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I am no closer to figuring out where BTC might go in the short to medium term. Yesterday was a strange day. BTC made new highs, as the previous days' momentum sort of suggested, then it promptly sold off as much at -14% before staging a massive but only partial recovery. I never saw that. My...

Does anyone have some objective insights into when the current surge in Bitcoin may end? As far as I can see it's mainly driven by: a) approval by SEC of Bitcoin ETFs on 10 Jan, albeit with a 4-week lag, b) the upcoming halving, estimated in 54 days on 19 Apr, and c) easier financial...

I use TradeMachine PRO by CML. Its pretty good for all my needs, but I wouldn’t say that I’m a power user, most of my trading is longer duration usually 10-45 days and not overly complex mainly CR spreads, Flys and Condors. Has anyone compared ORATS to TradeMachine, I’d be interested to hear...

Sure, ETFs are not free. There is a management fee, and for the oil ETFs there is a daily roll up to the slightly higher-priced contract and paying the bid/ask spread. But I wouldn't call it expensive because I get a decent exposure to the oil spot price with the convenience of not having to...

I use ETFs. Both these track the WTI spot quite closely: USO in the US, CRUD.L in London.

What did she buy, if you don’t mind sharing? But to clarify, do you mean ‘rare earth’ or ‘precious metals’? Rare earth prices are rising, but it’s very hard to find an investible pure-play. I have come across the occasional listed stock but it was always small/illiquid. Big miners have rare...

Good thread. Some great points made above. Look at procrastination as a good thing as it could likely be pointing out a deficiency in you and your trading. Fear of failure is the obvious one, and also most likely. But there could be others like being a perfectionist, inability to concentrate...

Not necessarily, depends on how you trade. Like I tried to explain in my example of shorting stocks with the hope of a massive fall at some point. How should Trader X do that? Should he first wait for the sell-off to establish itself and jump on the trend (but miss the first juicy -20-30% drop)...

Humans have a tendency to want to be right. It makes them feel good and gives them something to brag about at parties. The last thing a trader with a 10% win rate wants to do is talk about his last 9 losses. But a 10% win rate doesn’t necessarily mean a bad strategy, indeed it could be optimal...

Here is how I would explain that VXX ‘works’ as a simple introduction. Think of VXX in two parts. Part 1 is the short term, where VXX tries to replicate short term moves in the VX future. Specifically the 30-day spot on the VX curve. I have never done any regression but I think the correlation...

I would be interested to hear why you think 4 litres is too much, if you care to share? On my gym days I tend to think its slightly on the low side, because of how much I tend to sweat out and my urine colour. On the other days I think its fair goal, for me, a moderately active male. Or what...

If you have unlimited time and willpower, then my answer is, use a combination of eating less and exercising more to create a daily caloric deficit of 10% or about 250 calories. To eat fewer calories, you ‘probably’ have to have less sugar, simple carbs, alcohol and more protein, vegetables and...

Its true the tech sector had a great run leading into this earnings quarter, but given the results being reported maybe there is a lot of justification. Factset says of the 3Q Results (98% of coys now reported), 89% of tech coys beat on earnings (vs 74% of overall S&P index) and 83% beat on...

Great thread, OI. I was a bit skeptical given you small account size and the riskiness of your strategy, but I like your approach and appreciate you explanations. Well done! And congratulations on the performance so far! Are you actively looking for trades on the short side, or has it just been...

No, of course it doesn’t make sense. It was to show why those numbers are unrealistic. A 3% return every week is also unrealistic. It’s unrealistic because it assumes the trader makes 1% every single day. Let’s assume no system/strategy has a 100% win rate, so take 80%. Monday he loses 1%...

To make 3% every week is an exceptional return. To make 15% (taking the midpoint of your 10-20% range) every week is an immortal return. These are the figures you are suggesting, for one year, for a trader with $50k.

The 20% swing is not the move that GOOG needs for this trade to be a loser. Why? Because the 92% refers solely to the expiry date, and a lot can happen along the way to that date. If 8% is your probability of loss, then you need to double that to get to your probability of touching that level at...

The problem with your GOOG IC trade is that you don’t have an edge, despite 8 pages of conversation. All we know from what you have said is that ‘IMHO GOOG will not swing 20%’ is your entry edge, and all we know about your exit edge is that you ‘will not hold trade until expiry’. Without an edge...

In your backtesting & experience, what is the best way to use OTM Calls, in terms of 1) how far OTM, 2) expiry (open with how many days to expiry) and 3) roll-over (close/roll with how many days to expiry? And do you recommend that clients do this or not? I am interested to hear your thoughts.

Thanks IronChef. I can‘t say I disagree with any of that. It still seems to me that bet size is the much smaller part of the problem; the larger part being how accurately you can estimate the probability. If you can’t/don’t get near the right number, then the default answer is to err on the...