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I am glad to have found this thread and appreciate the time and effort by many to spread the knowledge and keep the thread alive, especially ron99 and britkid99.
I am starting on the Futures Options journey in 2013; been trading stocks, options on stocks/indices(spreads, condors, butterflies) and bonds for a few years. I opened an account with Optionsxpress after doing some research (thank you Ron for your insights on OX) even though their commissions are on the higher side.
I plan to play the strategy of selling far OTM, Delta<0.03, initial margin + 2x the maintenance margin as cash reserve.
Happy and prosperous 2013 to all!
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
I've been with OX for about 5 years. Their customer service is great. If it costs a little more $ per trade with them but the customer service makes it worth every penny for me.
I am waiting on the ACH clearance from OX. So far am liking their interface and ease of use of their website. Also, called them a couple of times during/after account setup and was pleased with the quick response. Since, I won't be doing big volume or day trade etc. the commissions should work out OK.
Yes RB options aren't easy to get on, but the ROI is very good.
Normally RB puts are great to sell early in the year. Steady rise in futures Dec to Apr. RB and CL drop significantly in May. So plan on being out of them before May.
Long options - 44 trades of 862 contracts = 109k loss. I had bought a bunch of ES calls that weren't timed correctly. Plus a few other calls. Trying to predict direction is not easy.
Short futures - 10 trades of 92 contracts = 15k loss.
Short options - 746 trades of 5,034 contracts = 150k profit. A lot less contracts than 2011 but more profit.
Long futures - 216 trades of 949 contracts = 619k profit. Mainly milk futures.
I traded 15 different commodities. CL, C, DA (Milk), DY (Whey), ES, GC, HG, HO, KC, LH, NG, RB, SB, SI, S.
ROI was 75.1%. Not as good as last year. The long options hurt.
But here is the thing that surprised me. Of the 746 trades I sold options, 744 were net profitable. Only 2 trades of 21 contracts lost money. 99.7% winners.
I have an Access database setup into which I enter every trade. Then I am able to do searches to get this data.