Monday, November 7, 2011
MOS Weekly PUT 55
New position just initiated near end of day Monday. Sold the weekly MOS 55 put for $0.21. The motivation and theory behind this trade is essentially the same as the POT naked put from last week. MOS is a stock I have owned before and am comfortable buying at 55 if I am assigned. Did 5 contracts so it's just a small gain if it works out, but odds are favorable showing only 13.6% probability of my being assigned at the moment.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Have you visited Tasty Trade yet?
For those of you who haven't yet heard of TastyTrade.com, I strongly recommend it for beginning to intermediate option and/or futures traders. It's free and is a good 3-4 hours a day of actionable trading education and information.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Still Alive, anybody have experience using Prodigio on Think or Swim?
Before I post about my whereabouts the last few months, if anybody has experience using Prodigio on Think or Swim and wants to mentor a fellow trader please email me at JasonAndrewHaas@aol.com. I've got a trade idea I need help with implementing.
Well it's been a while since my last post which was July options expiration. Even before that I had really stopped posting two months prior as I had kind of settled in to what I was doing and had little to share or discuss. But a lot can change in a short period of time, I lost my ass big in the August and September expiration cycles. I still haven't updated my spreadsheet but I'm down over $80,000. For me that is a huge number as I was only averaging about $4,000 a month before the loss. So do the math and it will take me a few years just to get back to par. The good news is after taking a few weeks off I have now regained all my psychological capital and as of this morning I'm back trading again. There have been several good byproducts of such a horrifying event that I'd like to share.
The first is simply that I still have enough capital left to trade and should be able to target my monthly living expenses of $2500 indefinitely. So nothing major changes for me other than the psychology of accepting the damage. Second is that, the truth is, even at my best I was barely making a living so until or unless I lost big I was probably never going to entertain the idea of starting a new career. I had put that search on hold as I thought I was on the border line of having enough capital and experience to give trading a shot. I had been wanting to try trading for a living and now I know that I'm just simply not ready. I need more capital and more experience and I think I'll know when I get there, but it isn't today. Perhaps in the time it will take me to get to a capital level I think is adequate I will also gain that experience I need. The third positive to emerge for me is that I had a very unhealthy attachment to money. I had wrapped my whole self esteem and outlook on life based solely on having what I considered to be a safe nest egg. I had spent the previous five years of my life in what I call a permanent state of semi-paranoia always worrying about losing it.
And as many of you have probably experienced in life, the actual event happening that you fear most isn't actually that bad. What is far worse is the torture you put yourself through worrying about it. So in a sick way I'm actually happy to exercise this demon and I think I'll be able to live a healthier happier life going forward. Money truly isn't everything and I had to break my addiction to that misguided belief. However, I would absolutely trade places and give this experience back for the money, that's the truth, see how sick my behavior is/was.
Below is the chart for bond futures where I took the majority of my losses. I was also short volatility derivatives at a VIX of 27 and cut those once we stayed above 40 for a few weeks. I was short big on ZB at a cost average of about 127 (highlighted in green) on the Friday going in to the weekend where the debt ceiling debate was threatening to end in default on our debt. I thought that was BS and was willing to short in to the weekend. Congress reached an agreement on Sunday night and bond futures opened up with a half point gap down on the chart at about 127'16. So I was comfortable in waiting and taking my short off later in the day for a small profit. That day never materialized and the chart never looked back. Each day I found myself feeling like I would love to short at these levels so I just kept staying in the trade. I'll save the daily drama of my mindset as each day rolled on but the short version is I lost my mind and eventually cut the trade for a loss at 140'24 where the purple oval is I highlighted. That's about a 14 point loss per contract, on bonds which sometimes don't trade 14 points in a year!! Had I tried to stay in any furhter I would surely have lost my mind again the day the FED announced they were keeping rates at 0% for two years and sent ZB up 5 points in two days to a new all time high of 146. You get that, a new all time high ever in the history of bond futures and I was short big. Nice trade meat.
Well it's been a while since my last post which was July options expiration. Even before that I had really stopped posting two months prior as I had kind of settled in to what I was doing and had little to share or discuss. But a lot can change in a short period of time, I lost my ass big in the August and September expiration cycles. I still haven't updated my spreadsheet but I'm down over $80,000. For me that is a huge number as I was only averaging about $4,000 a month before the loss. So do the math and it will take me a few years just to get back to par. The good news is after taking a few weeks off I have now regained all my psychological capital and as of this morning I'm back trading again. There have been several good byproducts of such a horrifying event that I'd like to share.
