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I only started 1st week of Jan. 2018 and SO is allowing me to bring my trading to the next level. After becoming extremely annoyed that I was hardly getting filled with any of the official trades with the exception of the losing trades like UAL and a couple of the SVXY trades (down $1600 at one point) I took matters into my own hands and thanks to @Kim documenting all his trades and @Christof+ with AOT I was able to reverse engineer a basic set of rules for the straddles and calendars. And thanks to @Yowster, @RapperT, @Djtuxand @Maji I've been able to continuously fine tuning my rules. I think I'm only down about $500 at this point. A big *Thank You* to Kim, the mentors and the community making comments while I stick my neck out making my own trades.

Having completed a 100 CML trades, I thought I would summarise my results. Summary : 100 trades, 66 winners, overall profit of 12.1% PER TRADE. Here is a detailed breakdown, with further comments. Cons : I am cautious that most of the trades were done during the bull market phase and as a large number were long calls (65%), this meant I already had a helpful backwind pushing my trades/profitability upwards. There is heavy reliance on pre-earnings (70% of trades), and ideally, I would like to do more post-earnings too; or index/VIX based trades where earnings are a non-issue. Some of the CML test data has very obvious errors. I always checked the individual results of the backtests before I went ahead with a trade. The smaller/less-known stocks with low options liquidity tend to be more prone to data errors. It can feel a little like a roulette table - which may not necessarily be a bad thing if we are the casino owner with the edge in our favour. So far, I feel more like a sharp-suited, cigar-smoking casino owner, rather than a Joe punter. But this could be due to the first point above, about being in a bull phase. Pros : There was very little or no trade management involved - it was almost a set-and-forget type operation, where I would open a trade, put in my profit target and let the position close itself. This is a very strong benefit, as it makes for a mechanical approach, which is great esp for those with limited time. Very little time investment needed (related to above). Very easy to enter trades - whilst (and this is not a criticism at all) some SO trades can be frustrating to enter due to our strict price limits, my CML trades were opened at the mid price most of the time - within seconds/minutes of me putting my order in. I didn't even try to enter at lower prices than the current, because as the profit/loss amounts are much higher, say 40% either way, so paying a few cents more for a long call on CML didn't bother me too much. Very scalable, so definitely suitable for large portfolios. Tons of trades available. Short average trade holding times - 4.1 days - and this would have been much shorter if there were no short IC post-earnings trades, which tend to have long holding times. Other : Trades were opened in the last hour of the day that the CML tests suggested. I started in Nov '17 and was very active with CML during Dec/Jan, but did hardly any trades in Feb. My closing was based on around 40-50% profit, or sometimes, I would not put in a closing GTC order and close when the trade hit these levels or higher. I traded with very low allocations, and even then I've made enough money to pay for years of subscription fees for CML. I will now formalise/structure my CML trades more and will create a separate portfolio for this. I am under no illusions that a 12.1% return per trade is not realistic in a non-bull market environment, but even a 5% return would result in a very healthy cumulative annual profit.

Just to add to Jeff D's comments I have been a member for coming on two years now and also have made a lot of mistakes. My main ones were holding thru earnings because I didn't have a system for keeping on top of the dates. What I do now is review every morning what GTC orders I have in and adjust if stock prices have moved. I then look at all my open positions and check against my manual list of all the earnings dates of my trades and orders. I keep a log of all my trades the same as Kim does for his performance every month. My results are getting better all the time. Jan 18 was my best month yet. I did about 15 trades and got approximately the same results as Kim overall. 14% return in 1 month !!!!. I am very much enjoying the service and learning all the time from Kim and all the mentors and members. In Jan my main winners were IBM Hedged straddle, SVXY diagonal, LLY straddle, Msft hedged straddle, EBAY sraddle, FB calendar, TLT butterfly trade, Jnj hedged straddle, Goog calendar, sbux straddle, GS straddle. All these winners were above 10% and LLY was as high as 60%. I had losers NFLX Calendar, FDX, CSX Calendar,Ual calendar and Qcom straddle and one big mistake where I held WBA thru earnings while travelling and not been on top of the earnings dates. Many thanks to all of the community for all your help.