I had to use a translator, but yes, come and visit any time! We'll be on the southern coast somewhere near Malaga.
20-Delta Short Strangles
- Thread starter Theinkdon
- Start date
There is a difference between attempting to make a lot of money and unrealistic expectations.
The reasoning goes like this: if you weren't capable of making good returns in the market earlier in life what makes you think you can do it now?
There are funds with the best teams, pedigree, research, connections, etc who struggle to post double digit returns, but you think at age 58 coming out of nowhere you can post returns that if compounded, in 10 years would make you a billionaire?
Not a dig at you, but basically why do you think you have the special sauce? More cynical people would say you don't, being your age and not a multi millionaire already.
4 years isn't that far away, the fact that you want to speed it up in the face of Fed retirement+SS tells me there's something in your life you are not satisfied with.
It good that you stopped the experiment. I was not sure your approach would work. There are many misconceptions regarding short strangles. I will give you some pointers from my many years of experience. First: don't trade high IV stocks in strangles. High IV gives you poor risk/reward. You need to focus on low IV stocks. You won't get rich quick but you won't blow up either. It is wrong to think that sell elevated premiums is a good idea. As a option writer you want to a stock/index that move very little day to day so you can make money from time decay. Second, short DTE options are directional bets due to the elevated gamma. Short strangles are non directional bets so you don't want to take on gamma risks. Third: short strangles profits come by slowly. If you want quick profits, strangles and iron condors are not for you: think time decay. There are may people like me who trade short strangles on a daily basis successfully. We don't gamble and we don't take on undue market risk. The blow up you hear about are from people who gambled and lost. They wanted to make the quick bucks so they overleverage and take on oversized risk. You can't do that with strangles or any short options trades. You need to have a well defined plan that has been tested over time.
Here's an article that might jump-start your research into iron condors: Iron Condors or Short Strangles. On indices, the author initially thought iron condors were better, but then switched to short strangles.
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Iron Condors make a lot more sense for retail to trade. Zero chance of blow-up or even being unfavorably forced out of a position if you size your max loss : capital properly. They will also have more realistic returns and help to understand vol space better, not misleadingly high ones like strangles over short periods of time; which are largely the amortized cost of huge, rare tail events that have been discussed.
Totally agree
Not to get personal, what percentage returns would you consider realistic and from what percent of total capital at risk? I doubt very much anyone can make a living (in US or Spain) selling premium on low volatility stocks and/or indices.
Well, then answer the question and let’s see if people agree!You can
@Retief Thanks, that was an interesting read. My takeaway was that either short strangles OR ICs can blow you up if you don't risk-size your trades properly.