BlueWaterSailor: trading journey and journal

BlueWaterSailor said:
Hmmm. So... what was your thesis? That's the interesting part. :)
More...

Pure experimentation.

But my thesis is I use volume by price to determine where spot will oscillate around. I call them value volume areas. AAPL is a monster and moves like a serpent but spanning back a year she's slithering upward in a channel with the median price being around $230. AAPL just made a new high so I'm expecting sideways/downwardness. I'm going to add other positions and use more time my firefly only has 5 days, so we'll see if she can pullback quickly. I also sold the 235/240 call vertical with 5 days to go.
 
Hopefully one day I will trade butterflies within the implied space like @destriero does. I have not the slightest clue on how to do that, yet.. but working and evoluting towards that goal!
 
Arnie said:
My family made steam engines back in the day. I remember my dad telling a story how he went down to the engine room of a ferry on the St Lawrence and saw a plaque with our name on it. I used to have a business card from the Co.

http://vintagemachinery.org/mfgindex/detail.aspx?id=2124
More...

Oh, cool! There's actually a steam engine show around here that we go to once a year - lots of old steam machinery plus really old (but often working) farm equipment. The men who participate in it, especially the guys who maintain and build the equipment, are an interesting bunch... they remind me of the old tool and die makers at Hughes Aircraft who taught me what little I know about machining. Very different from the common run.

https://www.google.com/search?q=florida+flywheelers+2020

Amusing steam-related story: for some reason, a number of the guys in the millimeter-wave lab at Hughes were into cars (that's where all of my racing experiences started.) One of them, a physicist, built a steam engine (!) and - I shit you not - put it in his Camaro (!!!) Insane amounts of low-end torque, as you'd imagine. He fed it on industrial alcohol, as I recall.

One day, he came in laughing so hard that he couldn't talk for a while. When he finally calmed down, he told us that he had been pulled over by the cops for an exhaust check; California was getting started on them in those days, and some of the cops were carrying these big, expensive machines in their trunks. His car definitely sounded "souped up", so...

The cop put the probe into his exhaust pipe and fired up the machine. Um... damn near zero on most of the gauges. No sulfur, none of the other bad stuff they were looking for - hmm. That was a puzzler. Then, Jim piped up: "Sir? I work at Hughes here - you see my badge - and sometimes, these things get stuck. It may sound crude, but you might just tap it a little..."

He told us that he left the cop pounding the hell out of his expensive "stuck" machine. Burning alcohol doesn't produce much of anything other than water, you see...
 
Last edited:
BlueWaterSailor said:
Got it. Sounds a bit similar to volume profile, which I've been poking at (along with market profile.)
More...

That's pretty much it.. But I don't have any set guidelines. I just use these volume value areas as spot's to sell and buy premium around. Rinse & repeat.

I like to have at least 10 positions on at once. Of course depending where spot VIX is has to do with how much buying power I have working for me at any given moment as well..

I like higher vol because I can put on more trades in index and etf products instead of fishing for individual companies.
 
$119.20 ROKU 191115C135/205 -$6.32 -$117.00
Closed the 135 call spread, a good bit cheaper than expected. Recalculating from scratch, just to make sure I didn't miss anything: 140-5.4-6.5+0.12+3.37-0.12-3.05+0.09+0.98-6.49-5.15+8.49-5.4+6.32=127.26.

Ah, Columbus Day! A bright, cheery holiday that... made trading suck. I could have done without it just fine, thank you very much.

(Yes, I'm in Grumpy Cat mode. Just give me my high IV and nobody will get hurt, dammit.)
 
Damn. ROKU has been zooming up over 128 and back this morning - which is GOOD news for my short put, but... I wish to hell I was skilled enough to somehow nail that rise down. I know there's got to be something.

OK, reviewing what I know (or can figure out from what I know):

1) Roll my short put out to the call expiration for ~6.30. Meh. The market is obviously pricing in a big rise, and - mirabile dictu - for once, the analysts and the big investors seem to be right (injections of cash will do that to a stock.) If I do this, then I'm betting against everyone. Yeah, I'm the sharpest trader in the entire marketplace for sure...
2) Buy out the back month call spread (it's hunting between +$5 and -$80) and sell one in the front month so I'm not carrying that exposure after assignment. Meh. Yeah, it's credit - but not all that much of it, and then I'm still 140-127.26 (plus/minus the spot diff) in the hole at expiration. This does not really leverage the move except for the premium gain, and that's fairly thin soup.
3) Buy out the short put. OOOH. That's... intriguing. I hadn't thought about it until now, simply because it seemed like such a moonshot that it wasn't worth thinking about - but it has just become pertinent. In fact... if the buyout price goes over the total credit I've taken in (feverishly adding up all the +/- bits on my spreadsheet)... son of a bitch. If I can get out of it for 12.74, I'm at break-even. Well, except for that equity hedging experiment, and I've already journalled that $71 loss (in the rather wry "tuition" category. But yeah, a minor loss.)

