...What he's doing with gold and silver is trying to take in a neutral stance on gold and silver I guess by trying to profit from gold and silver whether they go or down by investing what's called strangles, buying calls (profiting when the underlying goes up) and buying puts (when underlying goes down). But that strategy only works when the underlying, in this case, gold and silver move tremendously in what he called "rogue waves" like what natural gas did in one direction or another, otherwise they are going to time decay to 0 if gold and silver doesn't move much...
This is the neutral hedging I tried to do with CL last year in pure CL futures, and abandoned it after making some decent dosh and started looking at other bits. Using manual calendar spreads.
But as I read what you have explained, and as I look at the statements, it looks like this guy got caught in the paradox that caused me to abandon my weird calendar leg method in the first place. But he did it with options with strike prices and "(In-out-at)-the-money possibilities", which is way too complicated for my brain.
This all evolved from the idea of maintaining calendar spread margin discounts to avoid an overnight margin call from the CME.
So you go long Jan 19 CL and short Feb 19 CL futures. The thing moves a dollar in one direction. If you think the move is over, you close the profitable leg and buy back into it, but hedge against it two months later on the short side.
Let us say Jan 18 CL long went from 50 to 51. Your Feb CL short went the same way. Net zero, it moved 100 tics...
Wait, I can provide screenshots in sim datafeed to exemplify it..
Edit: Gotta' wait for charts to reload, and for the sim data feed to catch up. ug...
Edit 2: NT 7 sux with custom indicators. :-\
K, well, my NT7 has crashed on sim data feed. It is what I HATE about NT7, it is a POS on tick data.
Bah, sorry JSOP, I can't replicate it with sim data. It is all falderal on the charts.
The paradox comes in where you keep hedging by closing profitable legs and re-opening opposing legs, hoping for the recovery. What eventually happens is after all your profits are taken, you then lock yourself into a net BE situation. All the hard earned profits from the profit legs will be eventually wiped out by the accumulation of the losing legs, and then the maintenance margins start to creep into the game, and so all the realized gains can quickly become unrealized losses that will cascade if the market does not reverse.