Oddly enough, I already am.
One of my rare long trades, but I just had to take a shot... even though I haven't had any luck with them before, I'm going to keep learning and trying.
BlueWaterSailor: trading journey and journal
- Thread starter BlueWaterSailor
- Start date
Oddly enough, I already am.
One of my rare long trades, but I just had to take a shot... even though I haven't had any luck with them before, I'm going to keep learning and trying.
Oddly enough, I already am.
One of my rare long trades, but I just had to take a shot... even though I haven't had any luck with them before, I'm going to keep learning and trying.
What type of trade do you have in $TWTR?
TWTR 200117 +P30/-P32, 66DTE. I should have said "directional" rather than just "long" - I mean, I'm always long the market anyway.
$141.44 ROKU 191122P120 -$0.40 $45.00
Out with a small profit. What an amazing adventure.
ROKU's been quite the education. Longest trade I've been in yet, just a bit short of two months, and a wrestling match all the way. I can tell that I'm going to need a few repeats to really lock these skills down, but I've already bitten a chunk out of my #1 goal in options - which is to learn how to manage whatever comes along during a trade (goal #2 is to know how to trade well in any type of market - with the caveat that "cash is also a position".) Overall, that was just wonderful... but I'll admit that this sweet tzimmes had more than a few Carolina Reapers buried in it. Frankly, it scared the hell out of me at times. Not that this is a bad thing; in fact, coming face-to-face with that fear (one I didn't know was there until I started trading) and beating it has meant a lot to me. Can't claim that it's all gone, but I now KNOW that I can take $5k+ worth of heat and keep going - which is a certainty I didn't have before.
(In the military, I'd been told again and again that "nobody knows how they'll act when the bullets start flying." I knew from the start, and it's exactly how I did act - calmly, rationally, and according to the training I got. But with this? I had no idea. So it was damn good to find out.)
On a peripheral note: sometimes (often) I'm a total pain in the ass to myself. I mean, really. With what I've learned so far, I could just sell premium on indexes when vol is high, collect anywhere from 20-100% of it, and... you know... be happy. Right? Wrong. You know what I do with all this incredibly cool stuff I've learned instead of a happy-happy-joy-joy dance? "OK, got that. What's the next challenge?"
Some people's children, I tell you...
So I'm busting my brain on Sinclair (but damn, he's actually a good read), playing with a BSM model (having built a nice version in Excel wasn't enough because... um, because don't ask stupid questions I can't answer. So built one in Python as well), learning to trade futures, and trying to figure out Market Profile and order flow. And "taking a break" isn't in the cards because I kinda feel like I am. It's as if I got a hold of a cheat code for life.
I wonder what "normal" people do for fun.
Out with a small profit. What an amazing adventure.
ROKU's been quite the education. Longest trade I've been in yet, just a bit short of two months, and a wrestling match all the way. I can tell that I'm going to need a few repeats to really lock these skills down, but I've already bitten a chunk out of my #1 goal in options - which is to learn how to manage whatever comes along during a trade (goal #2 is to know how to trade well in any type of market - with the caveat that "cash is also a position".) Overall, that was just wonderful... but I'll admit that this sweet tzimmes had more than a few Carolina Reapers buried in it. Frankly, it scared the hell out of me at times. Not that this is a bad thing; in fact, coming face-to-face with that fear (one I didn't know was there until I started trading) and beating it has meant a lot to me. Can't claim that it's all gone, but I now KNOW that I can take $5k+ worth of heat and keep going - which is a certainty I didn't have before.
(In the military, I'd been told again and again that "nobody knows how they'll act when the bullets start flying." I knew from the start, and it's exactly how I did act - calmly, rationally, and according to the training I got. But with this? I had no idea. So it was damn good to find out.)
On a peripheral note: sometimes (often) I'm a total pain in the ass to myself. I mean, really. With what I've learned so far, I could just sell premium on indexes when vol is high, collect anywhere from 20-100% of it, and... you know... be happy. Right? Wrong. You know what I do with all this incredibly cool stuff I've learned instead of a happy-happy-joy-joy dance? "OK, got that. What's the next challenge?"
Some people's children, I tell you...So I'm busting my brain on Sinclair (but damn, he's actually a good read), playing with a BSM model (having built a nice version in Excel wasn't enough because... um, because don't ask stupid questions I can't answer. So built one in Python as well), learning to trade futures, and trying to figure out Market Profile and order flow. And "taking a break" isn't in the cards because I kinda feel like I am. It's as if I got a hold of a cheat code for life.
I wonder what "normal" people do for fun.
