ReaM 

Judging by the description of what you do, your strategy is pure crap. Neither MACD nor some Bollinger crap or moving averages or candlestick patterns give you any edge, right click on them and select delete. Quoting you: "There are calculations into it, but basically it's a checklist of breaking out/bouncing of a line (resistance/trend) + MACD up + breaks a Pivot point on the chart (I usually take a point extra for safety)." This does not work! It's utter nonsense! And yes, random stuff can work for two years (been there, done that, hurt by it) Well, if you ask what is that which works you can have the answer for 250K, I can teach you how to trade but with NDA signed and all. Or you can try to figure it out on your own the probability of which would probably be not far away from winning a lottery, because the vast majority of information available is pure crap (would say near a 100% of all information, videos and books), all of them are scammers who film their rented Lamborghinis while trying to sell you their trading course for $299.

Is it a short answer?

I find it hard to believe that the strategy described could work at all, but would have to look at the code. The last few years in ETFs, a short term combination - 3 and 7 day rate of change are both positive worked pretty well, but nothing really Nobel prize worthy. That is quite unusual for those to do that well - both numbers negative usually play better than that.

My guess is that people on here tend to get hung up on day trading, that is a very dubious way of getting wealth at least from an equity trading point of view.

ldcapital 

consider changing your market to Futures. While futures trading is challenging, I find it infinitely simpler to trade than options. Futures also offer a much lower barrier to entry in terms of capital required, and better leverage.

The CME has E-Micro contracts now. Here, you can test your new strategies/systems for a very low risk...one-tenth that of the regular E-Mini contracts. However, this is futures, not options.
https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equity-index/us-index/micro-e-mini-futures.html

Many things could have happened.

You can’t always know. It does not work is enough to know. Maybe someone is trading out your edge in fast moving algos. It simply does not matter.

Don’t keep putting your money into something that does not work.

Put a system in place that spots when your edge is leaving.

Keep checking the systems you develop sometimes they come back.

Keep revising your process.

Now

Get a new grub stake.

Keep trying to develop a new system find another edge.

Maybe you get two working systems.... keep testing the old...

Good luck. You don't change the market, you adapt.

Try stepping back to a bigger view of the price structure and develope set ups at these higher time frames which are less noisy.
You might also contact David Dube at his Polarous Trading Group, with respect to using options to capture the swings within the Taylor Trading methodology that he uses.
David did a webinar her a few days ago. You can check out what this methodology is all about. David is a straight shooter.

Mistake, David did his webinar at Ninjatrader a few days ago which is available on their Ecosystems webpage.

I was in pretty much the same boat as you for the same time period, buying options and having great success. My "strategy" was pretty much just pattern analysis and stock picking.

From early 2016 to Jan 2018 we had historically LOW volatility, which made options very cheap and it was easy to hold something while it trended and on any pullbacks (which were shallow) just buy more/again. End of Jan '18 volatility returned with a bang and ever since, we get steady trends up for a few months and then BAM, volatility jumps again and wipes out all of your gains and then some. You might try buying dips and dig yourself even deeper in the hole, and by the time it starts bottoming you're too nervous to be buying anymore.

I went back to the drawing board, saw that my "strategy" was simply a coincidence of market conditions. You will have to do the same.

OliverB 

Hi. I've been an options ETF trader for the past 5 years and have done quite well. I developed my own trading systems and it worked. 2016-2018 I've been on a roll. 2019 was a complete turnover for me, especially the second half. The stock market stopped making any sense for me, my technical analysis failed me time after time and I blew up my account. I don't know what changed, but what I know is no longer relevant. I took a step back and try paper-trading, but to no avail. Still failing hard. I tried devising new trading methods. Day trading, scalping, short term swings etc etc. If I applied it back on past markets? BRILLIANT. 2019 onward? FAIL. None seem to be working because it all relies on my past technical analysis. I'm seriously broken. Broke too. Trading is my living, I don't have any other skills and don't know anything else. This is all I've got... Where do I go from here? What can I do? Where can I learn working strategies to work with? I feel like I'm on square one with no trading experience. Any tips or advice are welcome.

Sorry to be harsh , but trading is probably not for you. I have been smashed from pillar to post in this game , but describing it as “absolute devastating “ seems like your skin is not thick enough for this harsh business.

The story of life, I have had four blowups of my account, the 3 am call is upsetting for the wife:faint
Maybe your life purpose is to feed the liquidity of the market. Some people come to the river with a spoon and some with a bucket. Try the spoon with the new micro mini futures, extremely low margin and designed for Etf competition. Can swing trade it, as to technicals there is no answer.

Good luck

Oliver if I had to pick one piece of advice from all that's been given as the best explanation of why your systems quit working its for the same reason that even hedge funds managers and algo writers, much more retail traders, are broadly disappointed in their systems at times of major changes in money supply, e.g. y2k, iran war, QE and current pumping of money supply -- it breaks algos because as money supply changes, the same % of change in price becomes a larger absolute value, which breaks systems that are accustomed to different absolutes.

I'm pretty new and don't know much. I agree taking a several week (or more) break to step back and re-assess should be step one. A lot of the folks on this site are huge fans of order flow trading (w/Jigsaw or similar) which is my next challenge to learn. Best wishes.