Search results

Cool. I very much appreciated your comments helping to pull me back to reality in my journal after my delusional series of back-to-back short trades in a rising market last week, so just trying to return the favor as I noticed your gold positions are facing some headwinds. Good luck!

Not trying to criticize, but have you thought about at what point price action would reject (at least for this series of trades) your bullish thesis on gold?

Thanks, AZ. Good luck on the fly paper trading. I think you will start to feel comfortable with them fairly quickly, as traditional 121 flies are pretty straightforward. An ATM fly such as the one you mentioned, where spot is currently at one of the wings, can be a very powerful and...

I am going dark until after September opex. I heard a story once about Mike Krzyzewski who coaches the Duke basketball team. The team suffered a heartbreaking loss in a key game, and they got back in the wee hours of the morning with the mood pretty dark. Rather than everyone heading home to...

Went ahead and closed this pain trade at 42.75 credit, for a -6% return on risk. My unhealthy bearish obsession the last few days has been killing this account, and taken the journal from the green to solidly in the red. Even if we drop a little bit into the close, today was still a strong...

Thanks, AZ, I was definitely enjoying your journal. I traded gold quite a bit this summer but have been staying away from it of late. I agree that if GVZ drops further to perhaps 20 that might be a nice entry for a long vol trade. I tend to agree with your view on SPX, but as you know the market...

How are things going? I noticed that GVZ has dropped pretty dramatically the last several days.

Went ahead and closed at 2.89, for a return on risk of -23%. That was painful, obviously I was completely wrong on the market direction there. Going forward I am going to try to stay away from purely directional trades; in general those have not been very successful (to say the least) as...

I am probably going to be closing my purely directional trade (puts) imminently. The butterfly I just put on will be profitable in both directions up to a point, given a little bit of time, but obviously is oriented much more to the downside. We have had five up days in a row here.

Long the ES Sep20 1605/1645/1725 2/3/1 iron from 39.50 risk (40.50 credit). I am expecting a downward move this week but this position has a good amount of resilience to the upside as well. I am going to start setting profit targets for all of my trades going forward. For this one my target is...

I think that given your outlook your reasoning makes sense. The only thing I might suggest is, since you are bearish and AAPL is currently 498, to drop a strike so you will be helped if it falls as you are expecting, unless you think the risk is asymmetric to the upside. It looks like you are...

Jimmy, in my opinion the imaginary veil of Internet anonymity can do strange things to some people, and cause them to act in a way that they would never dream of in person. Also, some folks seem to have a predilection for mistaking kindness for weakness. Others are just jerks. Pick your poison...

Thanks, AZ. I had not yet considered trading AAPL tomorrow; what is your price/vol outlook, and what do you like about that particular spread? I personally try to focus on trading options where the underlying is at least $100, since it reduces the relative commissions especially if you do not...

Is your philosophy that if your argument fails, then try an ad hominem attack?

I recommend to always use a limit order. As far as the tradeoff between slippage vs. missing your entry, I think that for trading options that is generally a false choice. Tomorrow during regular trading hours, look at a few liquid tickers and the bid-ask spread of their options. You will see...

I would strongly recommend always using limit orders when trading options (if you are trading the underlying that can be a different matter). You can get killed on the slippage if you do not. At-the-money SPY options can have very narrow spreads but it is still a good practice to follow even if...

DP, no offense but to the extent possible I would ask all of us to please keep the posts in this journal on topic. I don't think anyone is served by engaging here in back and forths over usernames, etc. Thanks.

Thanks for the kind words, Pipflow. Although I certainly would not let the account literally get anywhere close to zero without calling a halt to trading and doing some significant regrouping and soul-searching. The goal to double is very real though and serves as an inspiration for me, and is I...

It's not that I am necessarily opposed to it, but would want to do it through a position that has a slight to moderate bearish bias and a relatively wide "strikezone" (to borrow a baseball term). I lost faith in the calendar position in question when the SPX dropped 7-8 points very quickly after...

Careless word choice. I was referring to the desire for the spot price to remain fairly stable with a long ATM calendar. Obviously it's helped by a vol increase all other things being equal. Basically I wanted to position myself for a sizable drop next week.