I've been delaying creating a journal here because I wasn't sure I'd have anything substantial to say or offer. I also hate writing essays, while English is (or was) my 2nd language, and I'm much better at just briefly answering questions. I was also concerned that I won’t be able to disclose my trades or strategies, so my journal may only contain my performance, which until recently was mainly experimental.
But I never provided much intro on ET either, just slipping bits of info into my various responses to other posts. Thus maybe it's time to start a small journal, more in style of a blog, which I may use at least as a spot for occasional thoughts and updates. Will try to keep my posts brief.
I'm coming from tech industry where I've created several small and bootstrapped startups, each based on coming up with original solutions to various problems, mostly being tools for software developers and web designers. At least of them had 250K users and generated 8-figure profits. But nothing lasts forever, especially with fierce competition and everyone copying everyone else in tech. After a while you just constantly defend your turf. At some point I've had to decide whether to work on another startup that would be my end-game, or park some money in the stock market and write a program that would grow it over time. In the end I choose the stock market because it would allow me to generate funding for anything I may want to do later. Obviously I was arrogant, thinking "if some traders can make money trading manually or even by writing some trading scripts, then imagine how much I can make when I automate all their little strategies and load up my own bank account". It took me couple years of working on software that was supposed to find and extract trading strategies/edges/alpha out of historical data, but it found very little of usable and scalable edges. It manage to find potential edges in trading premarket, possible ETF mispricings, pair trading, trading the open, trading penny stocks, etc - but nothing that I'd consider predictive, scalable and powerful. There were always more things I could've worked on, but I can't stay focused on boring stuff or stuff that everyone else is doing. I was looking for the Holy Grail and either had it or had to move on.
After testing hundreds of millions of strategies, and making improvements, and tweaks, and adjustments, I finally realized that none of them could become what I was looking for, there are no strong & predictive strategies or indicators, while any strategy that supposedly worked in the past isn't going to be very useful in the future. But some could be somewhat useful to day traders, so I started streaming trades/notifications on Twitter and Discord (for free) as "Deus Ex Trader".
In the meantime, since 2017, I've been learning and studying options, sometimes staring 16 hours a day at the options chains and writing down notes, pasting screenshots into PowerPoint and ending up with hundreds of pages of option trade ideas, their performance, hedging methods, etc. Initially, in 2017 I managed to make $80K from pure option arbitrage (that I quickly automated ), and another $300K from trading options manually, often selling UVXY calls and buying UVXY put spreads. My goal was to learn enough to work on options trading software, but I got carried away with doing "too well" by trading manually and following other traders online, and lost all my previous profit in 2018 volmageddon. At that point I realized that I must stop following people on Facebook and Twitter and trading manually with them, instead needing to get my act together and get back to what I do best, which is technology, as well as always stay hedged. Later I became so obsessed with hedging that I wasn't able to make much more money anymore during the bull market (at least with manual options trading). But I've learned how to buy nearly-free hedges, so finally made some money during this year's 2020 short bear market. But I also knew that if trading options can be consistently profitable then I'd be able to write software for trading them. Therefore during last three years, I've also been thinking, analyzing, writing notes and formulas, calculating, and preparing to write software for trading options. As well as wanting to combine my previous stock trading software/experience with automated options trading.
I also started to become a bit obsessed with Rentech's Medallion, at least in terms of knowing that if they consistently can make shitloads of money over the years, then at least this is possible and "Holy Grail" may exist. I also much enjoyed the posts of one of the top options traders I found online, right here on ET (@destriero) from whom I've also learned a bit about limiting risk and aiming for small but consistent profits. Not sure I can beat him, but finding something powerful in trading probably became my ultimate challenge and goal, and I knew that if/since it's rather not in trading stocks directly then it might be in options, or combination of both.
I now believe I have found it.
(taking a break)
But I never provided much intro on ET either, just slipping bits of info into my various responses to other posts. Thus maybe it's time to start a small journal, more in style of a blog, which I may use at least as a spot for occasional thoughts and updates. Will try to keep my posts brief.
I'm coming from tech industry where I've created several small and bootstrapped startups, each based on coming up with original solutions to various problems, mostly being tools for software developers and web designers. At least of them had 250K users and generated 8-figure profits. But nothing lasts forever, especially with fierce competition and everyone copying everyone else in tech. After a while you just constantly defend your turf. At some point I've had to decide whether to work on another startup that would be my end-game, or park some money in the stock market and write a program that would grow it over time. In the end I choose the stock market because it would allow me to generate funding for anything I may want to do later. Obviously I was arrogant, thinking "if some traders can make money trading manually or even by writing some trading scripts, then imagine how much I can make when I automate all their little strategies and load up my own bank account". It took me couple years of working on software that was supposed to find and extract trading strategies/edges/alpha out of historical data, but it found very little of usable and scalable edges. It manage to find potential edges in trading premarket, possible ETF mispricings, pair trading, trading the open, trading penny stocks, etc - but nothing that I'd consider predictive, scalable and powerful. There were always more things I could've worked on, but I can't stay focused on boring stuff or stuff that everyone else is doing. I was looking for the Holy Grail and either had it or had to move on.
After testing hundreds of millions of strategies, and making improvements, and tweaks, and adjustments, I finally realized that none of them could become what I was looking for, there are no strong & predictive strategies or indicators, while any strategy that supposedly worked in the past isn't going to be very useful in the future. But some could be somewhat useful to day traders, so I started streaming trades/notifications on Twitter and Discord (for free) as "Deus Ex Trader".
In the meantime, since 2017, I've been learning and studying options, sometimes staring 16 hours a day at the options chains and writing down notes, pasting screenshots into PowerPoint and ending up with hundreds of pages of option trade ideas, their performance, hedging methods, etc. Initially, in 2017 I managed to make $80K from pure option arbitrage (that I quickly automated ), and another $300K from trading options manually, often selling UVXY calls and buying UVXY put spreads. My goal was to learn enough to work on options trading software, but I got carried away with doing "too well" by trading manually and following other traders online, and lost all my previous profit in 2018 volmageddon. At that point I realized that I must stop following people on Facebook and Twitter and trading manually with them, instead needing to get my act together and get back to what I do best, which is technology, as well as always stay hedged. Later I became so obsessed with hedging that I wasn't able to make much more money anymore during the bull market (at least with manual options trading). But I've learned how to buy nearly-free hedges, so finally made some money during this year's 2020 short bear market. But I also knew that if trading options can be consistently profitable then I'd be able to write software for trading them. Therefore during last three years, I've also been thinking, analyzing, writing notes and formulas, calculating, and preparing to write software for trading options. As well as wanting to combine my previous stock trading software/experience with automated options trading.
I also started to become a bit obsessed with Rentech's Medallion, at least in terms of knowing that if they consistently can make shitloads of money over the years, then at least this is possible and "Holy Grail" may exist. I also much enjoyed the posts of one of the top options traders I found online, right here on ET (@destriero) from whom I've also learned a bit about limiting risk and aiming for small but consistent profits. Not sure I can beat him, but finding something powerful in trading probably became my ultimate challenge and goal, and I knew that if/since it's rather not in trading stocks directly then it might be in options, or combination of both.
I now believe I have found it.
(taking a break)
