I’m not naive enough to think I’m going to make 3-5% every week for the rest of my life trading spreads. I understand it doesn’t work like that, and your last bullet point is something that I’ve thought about. There will be times when this strategy will not be even remotely worth it. But it’s not like I have a credit spread quota.

And if I come off as “excited” it’s because with the exception of a couple lucky positions, I mostly ate **** the first four weeks trying to buy calls/puts.

This is why you sit and watch and don't make a trade for a month rather than being a toddler and reaching for the candy right away. Toddler/manchildren, don't win long term at trading. The good trades straight up fall into your lap if you let yourself get a sense of the market before diving in. If you're too busy chasing ****, that sense never develops.

Playing the market, especially options, is a game of waiting in the bushes for the limping gazelle to come along and give you easy dinner. You don't go chasing or trying to be clever.

To make it simpler: At present you're a ****** who doesn't know what alpha looks like.

How do you fix that? Not by selling spreads.

Well, while I’m in the process of trying to figure it out, I’m going to carry on trading spreads like a ******ed blind monkey.

If it’s okay with you, that is.

The process of figuring it out involves not trading. You need to train yourself to ignore everything that doesn't have high alpha. Throwing money at stuff to see what sticks is counterproductive and actually trains you the wrong way, particularly when you start with a personality that's extremely counterproductive to having positive expectation. The path of every loser in daytrading goes just like yours. Winners don't put capital at risk until they see a spot really really worth risking it.

I tried (again). Do update us. Congratulation on your win.

The ability to (at least intuitively) utilize bayes thinking is the single biggest predictor of trading success imo



Virtually 0% of your trades are against brain dead idiots. I’ll leave it as an exercise for you to figure out. I get the impression your not really aware of how the option market is structured

Your explanation and actions are equivalent to betting the patriots money line every game in Vegas because Tom Brady is GOAT and assuming the books are brain dead and free money because the other team needs so much to work in their favor to beat the GOAT.

In fact, doing the above will probably lose you less money in the long run compared to what you are doing now.

I’ve been trading it for barely over a month, so nah not really

Do you have a day job? You have spent a lot of time this past year trading....

These sort of responses are why most of your advice itt comes from TS tilting at you

I do. I work in finance for a defense contractor. I’m a cost control analyst.

I wouldn’t say “a lot of time” necessarily. I don’t spend all day scalping or anything like that.

This is what I think of when I think of options traders, 99.9% going into #brokeland ...

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ho...unt-2018-12-11

Holy crap



Obviously decided he was God on that runup, shoved, tilted, broke in one day by the looks of it. lol.

edit: actually the bit where he's careful for months and then the increasing boredom where he's slowly bleeding money to the huge rake then takes bigger and bigger shots before single day robusto -> busto is my favorite bit.

Yeah, **** that noise. Pretty much like the fish who takes a $50 roll to 5c/10c NL and grinds it up to $200 over weeks at a time, then in his infinite wisdom takes it to a $1/$2 NL table and blows it in the span of 5 minutes.

I mean, I did something similarly dumb in forex. But not planning on rolling that way in options.

Your interpretation bit skewed brah,

That was more like:

Fish who takes the $50 roll to 5c/10c NL and grinds it down to $5 over weeks at a time (not realizing how bad he is) then in his infinite wisdom takes it to $5 spin and go blinking and winning a 100x and blows it in the span of 5 minutes

Booked 10% this week trading my silly, silly credit spreads.

Granted, the middle of the week was a little rocky and needed the market to puke a bit today.

God this is entertaining. The trouble is you'll disappear when your silly, silly credit spreads get you raped. Also, again, you could have taken puts and multibagged it with less risk given your bearish view and the nature of this market. You're taking the worst possible instruments for this market. You're literally doing the exact opposite of what a non-cuck would do, which means...well, you can do the math.

I traded a few different spreads this week. In one of them (MS), your claim is correct. In the other two (URI and CAT), I would’ve lost my ass buying puts. That’s what I like about spreads - you don’t have to be “right”. You can make money when price trades flat or even slightly against you.

You're treating spreads like they're a free lunch rather than a roughly 80% win (to you) casino game that's tilted in the casino's favor in the long run.

Every weekly graph you post, a monkey throwing darts was 80% to generate the same graph as you. Something to consider.

I understand that - even more so this week. Like I said above, I needed the market to puke today to get out of the red for the week, and that was on just one of the three spreads when the other two were doing ok. It was eye-opening. I’ll have to be far more selective.

Given the above, would any experienced trader put the odds that his spread selling ends well at >1%?

I like you for some reason - I think it's because you're un ****** qui lutte vaillamment contre le vent - but I like you nonetheless, so please God start listening to us. Thanks. Or don't. Either way, top thread.

What's with the sudden propensity for French? (between this and the TA thread)… have you moved on from Dobrovnik to Marseille?

As requested...



Hopefully the Santa Clause rally isn’t a thing this year and the long puts I opened soften the blow.

Hey thanks for coming through. I lol'ed at the "Investing".
WTF man. You're gonna give me a heart attack at this rate.

Why the **** would you buy puts NOW? I'm not even sure it's a bad trade, this market is so unreadable multiday, especially after this puke, but I'm pretty sure it's not a good one.

You want to put your money in when it's so obvious even a ****** could spot the opportunity and get rich. Not throw **** at a wall "just because" and see what sticks.

It's a shame that your job interferes with intraday trading or I'd actually mentor you. That was a sick burn.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: the CandyKreep who sits on his ass waiting for 5 great trades a year is going to crush the CandyKreep who tries to make a trade every day or week. That's not obvious because neither alpha nor high edge geometric returns are obvious. You see few examples of them, most people are cucks. Geometric return even smart guys can't wrap their head around intuitively and so trade hilariously sub-optimally.

Nor is waiting obvious. We're psychologically built for action because in 99% of situations that's the most optimal. You gotta override that **** because your mind is shoving you into the dirt and spitting on you when it habitualizes you into trading stuff without a known strong edge.

I want you to be the guy who turns $5K into $500K, and you're not gonna do it without alpha, bleeding to the spread every single trade.