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I read Cordier's book, improved his strategy to the point I was making well more than him. I had had an account with him for a while. So I know how he was doing.
I then took Karen's strategy, improved upon it to where I am making well more than she is now.
I spent hours and hours researching of the numbers. That is how you perform better than others. Not reading books.
Many, many posters have contributed to this thread. I have learned from them. I think some have learned things from me. I am a better trader because of what I have learned from this thread.
It looks like all you want to do is tell me I am doing it wrong because that is not what the books say should happen. Well guess what. I am not typical.
I have no angle in this discussion to "make up stuff".
Go look at chart if you don't believe. CL ran up $40 + from Jan 2008 to July. Then CL sold off the gains it had made for the year. And didnt start tanking below $100 Jan 2008 low until after, the fall of Lehman Brothers. All the way down 30ish at the 2008. Besides Do you think the recent fall in CL signals another financial crisis and great recession? I think not
Since I'm making this "stuff up" here's a CL chart
Here's a ES chart
And the debt ceiling has been raised so many times over the years that would not have been a precursor to the S&P downgrade in 2011
There's your proof, I have no reason to make up anything.
My last post on this hindsight trading topic, no sense in arguing about it.
Volatility is good for the market and trading.
Preservation of capital is the most important concept for those who want to stay in the trading game for the long haul. - Van Tharp
Quick question. Based on the comments from blb014 and some of your earlier statements, what was the thought process that kept you out of the market around August 15th after the move down had happened and the market seemed to find a floor? I wasn't in the market then and am curious as to the fundamentals that guided you? Here's the chart I was looking at based on the last few comments in this thread.
I agree with you on the debt ceiling debate and avoiding puts, most people could see the political parties not agreeing on a budget from a mile away and the results from something like that are never good for the market..even if you didn't know a credit rating downgrade was the result.
I can't remember the news and other information leading up to the collapse in mid Sept though and was hoping for more color on where your head was.
As far as my next few trades I'm going to be doing spreads with a higher number of contracts at a lower delta. I'm expecting more swings to the downside right after interest rates go up in Sept.
I have lost money only one time on an ES put trade. Sold 50 ESv5p800 on 9/19/11. Lost $2,500. And actually if then I had followed my current plan that trade would not have been a loser because I hadn't hit the exit point. I just thought that things would get worse and got out after only holding 3 days. Beginner nerves for ES trading.
784 out of 785 trades were winners. No losers since 2011. 41,688 total short ES put contracts. The net profit is $2.3 million.
jawadde001 you are right. If you take an average person (even a college finance professor)
and throw them into the options arena, they would lose all. But some of us on this thread
are not average (such as Ron99). We have spent a lot of effort and time reading, analyzing,
and working in the options arena. If we were to give a class on options, Cordier and Gross
should attend, because they would learn a lot. I have invested in crude (CL) this entire year
and have not had a losing position. (I know CL moved much more in 2014 than so far in 2015.)
I have had a losing position in 6EG5 (-$63.04), and in EWN5 (-$40.76). That is all for this
year. Conditional probabilities can vastly decrease risk and improve your probablility of success.
For example, look at black jack.
Just now reading this thread, and I invite @ron99 to place you on ignore if you continue to basically call the people here liars.
I want to chime in that I was > 200% YTD return personally, on about 10x the risk rate of ES. I say "was" because I stopped posting all my broker statements because of users like you, so these days I don't share my returns any more because it wasn't worth the headache of defending them. The 200% figure was as of March 31, the last time I publicly shared all my statements.
I have nothing to sell, I spend time posting simply to help others -- as does @ron99. Ron runs a great thread, and I don't want him getting discouraged just because some people can't see the value. Ron has nothing to sell, same as me. He isn't a vendor. It's fine to question people that have ulterior motives and there is plenty of that on other trading forums, but there is none here.
You also need to understand there is a big difference between an individual trader that is trading a six or seven figure account, and an institution trading ten figure accounts (or more). It should go without saying that returns are not symmetrical with the invested money at play.
I'm not a fantastic trader, nor am I smart enough to trade options. So I have no difficulty believing that @ron99 would consistently outperform me in terms of risk to return.
If you want to call me a liar or continue trolling, go ahead, and that will be the end of your invitation to visit futures.io (formerly BMT).
I don't doubt that, however, for the new people it should be noted that you had some implied volatility tail winds, or at least they weren't head winds.
During the month of July, ATM IV increased by about 3 points and put skew, as measured by 10-delta risk reversals, actually declined from about -.10 to -.07 during the month. For the newbies, the latter is a good thing if you were short puts coming into July.
So a short put position during a month of a 20% decline in the underlying could have worked. But a similar position from Oct 2014 to March 2015 could have led to painful losses, or at best a long, painful wait until expiration was nearer and IV/IV skew stabilized.
Just came to this thread for the first time. I have option experience with equities, but not futures. I hope to learn from your and other's experience.
It's good to see an option thread here, don't know how I missed it.
(And ignore the nay-sayers. I don't know why people will troll when they can just go somewhere else....)