analysis trading and thinking. Guy was a decent fundamental picker (better than me, he liked FB at $25, I didn't), but the daftest first-principles analyst; he took what he read in technical analysis books and treated it as true, and confirmation bias cemented it. Caused him to read bogus signals and mis time trades and miss out on a fortune compared to just investing, and leave with his tail between his legs when I crushed him in trading.

cliffs: Trading books are for people who lack the intelligence to trade, and won't help you.

No, I was already long XIV. As such, I generally prefer to be really bored. Woke up a bit late and with an achy head and had to figure out what was going on (a short-term something that is an intermediate/long-term nothing-burger*) before I had my first cup of coffee. That is annoying.

*all political things that don't involve trade restrictions or increasing/reducing liquidity are intermediate/long-term nothing-burgers.

Being a successful trader has little to do with intelligence. It mostly has something to do with knowing about cognitive biases and statistical modeling. No one ever has discovered their own cognitive biases (and those that most/all people have) without doing at least some reading. Not sure which guy discovered statistics, but other than that guy some reading was required.

Also, avoid most books on trading.

My background is in math and statistics. How can I start to get better at trading? Can you elaborate on "first-principles analysis?"