The first is simply that I still have enough capital left to trade and should be able to target my monthly living expenses of $2500 indefinitely. So nothing major changes for me other than the psychology of accepting the damage. Second is that, the truth is, even at my best I was barely making a living so until or unless I lost big I was probably never going to entertain the idea of starting a new career. I had put that search on hold as I thought I was on the border line of having enough capital and experience to give trading a shot. I had been wanting to try trading for a living and now I know that I'm just simply not ready. I need more capital and more experience and I think I'll know when I get there, but it isn't today. Perhaps in the time it will take me to get to a capital level I think is adequate I will also gain that experience I need. The third positive to emerge for me is that I had a very unhealthy attachment to money. I had wrapped my whole self esteem and outlook on life based solely on having what I considered to be a safe nest egg. I had spent the previous five years of my life in what I call a permanent state of semi-paranoia always worrying about losing it.
And as many of you have probably experienced in life, the actual event happening that you fear most isn't actually that bad. What is far worse is the torture you put yourself through worrying about it. So in a sick way I'm actually happy to exercise this demon and I think I'll be able to live a healthier happier life going forward. Money truly isn't everything and I had to break my addiction to that misguided belief. However, I would absolutely trade places and give this experience back for the money, that's the truth, see how sick my behavior is/was.
Below is the chart for bond futures where I took the majority of my losses. I was also short volatility derivatives at a VIX of 27 and cut those once we stayed above 40 for a few weeks. I was short big on ZB at a cost average of about 127 (highlighted in green) on the Friday going in to the weekend where the debt ceiling debate was threatening to end in default on our debt. I thought that was BS and was willing to short in to the weekend. Congress reached an agreement on Sunday night and bond futures opened up with a half point gap down on the chart at about 127'16. So I was comfortable in waiting and taking my short off later in the day for a small profit. That day never materialized and the chart never looked back. Each day I found myself feeling like I would love to short at these levels so I just kept staying in the trade. I'll save the daily drama of my mindset as each day rolled on but the short version is I lost my mind and eventually cut the trade for a loss at 140'24 where the purple oval is I highlighted. That's about a 14 point loss per contract, on bonds which sometimes don't trade 14 points in a year!! Had I tried to stay in any furhter I would surely have lost my mind again the day the FED announced they were keeping rates at 0% for two years and sent ZB up 5 points in two days to a new all time high of 146. You get that, a new all time high ever in the history of bond futures and I was short big. Nice trade meat.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Nothing new.
I haven't posted any trades lately because I am doing very little at the moment. Holding a big position in RMBS that was gotten by getting assigned on my naked puts. Also holding my positions in DIS and QCOM. With the debt uncertainty going on I prefer to stay out of the options game for awhile and work on my golf game instead. Will start posting again when I become more active in the market.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
July 2011 Options Expiration Results
This was a great month for traders as we had some good range-bound but volatile markets. It allows you to get paid quicker on your trades if you're right on direction. The bottom line number this month is $8096 and I needed it. The previous two months were turds as I got myself in some trouble with position size and strategies used. There were a few mistakes as always that don't show up in the numbers. I took a few trades down early for no reason other than I wasn't able to discipline myself with patience. I didn't exit one trade when I should have and missed my profit target as it was hit. There are two profitable trades on CL that were both just extremely lucky timing on the trade exits as both would have been losers had I let them go to expiration. In the end the numbers could have been better or worse. I suppose this will always be the case as if you're trading frequently you're going to continually both make mistakes and get lucky over time, it's just part of the game. At least for me it is.
I find myself successfully correcting some bad behavioral issues or problem areas from past months only to fall back in to the ones I'm not currently working on. Overall I've made great strides and my confidence is always slowly growing, though I'm constantly working on something. I suppose this also will always be the case. I read a lot of other traders post and know I'm not alone with these issues. At some level I like this as I don't want to be a robot and I enjoy trading off the psychological aspects of the market. If we were all robots and made no mistakes or let our emotions get the best of us then trading would probably be pretty boring. The trick is really to make less mistakes than the next guy.
