BlueWaterSailor: trading journey and journal
- Thread starter BlueWaterSailor
- Start date
ON my friend... that's funnier than hell. I guess it's like that classic illustration from history classes - to most people, Cleopatra and T. Rex are both "far back in history" - but there's a bit of difference between 65BC and 65MYA.
There's about the same tiny difference between destriero's skill in options and mine. But if it looks the same from a distance, well, who am I to complain...
It's all about direction. I look at the mad Kandinsky compositions that you call "charts", and watch you effortlessly click here and clack there and I can't even begin to get what in the world you're doing. Options - well, I could teach you to do reasonable vertical spreads in a few minutes. And given what you know about directionality, you'd probably be pretty successful trading them. But I seriously doubt that there's anything useful you could teach me about directional trading in a month - it seems to be a purely intuitive thing.
If I'm wrong about that, then I'd sure as hell love to find out.
I just love looking at life through humor-colored glasses. Don't see a point to doing it any other way, just because life is such a deep joy to me. I've been through some really bad times, and I know how damn awful things can get... so I squeeze all the juice I can from every moment. Best way to live that I know of.
You are really good at analogies. Exactly right. You equate the difference between yourself and des as 2000 years and 65 mil years, but you see a "bit" difference. From my viewpoint, both of you are infinite distance from myself.
Fascinating, Cap'n.
K, well, I guess we should be glad you are not grinding out your trades in a nuclear missile silo, where you have killed your partner and have both launch keys in your possession and have bypassed the control codes, ALA Red Oktober.
Funny you should mention that. I'm the fire control chief on that sub.
(Not in the credits, just an extra. But being a movie Russian was a hell of a lot of fun - as was working with Sean Connery. I'll tell you about it some time.)
Funny you should mention that. I'm the fire control chief on that sub.
(Not in the credits, just an extra. But being a movie Russian was a hell of a lot of fun - as was working with Sean Connery. I'll tell you about it some time.)
I look forward to it, because I know that movie well. Like how "I know this book. Your conclusions were all wrong, Ryan. Halsey acted stupidly."
$139.99 TLT 191115P137 -$0.74 $31.00
Out with 29.4%. Got tangled up in my own fingers when trying to set up a conditional close order and bot it back at market. Duh.
$38.90 TWTR 191115P36.5 / P38.5 / C38.5 / C40.5 $1.70
Iron Fly for earnings. EDIT: damn, wrong expiration! Wanted a 2-day, routed a 22-day... it's not going to be worth much for a while. Maybe I'll just hold it - it's a max $30 loss - and study it to see what happens as time goes on.
I'm getting the feeling that I'm missing something important. There's a Russian saying, "Для природы нет плохой погоды" - "to Nature, there's no such thing as bad weather" - so all my grousing about sucky market days is starting to ring a bit false in my own ears. To a good trader - especially to an options trader, FFS! - there should be very few truly "bad" days in the market (OK, I'm not a "good trader" yet - but I should be doing my best to emulate one.)
Sure, things can go all sideways and crazy in the middle of a trade - but here, I'm talking about simply a) finding something worth trading, and b) executing the appropriate strategy. Admittedly, I'm flying somewhat blind here; I'm aware of a number of options strategies, but actually trading all of the little buggers is an entirely different kettle of fish of a different color after the horse is stolen. For one thing, half of them require a directional bias... and that, despite Great Big Clues from @TheBigShort and @Overnight's kind help, is a road on which I've got pretty much zero traction so far. There may be some hope for me in TBS' in-depth market analysis approach and maybe market/volume profile as well - but this seems like a longish-range project, and offers no help or leverage right now.
So overall, it seems like my choices come down to
#1. Trading only when I see a good setup and sitting on my hands the rest of the time;
#2. Boldly going where only r/wallstreetbets morons have YOLOed before, and trading strategies about which I have minimal-to-no clue (except "use this when market does that");
#3. Digging, yet again, through my now-huge pile of trading books in the vain hope of finding anything other than sonorous nullities about general principles or dry academic formulae that are of no earthly use for trading, then throwing the damned things against a wall and randomly choosing #1 or #2 out of pure frustration.
