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Hi Matt,

Sorry about the late reply (I had been out interviewing for a new job). I'm hesitant to give you exact parameters as everybody's strategies are different and therefore your hedges as well. But I'll try to give color but understand your hedging might be different depending on how close/far out you're selling your main puts for theta.


>How/When do u enter (VIX < 23 seems like reasonable now)
>How far out do you buy (delta and expiration)?

Yes I usually like to buy SPX puts on rallies and also very low delta's like 60 days out where they are roughly about ~$3.00-$4.00. It may seem buying these SPX puts seem literally flushing money down the toilet... but they are there in case VIX goes to 30-40. Primarily because all the value they hold is the vega (vol).

On really shaky days, I will cash in these puts for a profit and roll down my underwater or soon-might-be short puts further down. The name of the game is I want to roll my short puts sooner than later and always be safe - and having protection helps me with that; as it dampens the loss as I roll down and out.

>How much overall portfolio delta do you hedge - e.g. if Delta is X - do you hedge half or more?

This is a very good question. The short answer is, I do not know lol. The long answer is: what I do is use IBKR Risk Navigator. There it should give you your entire SPX risk exposure. For what it's worth, right now, my SPX weighted exposure is about 1/3 of my actual net liq. I also look at my IBKR account's excess liquidity - I try to keep my excess liquidity to be above 50% of my net liq. (and if it dips, I try to go into the market to buy those black swan puts to get my excess liq above that 50% threshold).

Hope this might be helpful. and please do not copy as your portfolio might be totally different than mine. Just givin' you some thoughts/ideas.
Appreciate this !!! - yep I understand the one size doesn't fit all pretty well :) - hope you did much better than me this week
 
weight: 175
fitness: D - work is still crazy busy
weed/alcohol: using - trying to change next week (again) - aka I start tomorrow :)
sleep: C
trading plan execution: C

Weekly P&L -24974 ouch - but being semi-long and short volatility both went seriously against my position.
 
weight: 174
fitness: F - on the road this week
weed/alcohol: using - trying to change next week (again) - aka I start tomorrow :)
sleep: F - can't expect much either when traveling - so matched my expectation
trading plan execution: C - ==

Weekly P&L -2463 - stop the pain :) - luckily wasn't that painful of a week
 
Technical's are bearish and have been forever. US has inflation, eurozone has economic issues along with Russia / Ukraine in conflict. The list goes on.

Are you seriously giving this a real effort? I genuinely don't understand and am seriously asking this question. This just seems odd, to lose $27k in 2 weeks for what?
 
Are you seriously giving this a real effort? I genuinely don't understand and am seriously asking this question. This just seems odd, to lose $27k in 2 weeks for what?

this will probably be a bad inside joke that's lost in translation - but i'll try anyway. many traders follow probabilities - i certainly do - so let's occams razor this.
Based on the wording and the fact that you see 27k in 2 weeks -> you didn't even bother to scroll a page back -> you don't know that the last 3 weeks were -44k (i feel like you would have highlighted if you would have known) -> you have no clue on account size or anything else. One person's 44k are another person's 44 million and another persons 440 dollars
 
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this will probably be a bad inside joke that's lost in translation - but i'll try anyway. many traders follow probabilities - i certainly do - so let's occams razor this.
Based on the wording and the fact that you see 27k in 2 weeks -> you didn't even bother to scroll a page back -> you don't know that the last 3 weeks were -44k (i feel like you would have highlighted if you would have known) -> you have no clue on account size or anything else. One person's 44k are another person's 44 million and another persons 440 dollars

I understand what you’re saying, you have enough money that losing 27k is irrelevant. Ok fair enough, that's still a relatively large sum of money in relation to what can be done with it. At any point correct me if I am wrong, but I assume you're here to trade and make money, not lose it correct? If this is the case than regardless if you lost 1 penny or 27k, we can agree that goal was not accomplished.

Just letting you know. that something seems off here. Maybe it's that you're not able to dedicate enough screen time or give enough attention to your trading, maybe how you're calculating or what you're using for your probabilities isn't as effective as you think, but things just aren't adding up let me explain:

You speak of probability. The reason I bring up the last 2 weeks specifically. Is exactly for that reason, this has been some of the highest probability trading days one can ask for. Not claiming everyday was easy, there were some days that I found tricky, but overall on most days it was fairly clear or at least become more clear as the day progressed as to what was taking place.

It's been near the perfect storm:
(1) Weekly chart clearly bearish from TA standpoint.
(2) We had out standing June lows that we're highly unlikely not to be retested (probability)
(3) We had buyers from 09/07/2022 - 09/12/2022 that as of 09/14/2022 were clearly trapped and primed to be long squeeze.
(4) It's been clearly shown on micro price action and macro that every time we get above a relative high, larger players come in and sell into that break above. This is important because it shows desperation for buy side liquidity, so clearly the directional bias is down.