10/15/19 10:33:26AM $128.35 ROKU 191018P140 -12.50 +$24

Oh-kay then. Not too damn bad for a trade that was almost $5k in the negative at one point.

Am I allowed to scream "Yeah!!! Options, motherfuckers!!!" yet?
 
Non-wheel:

10/16/2019 $287.40 NFLX 191018C285/290/P250/255 -$3.22 -$45.00
Out for a small loss; spot was up 2.40 over short call strike

10/16/2019 $283.00 NFLX 191018C320/325/P250/245 $1.42
Earnings play

Hmm. I'm doing a lot of "efforting", but not a lot of trading. Looking at possible trades, grinding through all the evaluation bits, and then discarding them. I think I may have a mild case of perfectionism going, which I need to kick to the curb stat.

I'm also feeling edgy from seeing a consistently negative P&L for so damn long. Yeah, it's a stupid emotional reaction, but it would be nice to see daylight once in a while - and it's been red for at least a month. And the trades that I've put on since then have been pretty weak, to say the least. I'm not exactly running scared, but it feels like my point has been blunted; I'm not coming up to my trading desk sharp and hungry in the way I had been. It feels like... exhaustion. But I don't know what "rest" means in this context; not trading feels much worse.

(Ah. Just got it. I'm feeling exactly like Ned Beaumont at the start of "The Glass Key", that same edgy itch - although I'm not on board with the superstition underlying his solution. Hammett, though, caught that tenor of feeling with enough precision to make me grit my teeth with envy. That's good writing, dammit.)

OK, so I fought ROKU and won - more or less. Like riding a wild bull naked: I survived the experience and came off with bragging rights, but goddamn my balls have been chafed raw! I'm still left with a synth naked call in it at 145 (-253.50 with 29DTE) as well as an SBUX fly (-120.50, 29DTE), and a wide IC that was an NFLX earnings play (-52.50, 1DTE.) I also have some cheap GE puts that I bought as a portfolio delta hedge expiring in 1 day; they did what they were supposed to do, so I got my money's worth, but seeing that -120 (1DTE) added to the total just chaps my ass.

Oh well. That last bit evaporates in a day, and I'll fight the rest of them bastards till they bleed.

So... what the hell is with me? The numbers are irrelevant - I know they are; it's not like I'd starve even if every single trade above went completely batshit.

I guess the largest context here is that I don't yet feel fully competent to do this well. Also that I'm starting to get the scope of what it will take to do well. It's kinda big. Which is fine, much as I love learning and big challenges, but... fuck, I don't know if I can stand the gaff.

All right, I'm making myself a new deal: here it is, stamped, signed, and notarized as of 6:40am on 10/17/2019. If I'm not confidently and consistently averaging $100/day by this point one year from now, I'll go back to consulting/running a business/whatever - all that stuff I've been doing for income until I started down this path - full time, and shift trading to... a spare-time activity.

Damn, that hurt even to write. And $100/day is laughably small piker bait. But that's the deal. Let me just dip this quill into that red ink - the hole in my chest has plenty - and sign it...
 
Non-wheel:
$304.50 NFLX 191018C320/325/P250/245 $0.71 $71.00
Out for 50% immediately AMO

Wheel:
10/17/2019 $37.20 GDXJ 191115P36 -$0.87 $23.00
Out for 25%+
10/17/2019 $139.78 TLT 191115P137 $1.05

So, iiiinteresting.

Writing that binary timeline/commitment in the previous post snapped me back into risk-on mode, just like that. I'd been moping for - I don't know how long now, feeling that drag, that friction on everything I was doing around trading. Committing to future actions - distasteful as it was - was the right pill.

So much for the good side. Now, about that ROKU thing, one more damn time...

I thought I was done with it, but - nope. I still had that synthetic naked call on top, ~$250 in the red when I got out of the put, but I figured "man, after that meteoric rise, it's got to take a breather - right?"

Um... yeah. About that...

Last I looked, it was about $550 in the red, with about 8 points to go to my short (just for a metric, it moved 6.57 today.) Not quite the $5k that the put side dragged me down to, but this is the call side - definitely NOT my preferred situation. Now I get to fight my way out of this mousetrap. Grrr.

Oh well. I'll just file it away as a character building exercise, and - off to the barricades once more!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top