Quote from shortie:
My summary (I hope I got it right):
1a. Buy 1 ATM call ~1302, <1% "stop"
2a. Stopped out <1296, Sell OTM Calls (~2x??)
1b, 2b repeated ~1272 (1265 stopped out)
The rationed short calls essentially pay for the ATM call and the position is ~free. The danger is only if OTM calls go ITM. But you will deal with it later, if needed.
This is not that bad considering that two entries were stopped out.
Almost exactly correct. The second stop (of the 1272 trade) was at 1263. You also understand the use of hedging by selling ratio'ed OTM calls to complete a spread, and you also understand the risk that if those calls start to come ITM, the "rationess" of them is a problem.
You could just exit the long calls instead of hedging a bad trade, but the hedges allow for more complex choices if and when the market rights itself. The only thing is, you are betting that your initial direction is wrong (in this case that the market continues to sell off), so that you can buy back those ratiod calls cheap, and now you have OTM long naked options with some delta that if the market moves higher as expected, can go ITM again. That is why it is so key to do this (sell ratio'ed calls) at key support (resistance) points, because if those points are broken, odds are huge that we continue in that direction. We give the trade some breathing room by acknowledging the stop to the trade as nearly "certain" that it is not just an intra-day break. The initial use of long options limits our risk further.
We will repeat this again near 1242, not only going with ITM 75 delta options, but buying back both the hedges to 1302 and 1272 trades (short calls). We have lost about 16 SPX points on these two tries. We are going for the gusto.
The only thing that worries me here is, what happens if we don't go back to 1242? At what point do we buy back the ratio'ed hedges if things start moving in our direction, albeit without any deltas? The thinking (hope) is that usually these sorts of trades find their "bottom" at key points, but that is only statistics, not law.
People will notice that there is a great deal of trading knowledge in this execution that has nothing to do with FV. In fact, using that knowledge alone would have made money on these movements by SAR the position. Perhaps, but I have done this long enough to know that in a slightly different regime, this may not have worked. The system IS "FV" and parameter (as of now), coupled with the way a knowledgeable trader would execute his trades to minimize risk and maximize gain, regardless of what system he is trading. It is imperative that we build theory, not look at individual results to build our domain expertise. Bridge players know
exactly what I am talking about. On the other hand, if there is no theory of markets as I understand and FV attempts, this method is doomed.