I don't really focus on news but when the TA is super clear plus extreme news backs it up, that does add to probability:
(1) US inflation and companies in general under stress, likely more pain to come for mortgage and mortgage related industries in particular.
(2) Euro zone economic issues
(3) Unresolved Ukraine / Russia conflict

So, the probability you speak of was clearly to short rallies. I am just saying you may want to review your trading plan or how you approach getting your probabilities. This isn't me trying to be a smart ass or debate or argue with you. Really do not want to do that, but to me something just seemed off, so for what it is worth thought I would post this message.

Good luck on your trading.
 
If this is the case than regardless if you lost 1 penny or 27k, we can agree that goal was not accomplished.

Just letting you know. that something seems off here. Maybe it's that you're not able to dedicate enough screen time or give enough attention to your trading, maybe how you're calculating or what you're using for your probabilities isn't as effective as you think

Good luck on your trading.

All good and fair points - appreciate the follow up.
 
Hang in there everybody... I lost bigly last two weeks too; and I don't even have that big of an account to justify the loss.

>You speak of probability. The reason I bring up the last 2 weeks specifically. Is exactly for that reason, this has been some of the highest probability trading days one can ask for.

Speaking as a option premium seller, I do not look at macros or TA of the indices I'm selling premium for. As crazy as it sounds - it is because what option premium sellers do is harvest premium based on the conviction that it is over-priced when aggregated together in both good and bad times; without market timing. So I can understand why Matt_K74 also comes off casual losin' this money (losin' is part of the game - as crazy as it sounds; you're gettin' paid to lose for other people - in hopes that whatever losses you incur on market volatility you'll gain back over time in the premium they pay you).


> So, the probability you speak of was clearly to short rallies. I am just saying you may want to review your trading plan or how you approach getting your probabilities.

I take your point (and directly contradict what I just said lol). Of course one should lean bearish or bullish even if one is trading delta-neutral. However with options, the underlying movement is just one component; these days, vega (implied vol) is also critical. So you're correct that the technicals in the market pointed to the markets crashing for the past two weeks - but the future forward 30-100 day realized vol in the market may still turn out to be overpriced than the market implied price. Both are not mutually exclusive and why a option seller willing to incur an loss now and still sitting pretty (versus a delta-one trader).

Thank u for everybody's inputs and GLTA!

(light blue is my account; whilst BRK.A [green], QQQ [yellow], SPY[brownish-green])
b8tyCSy.png

(bi-weekly loss -4.05%; ytd: +14.86%)
 
Hang in there everybody... I lost bigly last two weeks too; and I don't even have that big of an account to justify the loss.

>You speak of probability. The reason I bring up the last 2 weeks specifically. Is exactly for that reason, this has been some of the highest probability trading days one can ask for.

Speaking as a option premium seller, I do not look at macros or TA of the indices I'm selling premium for. As crazy as it sounds - it is because what option premium sellers do is harvest premium based on the conviction that it is over-priced when aggregated together in both good and bad times; without market timing. So I can understand why Matt_K74 also comes off casual losin' this money (losin' is part of the game - as crazy as it sounds; you're gettin' paid to lose for other people - in hopes that whatever losses you incur on market volatility you'll gain back over time in the premium they pay you).


> So, the probability you speak of was clearly to short rallies. I am just saying you may want to review your trading plan or how you approach getting your probabilities.

I take your point (and directly contradict what I just said lol). Of course one should lean bearish or bullish even if one is trading delta-neutral. However with options, the underlying movement is just one component; these days, vega (implied vol) is also critical. So you're correct that the technicals in the market pointed to the markets crashing for the past two weeks - but the future forward 30-100 day realized vol in the market may still turn out to be overpriced than the market implied price. Both are not mutually exclusive and why a option seller willing to incur an loss now and still sitting pretty (versus a delta-one trader).

Thank u for everybody's inputs and GLTA!

(light blue is my account; whilst BRK.A [green], QQQ [yellow], SPY[brownish-green])
b8tyCSy.png

(bi-weekly loss -4.05%; ytd: +14.86%)


That is fair and understand your points. If you're doing options, this is one of the cons you have come to accept. So, if it's working for you long term, than obviously keep doing it.

But particularly with a larger account size(or in lieu of this trading a lot smaller position sizing can some what mimic but not as well) if I know the market has high probability to go in one direction, I'd rather just trade the underlining directly as oppose to adding another variable that may cause me to lose, despite getting the macro direction correct.

Particularly for OP though and with his larger account size. He has so many additional edges he can grant himself with a larger account size. Like for example if he trades the underlining directly he can actually add time to his side as an edge, instead of time and volatility potentially working against him with options.

At any rate just my two cents and I understand there's tons of different ways to trade. Think we all understand each other and the points well enough. So, will end it here.
 
Matt_K74,

How do you balance the work and trading? How many hours do you spend on trading on average every day?
 
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