Karen the Supertrader - TastyTrade Hybrid Experiment

[conduit]

well, but you do know that your strategy will be blown away the next time volatility picks up meaningfully. I hope you are perfectly aware of that. Why you have done well recently was mostly because vol has been dropping like a stone. It was hard to impossible to lose money collecting premium. Most always the direct relationship between risk-reward holds even if in the short term it is not apparent. Let's see how you weather time periods when vol picks up.

By the way, I said none of that with mean intention, I said it to warn you and hopefully be aware of the specific environment your strategy works and all the other times it does not.

I have read the complaint and it does not look good for Karen. The Karen videos did one thing for me - they got me engaged. I, along with many others, have devoted years of our lives trying to understand her strategy. One important thing that Karen said was "don't try to do what I do. You have to find what works for you."

I took her advice to heart. I have tried and tried to explain what Karen says when she says she's using 50% of her account. In my paper trading, I could NEVER see that this was remotely possible. It was too big! In my opinion, it was too much risk. But several things that she said made absolute, perfect sense.

Now, I have formulated my own strategy and I am in the process of testing it. I named it the Karen/Tastytrade hybrid because I drew inspiration from both sources. It's easy for someone to come on here and bash me and tell me that I'm stupid and I'm going to lose everything and that I'm dreaming unrealistic dreams. But if you look at what I'm doing, I'm taking a very different approach. Karen says that she does not watch her deltas and she's not concerned with maintaining a negative delta. I differ from Karen on delta. Karen says she's 50% invested. I am no where close to that. I manage winners at 50%. Karen often lets trades run to expiration. I never will. She sells puts and calls separately. I normally sell ratio strangles and I have even sold just puts and I have put on straddles. Depending on what's going on with my account, my strategies may change.

I'm not trying to get on here and say that I'm the next SuperTrader. I have no stinking idea what I'm doing. I'm simply testing a strategy. More importantly, I'm learning. It helps me to be accountable to report my progress. If people don't want to read my posts, go back to your dangling babies and leave me the hell alone.

My strategy is performing well thus far. I am tweaking it all the time. I eagerly look forward to choppy markets because I want to see how well I make adjustments.

If Karen is indeed a fraud, she was a very convincing fraud. If she goes to jail and all of her investors go bankrupt that will be sad, but I've invested thousands of hours toward this study. And, her failures aren't going to stop me. I plan on learning something new tomorrow that will make me a better trader.

Happy trading!

Bobby

 

[tradexxx0001]

How did your strategy perform in May? I look forward to seeing your spreadsheet.

Thanks,

Bobby

Excellent. Unlike people who need to follow someone else, I don't follow anybody and easily go against smartest people out there (if they tweet their ideas for example). So May was the best month YTD, took credit oil spikes with CL calls precisely (like 1 fails in 6), scalped ES hundreds times with high accuracy, cashed on SPY calendar spreads, VIX spreads, and swinged SPX for major moves, up to 30$ moves just in ES single trades and more in options. Everything logged on my twitter, including screenshots, while correctly describing the topping process day by day and reassuring many times <1month ahead that we will have 210 retry, while everyone else was loading strategic shorts for a suckers bear trap pullback. Short low, cover high. Not nice.
Now in SPY 203-210 spread (and yes we keep the range), AAPL bear put (and yes we be flagging here), CL 50 call short @2.7 (50 magnet worked as suggested), and VIX long (for a nice leg up since eod). Far better mix than some bs Karen technique working only in one direction market.

 

[conduit]

what is your twitter handle? And when you say you posted all your trades on twitter can we assume you mean in real-time? Thanks

Excellent. Unlike people who need to follow someone else, I don't follow anybody and easily go against smartest people out there (if they tweet their ideas for example). So May was the best month YTD, took credit oil spikes with CL calls precisely (like 1 fails in 6), scalped ES hundreds times with high accuracy, cashed on SPY calendar spreads, VIX spreads, and swinged SPX for major moves, up to 30$ moves just in ES single trades and more in options. Everything logged on my twitter, including screenshots, while correctly describing the topping process day by day and reassuring many times <1month ahead that we will have 210 retry, while everyone else was loading strategic shorts for a suckers bear trap pullback. Short low, cover high. Not nice.
Now in SPY 203-210 spread (and yes we keep the range), AAPL bear put (and yes we be flagging here), CL 50 call short @2.7 (50 magnet worked as suggested), and VIX long (for a nice leg up since eod). Far better mix than some bs Karen technique working only in one direction market.

 

[Amalgam]

Excellent. Unlike people who need to follow someone else, I don't follow anybody and easily go against smartest people out there (if they tweet their ideas for example). So May was the best month YTD, took credit oil spikes with CL calls precisely (like 1 fails in 6), scalped ES hundreds times with high accuracy, cashed on SPY calendar spreads, VIX spreads, and swinged SPX for major moves, up to 30$ moves just in ES single trades and more in options. Everything logged on my twitter, including screenshots, while correctly describing the topping process day by day and reassuring many times <1month ahead that we will have 210 retry, while everyone else was loading strategic shorts for a suckers bear trap pullback. Short low, cover high. Not nice.
Now in SPY 203-210 spread (and yes we keep the range), AAPL bear put (and yes we be flagging here), CL 50 call short @2.7 (50 magnet worked as suggested), and VIX long (for a nice leg up since eod). Far better mix than some bs Karen technique working only in one direction market.

