Schadenfreude Warning: "Karen the Supertrader"

I've read this site for 5 years and constantly get the dire warnings about selling naked otm options- that eventually you will surely suffer catastrophic loss. Does this mean you will ultimately secure spectacular gains with a constant strategy of buying out of the money options?


It all evens out Springs, whatever you lose in the process trying to land that big run will will even out.
 
Regarding your argument against selling options, I live off selling naked options especially strangles and straddles mechanically using the TT way on indexes. The results are based off of live money...not back testing data. I've been doing so since 2014. I have PM. What's the secret? I just keep my trading size intact. Don't get too big. That's key. Where did I learn all this? Simple...Tastytrade.

Disagree if you want, but they have some good trading nuggets especially in the market measure segments. Yeah, they have blown up some accounts (ie. Case and Katie's), but ironically that was due to size. You can't go big on highly leveraged future positions.

Size...such a reoccurring theme here. Karen fell into that trap.
Being profotable since 2014 thats a short period of time , you may as well flip a coin and stay profitable that long , come after 10 years .

Re the so called tastytrade enjoy this article below

http://johnsville.blogspot.com/2014/11/tastytrade-shill-with-skills.html?m=1
 
It's definitely not safe to argue that less vol in 2014 would have been more survivable or made at least the same returns as 2015 .

OK, I will bite. What was so special about 2014? You name anything (vol, drop size) and I will show you similar events before or after. Even her PM usage couldn't be that large because she was pretty much maxing it out back in 2011, when she was making 5% monthly, and still survived an 18% drop. So you tell us, because I can't find my thinking cap...

Now if she faked all her performance after 2011, that would explain it, but you still have to explain away the Yahoo boys' performance...
 
Agreed but you have to remember that her interviews were around 2013-2014 everything she was saying could have been bullsh*t.

Tom sold ToS to TD in 2009, after that he lost access to view all the trading accounts. So the last time Sosnoff actually viewed her account was 2009 so he has no idea if she was telling the truth in 2013-14

For all we know she was a con artist the entire time and was never legit. All the TT interviews may have been part of the scam to pull in more big fish. We have no idea what she was doing, all we know for sure is what the SEC has accused her of.
Madoff was always described as being a really nice guy and hung with celebs

Yea now that that is in the light God only knows what went on, as well as the SEC XD.

We just gotta sit around now and wait for the SEC findings. It didn't say anywhere in the SEC report what her current losses on the account were? I only read the bit about the $110 mil, but I don't think that was current.
 
Being profotable since 2014 thats a short period of time , you may as well flip a coin and stay profitable that long , come after 10 years .

Re the so called tastytrade enjoy this article below

http://johnsville.blogspot.com/2014/11/tastytrade-shill-with-skills.html?m=1

I have been doing it since December 2013. So far, all is well. But like you said "come after 10 years". Though our strategy is a bit more sophisticated. We hedge (when needed), with 100% automated algo that trade futures. The only instrument that we trade is ES.
 
As someone who's managed funds for others and been through regulatory examinations, I can tell you they know pretty much everything.

When I got examined, I got a few weeks notice and they had a team spend nearly a week at my place. They got every statement, communication, document and file - both electronic and paper - that existed on my end. Then they contacted my accountant, auditor, bank, broker, randomly selected clients and everyone else that had any knowledge of my fund and got every document they could obtain DIRECTLY FROM THEM. If anything was a penny different, it was chased down and explained to their satisfaction. For all the ponzi schemes and others that have gotten away with fraud over the years - they were not fully examined by a regulatory authority.

I'm not sure when Karen was examined before, but if anything was amiss they would have caught it. Exams are not every year and not even regular. Much depends on your size and scope and other factors, but I think the goal is to examine everyone on average about every 5-7 years.

They will also not disclose everything in a briefing doc. It's just enough to establish misconduct and illustrate the level of deception that took place for the record.

I don't know Karen and I haven't really followed her except for some of what I've read here. I can tell you that most people that run funds that get involved in this kind of activity had a loss and started fudging to cover the loss with the intention of squaring things up once the funds were recouped. If you never make the money back, the hole gets deeper. And if the SEC/NFA shows up for an exam, it's over. Even if she fully recovered, they would have discovered the fraudulent reporting on her next exam. I'm not sure if this was her first exam or not, but if you have been through it once you know there is no way you could get away with anything.
 
If you set up the fund correctly aren't you exempt from SEC regulation and registration and therefore are not subject to regular audits?
 
What I learned from you folks and Karen is very valuable: her over leverage created the huge losses:

I went back and look at naked 5 delta (her criteria) short puts on SPY that expired in ~50 days. I would collect ~$0.5, if SPY dropped ~10%, the 5 delta became ~50 delta and the puts became ~$5. If I committed 50% of my fund and used PM, margin calls came in no time. I have no clue how to get out of that without a loss.:banghead:

If I didn't leverage, my puts would all expire worthless and I made money.:D
 
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