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Option Side: Almost got back in. Friday is usually a pretty good day to sell options. Even had an order in for EW1U 3075/2600 straddle, but decided to cancel when the VIX started moving up quicker than I was expecting. So, on the sidelines I remain.
Day Trade Side: Trade was immediately underwater. Not horribly so, but not too encouraging either. First trade got negated. I exited the long, and then then went to work on the short. It had started moving down in the interim, so I let it run for a while before exiting. About 250 in positive slippage. Nice. Do that 10,000 more times and I'll be even on slippage in my lifetime. Trade was still down about 600 until 12:30 when the Dow just took off, taking my trade with it. It quickly reached +1000. I lightened up, and when it got to +1500, I lightened up some more. Finished +1627. A good windup to a good week. Back again next week to fight 'em again.
Option Side: Did some preliminary work on a very short-term model over the weekend. Not really sure if it will prove fruitful or not. Best way to find out is to actually trade it. So I tiptoed back into the water today. Sold a couple 2835 Puts for Wednesday expiration. Bought back 1 for a profit and held the other. In hindsight, should have bought them both back, but of course hindsight is useless in trading. Down about 100
Day Trade Side: Pretty uneventful day. Which is what I envisioned when I switched to the Micros and the added granularity. It hasn't really been the case though in the 2+ months I've been trading them. Today it got to +500 fairly quickly and then just sat there. For hours. Finally, it looked like we might get a down trend, so I closed the long side and put a fairly tight stop on the short side; tight enough to ensure that it wouldn't turn into a losing day. It went well initially, and I was +1200, but then it went back the other way, and my stop, which I kept adjusting down, but perhaps not aggressively enough, got picked off. Finished +704 for the day.
Have you considered spread trades with duration longer than one session?
When SPX, NDX, and DJIA made all time highs in July, RUT was still 9% away from its all time highs.
There is definitely money to be made, I am just not sure of how to go about identifying trade triggers for these long term spread trades.
(I am currently long the S&P500 and short the Russell 2000)
Nope. Not at all. My absolute favorite thing about day trading is being completely flat at the end of the day. I like waking up to a fresh start every day, regardless of whether or not yesterday was a good day.
In addition, I have (many times) in the past, turned manageable losers into gigantic losers by hanging on in an attempt to salvage something out of nothing. If I ever do that again (and I probably will) it's because of a lack of discipline, and not by design. If holding on to trades is part of your plan, that's great, but for my plan, that is not trading like a professional.
Option Side: Holding a Short Put when the ES blows the roof off isn't all bad. I bought back my one and only Put for $30. Didn't initiate anything else. May try a Friday expiration pre-open tomorrow if I can find any value there. Up 360 for the day.
Day Trade Side: Did 2 units today. Meant to do 2 yesterday and just plain forgot, so did 2 today. Worked out quite nicely as the trade worked all day long. Also made a decision to let it ride for as long as I could. And that wasn't easy as I wanted to start peeling off as the trade became more and more profitable. In the end, I held on until it was time to exit and I profited about 2970, or 1485 per unit. A good day.
Option Side: Well, got to my desk a little after 6 this morning and saw the ES was down 25 points. Decided to hold off on selling any Puts. Good thing I did as the ES proceeded to get hammered. Eventually I sold the exact same Put I bought back for $30 yesterday for $225. Originally intended to let it expire worthless this afternoon (and it did) but I bought it back first. Up 139 on the day. Have been doing a lot of thinking about options these past couple of weeks. I've traded options for 20 years, and day traded for about 10. For quite a while they shared the load and I did pretty well with both. But looking back, the options haven't really done anything for me the past three years and almost nothing this year. I'm starting to think the edge in selling options is gone. The premiums when things are going well are smaller and smaller, and the volatility spikes we see on a day like today (VIX up 26%) make it very difficult to hold existing positions. I'm flat again, and am going to stay that way. Longer this time. I am going to build a new model from the ground up, and if I cannot find a quantifiable edge that I feel confident can be sustained, I may stay out until such time as the Theta once again provides an edge. My profits, or the lack thereof, cannot justify tying up the margin required by being a premium seller. So back to the sidelines, and this time maybe for good.
Day Trade Side: This trade continues to excel for me. For a methodology that has a ~58% win rate long-term, it has really been on a hot streak, and I am not complaining at all. I barely paid any attention to this trade today. For one thing, I didn't have to. It did well except for one brief spurt. I was focused on the Option Side, hence just let it ride. I did 2 units and didn't touch it until it was up 1500 per unit, only about 30 minutes before my exit time. I went ahead and closed 2/3 of what I had on, and then the rest about 5 minutes before my scheduled exit. Finished +2564 for the day, so gave a little back, but again, no complaints. Another good day.