Looks like we've found the next person on the chopping block.

 

[Pekelo]

Oh, some interesting developments!!! I am still trying to understand what exactly has happened since 2014 October. I get the carrying over the unrealized losses. Some questions to be answered:

1. How did they perform during 2015?
2. Was their trading activity in 2015 mostly just the Scheme trades for covering up the losses and did they abandon the core strategy? Or did they do both?
3. What if she just takes the 40-50% hit in 2014 and keeps carrying on?
4. How come the 2 guys using real money in the Yahoo group made good profits in 2015 when volatility was twice as big as in 2014? (VIX maxed at 31 in 2014 and at 53 in 2015) As quoted in post #59, one of them made 18% last year.
5. They must have thought that eventually they can make the loss back?
6. The VIX was much higher back in 2011 ( maxed at 48) and Karen still made money (assumption?) so what was the difference between 2011 and 2014? Was it because the high water mark stipulation?

I just found it curious that a relative small spike in volatility caused them to start the Scheme trades when volatility was much higher both before and after 2014 and the strategy seemed to perform well even in those times...

I am really interested what those 2 guys have to say about this whole thing, Bobby, can you keep us posted? My guess is that Karen was actually worse at using her own strategy than those guys. Or she went greedy and overused the portfolio margin...

Anyhow, I want Bobby to keep continuing this experiment and we shall see how it performs when we get into "more interesting times."

 

[DTB2]

4. How come the 2 guys using real money in the Yahoo group made good profits in 2015 when volatility was twice as big as in 2014? (VIX maxed at 31 in 2014 and at 53 in 2015) As quoted in post #59, one of them made 18% last year.


Is there a link to these discussions?
Thanks

 

[F_488]

I would also like to see Bobby continue with his Journal.

 

[tradexxx0001]

@conduit: yes and with threads so i can browse what happened before and before. No deletions. A new tweet thread reply is marked with continuation mark to make sure that is a thread with history. Realtime asap screenshots from the broker screen. Noone else does it but it's ok, i have it as a diary and reference. I don't share, you can try pattern-find me.

@Amalgam
classic.. who "we"? The 90% of losing traders? Ok then.

That's why i come here only to solve technical stuff. But couldn't resist to unpuzzle that lady. And it's a great example how not only the retail herd, but also hedge funds are clueless how to profit from markets. They get tricked by a lady propped on some channel and once she gains the initial trust, she goes wicked)

>>enjoy Karen, who found magic in fixed income just like other failed traders who have no morale.<<

or

Stop following, start trading.

 

[Sweet Bobby]

Oh, some interesting developments!!! I am still trying to understand what exactly has happened since 2014 October. I get the carrying over the unrealized losses. Some questions to be answered:

1. How did they perform during 2015?
2. Was their trading activity in 2015 mostly just the Scheme trades for covering up the losses and did they abandon the core strategy? Or did they do both?
3. What if she just takes the 40-50% hit in 2014 and keeps carrying on?
4. How come the 2 guys using real money in the Yahoo group made good profits in 2015 when volatility was twice as big as in 2014? (VIX maxed at 31 in 2014 and at 53 in 2015) As quoted in post #59, one of them made 18% last year.
5. They must have thought that eventually they can make the loss back?
6. The VIX was much higher back in 2011 ( maxed at 48) and Karen still made money (assumption?) so what was the difference between 2011 and 2014? Was it because the high water mark stipulation?

I just found it curious that a relative small spike in volatility caused them to start the Scheme trades when volatility was much higher both before and after 2014 and the strategy seemed to perform well even in those times...

I am really interested what those 2 guys have to say about this whole thing, Bobby, can you keep us posted? My guess is that Karen was actually worse at using her own strategy than those guys. Or she went greedy and overused the portfolio margin...

Anyhow, I want Bobby to keep continuing this experiment and we shall see how it performs when we get into "more interesting times."

Pekelo, as you can imagine there is quite the chatter in our yahoo group. Now that this news has come to light, I think I now know how we could never figure out exactly how she managed certain things. As I was driving yesterday, and even before I heard this news about Karen, I keep thinking "how can she possibly be 50% invested?" I am no where near that level and I feel that I am pretty much at maximum risk. I will keep you posted.

Bobby

 

[Sweet Bobby]

4. How come the 2 guys using real money in the Yahoo group made good profits in 2015 when volatility was twice as big as in 2014? (VIX maxed at 31 in 2014 and at 53 in 2015) As quoted in post #59, one of them made 18% last year.


Is there a link to these discussions?
Thanks

I posted the link previously in this thread.

Bobby