Kim 7,512 Report post Posted December 9, 2012 November was a good month for SteadyOptions. We closed 35 options trades in November, 20 winners and 15 losers. Total gain in November was $1,000 based on $1,000 allocation per trade. Assuming maximum of 6 trades open (the average number is much lower), that’s 16.7% non-compounded gain. Click here to view the article Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Corto Report post Posted December 9, 2012 Only taking the earning trades, my return was $59 for November. Taking out ADM would have been about $650. Mike Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Xfanman 9 Report post Posted December 11, 2012 An Observation -- Kim, I just did a quick calculation for 2012 to date of SO performance without the earnings trades and I get a 161.4%, non-compounded gain and that's including the 43% SPY loss on the double calendar! (and my personal performance on some of those trades was even better since I didn't take the big 43% SPY loss). I may have missed one or two when going through the performance numbers but I think I grabbed all of the calendar, fly and RIC Non-Earnings related plays for the year. For me, those trades are much easier to both get into, manage and get out of most of the time. I know many people (myself included) complain about not being able to achieve your results on the Earnings plays. Even though I manage these trades much better now than I initially did, I still find my account 8% down as of today. As fate or bad luck would have it, it's often the winners that take off quickly after an alert or I can't get into because I'm in a meeting or on vacation or out of the office or whatever. Statistically you'd think that this would rectify itself over time and perhaps it would/will but the question is how long do you have to roll the dice before the odds of probability start to come into play? Anyway, my point is the non-earnings plays (this year at least) are performing better than the earnings plays from a percentage increase viewpoint and for ME, are more manageable given a full time job and other commitments. I'm going to try to take only these trades for awhile, bump the % up a little and see what happens. If you've already sliced SO performance up into different types of trades and my numbers are off, please let me know. Thanks --- Scott Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Corto Report post Posted December 11, 2012 Scott, How long have you been a sub? Funny, I am only taking earning ones and you are doing the opposite. But I am dismayed by your performance over a longer period of time. Mike Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Xfanman 9 Report post Posted December 11, 2012 (edited) Scott, How long have you been a sub? Funny, I am only taking earning ones and you are doing the opposite. But I am dismayed by your performance over a longer period of time. Mike Mike I've been an SO member since June 1st of this year. I have NO doubt this strategy can work for people, I just need to find a way to make it work for me given a full time job and not wanting to baby sit these earnings plays until the last second. The problem I have with just taking the Non-earnings plays is the percentage I'd have to allocate to them would be much higher with the greater potential loss when larger positions and fewer trades go bad (which you know they will). Edited December 11, 2012 by Xfanman Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Kelly Park 10 Report post Posted December 12, 2012 Scott, I got busy and also dropped earnings plays for the last few weeks (when they have been doing better, of course!). I like the decreased management time, but not the lack of gamma exposure in my portfolio. I think the goal for us is to find a gamma positive trade that doesn't take so much time to baby sit. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Xfanman 9 Report post Posted December 12, 2012 Kelly you are so right. I don't know what that vehicle is yet but maybe it's just my normal trading outside of SO for Gamma and the Calendars, IC's and other non-earnings related plays with SO. Of course as soon as I dove back in this week from my break I get what looks like 3 losing earnings plays (even though I bought in cheaper than most thankfully) and the RUT trades going south at the moment. Murphy (and Scott's) luck sometimes Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Kim 7,512 Report post Posted December 14, 2012 I think this is the attractiveness of SO - it can give everyone what he/she wants. There is no doubt that non-earnings trades performed very good this year. But we have to remember that this is the nature of those trades - they are high probability trades that are supposed to win around 70% of the time. The big question is what happens in the rest 30%. As we have seen with the 43% SPY loss, when the market makes a big move, the loss can be brutal. Of course we can always reduce the risk by playing monthlies and not weeklys, but still, I would hesitate to allocate more than 30% of the account to those trades. The question is what to do with the rest of the portfolio? I agree that earnings trades require more management, but you can always reduce it to accommodate your busy schedule. For example: don't wait till the last hour, always sell by 2pm (or whatever hour you find suitable). Don't feel obligated to take all of them. I didn't do any statistics, but I would think that at least 80% of the trades come down to my alert price at some point. Some don't, but it will level out over time. To reduce the theta risk, you can do some of the trades with longer expiration, so it allows you to enter a bit earlier I'm trying to provide a place for ideas and encourage members to think independently and trade what they feel comfortable with. Take Mike for example - I think he is starting to pull things together, and according to his reporting, looks like he is going to beat me this month (DG and RIMM come to mind) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Corto Report post Posted December 14, 2012 Hope so! Hoping for a hat trick on RIMM! Mike Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