Bloody hell. But...
I've now been moping for what feels like several weeks because I'm not getting the high-VIX/lower VIX9D, index-or-bluechip-on-its-butt, perfect-sunny-weather-with-Goslings-rum-over-ice-and-babe-on-my-lap setup I want - and this is starting to sound like lazy-ass self-indulgence. Maybe with some mitigating factors, even reasonably-sized ones, but still.
Given that my goal is to average a minimum of $100/day, #1 cannot remain as it is now. This means that my definition of "good setup" needs to get seriously expanded - perhaps by some cautious version of #2.
This is going to lose me a bunch of money.
I don't mind that too much - at .5%-1% per trade that I plan to risk, it'll sting but won't kill - but I can only hope that I'll learn something useful by paying that "tuition". The market is good at saying "you're WRONG!", but it rarely includes an instruction brochure on how to fix the failure.
"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils."
-- Louis Hector Berlioz
Out with 29.4%. Got tangled up in my own fingers when trying to set up a conditional close order and bot it back at market. Duh.
$38.90 TWTR 191115P36.5 / P38.5 / C38.5 / C40.5 $1.70
Iron Fly for earnings. EDIT: damn, wrong expiration! Wanted a 2-day, routed a 22-day... it's not going to be worth much for a while. Maybe I'll just hold it - it's a max $30 loss - and study it to see what happens as time goes on.
I'm getting the feeling that I'm missing something important. There's a Russian saying, "Для природы нет плохой погоды" - "to Nature, there's no such thing as bad weather" - so all my grousing about sucky market days is starting to ring a bit false in my own ears. To a good trader - especially to an options trader, FFS! - there should be very few truly "bad" days in the market (OK, I'm not a "good trader" yet - but I should be doing my best to emulate one.)
Sure, things can go all sideways and crazy in the middle of a trade - but here, I'm talking about simply a) finding something worth trading, and b) executing the appropriate strategy. Admittedly, I'm flying somewhat blind here; I'm aware of a number of options strategies, but actually trading all of the little buggers is an entirely different kettle of fish of a different color after the horse is stolen. For one thing, half of them require a directional bias... and that, despite Great Big Clues from @TheBigShort and @Overnight's kind help, is a road on which I've got pretty much zero traction so far. There may be some hope for me in TBS' in-depth market analysis approach and maybe market/volume profile as well - but this seems like a longish-range project, and offers no help or leverage right now.
So overall, it seems like my choices come down to
#1. Trading only when I see a good setup and sitting on my hands the rest of the time;
#2. Boldly going where only r/wallstreetbets morons have YOLOed before, and trading strategies about which I have minimal-to-no clue (except "use this when market does that");
#3. Digging, yet again, through my now-huge pile of trading books in the vain hope of finding anything other than sonorous nullities about general principles or dry academic formulae that are of no earthly use for trading, then throwing the damned things against a wall and randomly choosing #1 or #2 out of pure frustration.
Bloody hell. But...
I've now been moping for what feels like several weeks because I'm not getting the high-VIX/lower VIX9D, index-or-bluechip-on-its-butt, perfect-sunny-weather-with-Goslings-rum-over-ice-and-babe-on-my-lap setup I want - and this is starting to sound like lazy-ass self-indulgence. Maybe with some mitigating factors, even reasonably-sized ones, but still.
Given that my goal is to average a minimum of $100/day, #1 cannot remain as it is now. This means that my definition of "good setup" needs to get seriously expanded - perhaps by some cautious version of #2.
This is going to lose me a bunch of money.
I don't mind that too much - at .5%-1% per trade that I plan to risk, it'll sting but won't kill - but I can only hope that I'll learn something useful by paying that "tuition". The market is good at saying "you're WRONG!", but it rarely includes an instruction brochure on how to fix the failure."Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils."
-- Louis Hector Berlioz
I know. It's a pittance. But if I can't average that tiny amount within a year, then I get to [gulp] give up trading full time...
...I've committed to it.
(Damn, I hated even writing that.)