Forex Forex
My apologies. I haven´t even signed up on Yahoo Finance yet. Will do soon. What is IB?
My mind puzzles problems overnight. Learned C++ once, and took a course at the Community College. With the intent to doing programming. I found that my mind wouldn´t shut off when I slept and thus it exhausted me. End of programming idea as a vocation.
Anyway, to get to the nitty gritty. The weekly bar in a confused market, seems to achieve a movement in the SPY of 2 strikes during the five days of the week. That should provide a profit, using 6 to 8 week options, to minimize the effect of THETA.
The trouble with a 5 day week,is that you do not know if you are starting the week, at the top, middle or bottom of the bar. So instead of diddling with strategies that rely on changing the straddle to a directional trade, I´m beginning to think Eudamon is right. Leave the STRADDLE alone as a non-directional trade. Treat it as a spread. I like his idea of AVERAGING if you get the expectation to direction wrong. As to those who insist the STRADDLE is a Volatility trade, I am not sure it is. Certainly you make a profit quickly and a good amount when a volatility balloon occurs, But if you are trading every week, then just being often in the market through a week, should catch the volatility balloon, when it occurs. You do not actually have to plan for it. Just take it as it happens. As somebody told me on here, I just got LUCKY when it happened early in my trying to understand the STRADDLE uses.
Lets say you want one trade a week. Can you get that? 3% seems to be the minimum return on investment. If you trade AVERAGING, trying to get the once a week, sometimes twice a week trend ( in the hourly charts ). A profit is a profit, no matter what, as somebody said.
As day trader rules limit me to three trades per week, one of those trades is reserved for a directional trade, if I can get my trend turn indicator to work properly. That leaves me with two spare trades. One of which could be the luck of getting a move for a quick profit with a one straddle spread trade. Otherwise averaging two spreads should work in a non directional straddle spread, whichever direction the trend finally occurs. The important thing is to make a profit every week. Am going to test the other WEEKLY options end of week trade and see how it works. Having traded that in credit spreads, I know it works in credit spreads, will it work in a straddle spread is the question? A boost to profits from volatility occuring, would be just icing on the cake. If it happens, it happens.
That is the picture forming in my novices mind from this learning process so far. I´m still recording the GREEKS, but can´t find much predictive ability in them. The IV seems to be the most workable numbers. From reading some forums, some of the professional traders really get into the GREEKS and convoluted strategies, very complex and I suppose they have their part to play. I just haven´t seemed to grasp anyway to use the GREEKS yet, in a pragmatic sense while planning my more simple trades.
...and retreat.
