Leaderboard

As I’ve done the past few years, I’ve broken down the Steady Options 2017 trade performance by trade type. Here’s are this year’s stats along with some comments from my perspective. Where applicable, I added totals from prior years for comparison... Pre-Earnings Calendars 2017: 31 Trades – 26 win, 5 loss (84% win) – Average Gain +13.81% 2016: 44 trades (80% win) - Average Gain +15.07% 2015: 51 trades (80% win) – Average Gain +12.67% 2014: 48 trades (71% win) – Average Gain +13.80% 2013: 24 trades (88% win) – Average Gain +20.60% Comments: Again one of our best performing trade types, as it has been for multiple years. Number of trades down a bit from last year, seemed a bit tougher to find good entry prices overall this year. Win rate comparable to prior years, and very high. Pre-Earnings Straddles/Strangles 2017: 77 Trades - 61 win, 16 loss (79% win) – Average Gain +5.02% Breaking down further by hedged and non-hedged: Hedged – 28 win, 6 loss (82% win), average gain +6.01% Non-Hedged – 33 win, 10 loss (77% win), average gain +4.24% 2016: 18 trades (72% win) – Average Gain +5.19% 2015: 44 trades (68% win) – Average Gain +2.61% 2014: 74 trades (62% win) – Average Gain +2.54% 2013: 104 trades (57% win) – Average Gain +1.35% Comments: Trade count spiked up significantly this year as hedged straddle trades (beginning in 2nd half of year) gave a lot more trade opportunities. Highest percentage of winning trades ever. Very low risk trades as it takes RV levels going much lower than prior cycles for these trades to be significant losers (only 4 of 77 trades has losses over -10%). No reason to limit the number of these trades that you have on at the same time as big market upturns/downturns will help these trades but they can also be winners during normal market times. Initially, there was some fear that the short hedges may hurt overall performance but thankfully this was not the case as the win% and average gain were both higher than the non-hedged trades. Index trades (RUT, SPY, SPX, TLT) 9 Trades – 8 win, 1 loss (89% win) – Average Gain +19.72%. 2016: 27 Trades (67% win) – Average Gain +3.01% Comments: RUT Broken Wing Condor: 3 win, 1 loss, average gain +6.10% TLT Iron Butterflies: 5 win, 0 loss, average gain +30.62%. Great trade idea on this one. Kudos to @SBatch on this idea, I believe. Longer duration trades, typically open for 30-60 days. VIX-based trades 16 trades – 12 win, 4 loss (75% win) – Average Gain +9.25% Breaking down further by trades for contango and those playing for VIX spikes: Contango (VXX/SVXY) – 10 win, 0 loss (100% win), average gain +29.70% VIX spike – 2 win, 4 loss (33% win), average loss -24.83% 2016: 16 trades (56% win) – Average Gain +1.34% Comments: Those trades playing for the continued low volatility were some our best performing trades with 100% wins and average gain near +30%. Those trades playing for VIX spikes were our worst performers – low win% and average loss of near -25%. I view these trades primarily as portfolio hedges, so in that respect the losses are kind of acceptable to me. Other may not view these trades as hedges – but after multiple years of a flat/declining VIX will a small number of upward spikes (and spikes to VIX levels still below 20) saying we are due for a larger VIX spike and opening trades for it sounds foolish to me. I’m sure such a spike will happen at some point in time, but many people have lost a lot of money over the past few years playing for such a large and prolonged spike. Other Trades A few post-earnings Iron Condors on FB were both successful at around +30% gains. These trades played for stock price to stay relatively stable after earnings. I’d like to see more of these trades in the future as there appear to be quite a few stocks that have a tendency to stay calm after earnings. The one caveat being that we can’t go overboard and have too many of these open at the same time because large overall market moves can really hurt these trades (unlike straddle trades where such overall market moves will help).

I just wanted to say thank you and Happy New Year to @Kim and all the mentors and other SO members who have given so much of their time answering my questions and guiding me. It really is appreciated and i look forward to an even greater 2018 with Steady Options!

Happy New Year Kim and the team for your guidance, patience and all the help towards me becoming a better trader. I also would like to thank @Yowster, @SBatch, @krisbee, @RapperT, @cwelsh for not only sharing their trading ideas but also explaining in details the rationale, risks and rewards. You guys really make this forum even more special. Some day I hope to start coming up with ideas of my own and start sharing to keep paying forward. Sincere thanks and best wishes for you in 2018!!

Happy New Year to all and thank you for all the good discussions we had in 2017!

Joining all the wishes! I've been with SO since the beginning. There is nothing like it! Very excited about 2018!

Great thread. Happy New Year to everyone. Im grateful to be part of a winning trading community. Here's to another huge year in 2018!

Happy New Year to all.. I am VERY excited about the new year and SO... So many new strategies and opportunities. It's going to be a banner year !!!

Happy New Year everyone. I hope it brings blessings and good fortunes to everyone of us and to everyone on earth. We really need evil to be banished and I hope it happens this new years. If anyone is in San Diego and/or Southern California and wants to get together sometime, please let me know. All the best.

Happy New Year. Now to make up for any of my misgivings, I do brew my own cerveza, so if there is a big gathering among members, ????

Thank you @Kim, @SBatch , @Yowster and all others members. I started trading in January and used mulitiple services. Happy I was able to find this service as I enjoy this style of trading a lot.

Joining too. Thank you guys for you patience and wiliness to help. And for sharing the ideas...

@Yowster Thank you for the excellent analysis as usual. And big thank you to our great community that continues to feed us with great trading ideas. Straddles definitely took a central stage this year, thanks to hedged straddle idea from @Yowster. Not only it improved the average return per trade, but did it with less risk and allowed us to take much more of those trades. Trading VIX spike was ugly in 2017 (we are not alone, see How To Lose $197 Million Trading VIX article), but it also provided us a nice hedge. Big thank you for other mentors for their great ideas @SBatch and others, and of course our partners from Lorintine @cwelshand @Jessefor their great contribution. We had an amazing year, and I'm looking forward to have a great 2018! Happy New year everyone!