Non-wheel:
11/19/2019 $22.50 APA 200117P20P / C25 $2.07cr
Put on a strangle at TastyWorks. Kind of a desperation move - I haven't traded in way too long - but it's a ~$20 stock with high IV, volume, and liquidity at the bottom of its range, and very nice credit.
Wheel:
11/19/2019 $110.65 TGT 191129C111 / P111 / C116 $6.19cr IRA
A Big Lizard (straddle plus a long call) earnings play. TGT is on my carefully-chosen list of stocks for wheeling in my IRA, so happy to have it.
Holy crap - I'm trading again! It feels like I've been out of the market forever. I think I said "two or three weeks" when talking about it yesterday; per my log, it's been exactly one week. This is a bad jones... but I don't want to be cured.
(TGT is up 10 points this morning; looking pretty sweet just BMO.)
Edit: Out with $140 in TGT; caught the very tippy-top at the open. Shweet!
11/19/2019 $22.50 APA 200117P20P / C25 $2.07cr
Put on a strangle at TastyWorks. Kind of a desperation move - I haven't traded in way too long - but it's a ~$20 stock with high IV, volume, and liquidity at the bottom of its range, and very nice credit.
Wheel:
11/19/2019 $110.65 TGT 191129C111 / P111 / C116 $6.19cr IRA
A Big Lizard (straddle plus a long call) earnings play. TGT is on my carefully-chosen list of stocks for wheeling in my IRA, so happy to have it.
Holy crap - I'm trading again! It feels like I've been out of the market forever. I think I said "two or three weeks" when talking about it yesterday; per my log, it's been exactly one week. This is a bad jones... but I don't want to be cured.
(TGT is up 10 points this morning; looking pretty sweet just BMO.)
Edit: Out with $140 in TGT; caught the very tippy-top at the open. Shweet!
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I like this one! Good catch. Which expiration are you at?
Now you've got me wondering if it's only TradeStation that codes their expirations this way. If so, then I've been assuming - wrongly - that the folks reading this journal would just get it and keep going. If that's not the case, I'll have to decode these before posting.
'200117', in the above, means 01/17/2020.
But hey, I'm glad you like it.
This is about as close as I get to predicting direction - and it even works most of the time!Non-wheel:
$161.55 IWM Nov 29 C163 / C162 / C164 $0.17db
Another cheap Iron Fly experiment. Next time, I'll try it on the put side - there was essentially no skew, so the prices were identical, but I'd like to find out how the two are different.
This week is going to be mostly dedicated to putting on debit trades. Frankly, I'm a bit ashamed of having gone so long without understanding them - but the market's been fairly volatile since I got in, and selling rather than buying was the only thing that made sense. Despite that, though, I've always been uneasy about missing something so fundamental; after all, longs are a part of most strategies, and not having a feeling for how they move and act is a huge flaw.
I guess the right way for me to consider this stretch, these last couple of weeks of "IV desert", is with a bit of gratitude. I can't trade the way I have been, but it's an opportunity to learn something I've been wanting and needing to learn since the beginning. I'll do most of these in sim... ugh, doing options in sim feels vaguely dirty and wrong. But I don't want to just throw money away - which, given that I don't recall any debit trades ever working out for me, that's what it would be. Once I get even mildly positive in sim, I'll go live - which is exactly what I did with credit trades initially.
I'm also going to experiment with a bunch of wider flys - the narrower ones are cheap enough that I'll do them live, as above - and play with my new understanding of hedging. Should be a nice busy week; even rewarding, although not in immediate financial terms.
$161.55 IWM Nov 29 C163 / C162 / C164 $0.17db
Another cheap Iron Fly experiment. Next time, I'll try it on the put side - there was essentially no skew, so the prices were identical, but I'd like to find out how the two are different.
This week is going to be mostly dedicated to putting on debit trades. Frankly, I'm a bit ashamed of having gone so long without understanding them - but the market's been fairly volatile since I got in, and selling rather than buying was the only thing that made sense. Despite that, though, I've always been uneasy about missing something so fundamental; after all, longs are a part of most strategies, and not having a feeling for how they move and act is a huge flaw.
I guess the right way for me to consider this stretch, these last couple of weeks of "IV desert", is with a bit of gratitude. I can't trade the way I have been, but it's an opportunity to learn something I've been wanting and needing to learn since the beginning. I'll do most of these in sim... ugh, doing options in sim feels vaguely dirty and wrong. But I don't want to just throw money away - which, given that I don't recall any debit trades ever working out for me, that's what it would be. Once I get even mildly positive in sim, I'll go live - which is exactly what I did with credit trades initially.
I'm also going to experiment with a bunch of wider flys - the narrower ones are cheap enough that I'll do them live, as above - and play with my new understanding of hedging. Should be a nice busy week; even rewarding, although not in immediate financial terms.