I'm still hesitant to ramp up my position size as there always seems to be a recent loss that keeps me from getting comfortable. This is a problem area as I've got a long enough track record of consistently profitably trading to suggest the amount of capital I've been allocating given my availability is too low. I'm making great returns on the risk I take, but literally leaving too much capital on the sidelines taking no risk and thus making no returns. If I have a good first week to the new options cycle I find myself being conservative with the next trades as I'm always scoreboard watching and know where my numbers are. This is a terrible habit as I need to make each and every trade that presents itself no matter how the current or most recent trades have performed.
Though I never seem to have what I would call typical results each month as my realized gains have fluctuated wildly, I do at least attempt to deliver consistent results, it just doesn't work out that way. I know ahead of time what my best and worst case scenario should be. The reason I mention this is the results this month are pretty much what I would call typical, if there were such a thing; not necessarily in the dollar amount of realized gains but in the structure of trades themselves. It seems I'm always making changes to the style of trading, underlyings I trade, or position sizing, but recently I've settled in to a formula I like to try and trade around. This is also why I'm not as active about blogging as in the recent past, I'm just more comfortable with what I'm doing and trying out fewer new trades or strategies. On a simple level I like to be short time premium on equity and futures options, and then trade directionally with futures. I shoot for roughly a 50/50 mix and this month just happened to fall in line. I consider these two types of trades separate animals as I might be short SPY calls for the duration of the options cycle but long the ES at some point just for a short-term trade.
For those of you were consider yourself a beginner to intermediate option trader, I highly suggest tuning in to TastyTrade.com. This site launched a few weeks ago and it's a four-hour daily show with about 90-120 minutes each day of what I consider to be really concise great trading information. If you like the Friday afternoon chat on Think or Swim then you'll love this show. The great thing is its archived daily so you don't need to watch live and you can skip the segments of the show that are not relevant to trading. As always if anybody has any comments or questions feel free to comment below or contact me directly via email or Twitter.
E-mail: JasonAndrewHaas@aol.com
I find myself successfully correcting some bad behavioral issues or problem areas from past months only to fall back in to the ones I'm not currently working on. Overall I've made great strides and my confidence is always slowly growing, though I'm constantly working on something. I suppose this also will always be the case. I read a lot of other traders post and know I'm not alone with these issues. At some level I like this as I don't want to be a robot and I enjoy trading off the psychological aspects of the market. If we were all robots and made no mistakes or let our emotions get the best of us then trading would probably be pretty boring. The trick is really to make less mistakes than the next guy.
I'm still hesitant to ramp up my position size as there always seems to be a recent loss that keeps me from getting comfortable. This is a problem area as I've got a long enough track record of consistently profitably trading to suggest the amount of capital I've been allocating given my availability is too low. I'm making great returns on the risk I take, but literally leaving too much capital on the sidelines taking no risk and thus making no returns. If I have a good first week to the new options cycle I find myself being conservative with the next trades as I'm always scoreboard watching and know where my numbers are. This is a terrible habit as I need to make each and every trade that presents itself no matter how the current or most recent trades have performed.
Though I never seem to have what I would call typical results each month as my realized gains have fluctuated wildly, I do at least attempt to deliver consistent results, it just doesn't work out that way. I know ahead of time what my best and worst case scenario should be. The reason I mention this is the results this month are pretty much what I would call typical, if there were such a thing; not necessarily in the dollar amount of realized gains but in the structure of trades themselves. It seems I'm always making changes to the style of trading, underlyings I trade, or position sizing, but recently I've settled in to a formula I like to try and trade around. This is also why I'm not as active about blogging as in the recent past, I'm just more comfortable with what I'm doing and trying out fewer new trades or strategies. On a simple level I like to be short time premium on equity and futures options, and then trade directionally with futures. I shoot for roughly a 50/50 mix and this month just happened to fall in line. I consider these two types of trades separate animals as I might be short SPY calls for the duration of the options cycle but long the ES at some point just for a short-term trade.
For those of you were consider yourself a beginner to intermediate option trader, I highly suggest tuning in to TastyTrade.com. This site launched a few weeks ago and it's a four-hour daily show with about 90-120 minutes each day of what I consider to be really concise great trading information. If you like the Friday afternoon chat on Think or Swim then you'll love this show. The great thing is its archived daily so you don't need to watch live and you can skip the segments of the show that are not relevant to trading. As always if anybody has any comments or questions feel free to comment below or contact me directly via email or Twitter.
July Options Expiration Results
Updated Historical Results
E-mail: JasonAndrewHaas@aol.com
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