Leaderboard

@FrankTheTank It would depend on how accurate a normalized RV statistic would be, but I don't consider it a requirement. For the short-term straddle trades I tend to look at the relative RV behavior (ie. how well the RV tends to holds up) instead of looking at an absolute RV level. For the hedged straddle trades (with much more time for RV to decline) I do tend to look at absolute RV levels in that I want the adjusted RV down to a level that compares well to prior cycles at short expiration - but for these trades I only look at stocks that have weeklies available.

This is indeed very important - and not only in options that only have monthlies. To add to this, in the RV calculation that GF58 shared the exact DTE is essential to the calculation. As you saw in that prior trade the difference with standard vol.HQ RV can be large

Can we modify RV to be "normalized RV" or "nRV" in the charts which takes into account the number of days between earnings and option expiration? This impacts all trades but is especially important for monthly expirations. It is very misleading to look at an RV chart like this one for HLT and assume each RV lines is showing the same thing. In this current cycle the options expire the same week as earnings whereas in the cycle prior options expired 3 weeks later. Maybe at the most simple level nRV should be nRV = (option spread price / stock price) / D D = days between earnings and option expiration Would love to get @Djtux @Yowster and @TrustyJules comments on this.

It makes sense about having a specific location but maybe not the SO way. One of the things I found frustrating early on was that there was a massive amount of info on how to do these trades spread out in many, many discussion topics. Yeah, the "must read topics" cover the basics, but the nuance was spread out everywhere. Eventually I realized that it would take a herculean effort to consolidate the knowledge spread out in all those different topics and I gained more by having to make notes and chase it down than if it was spoon fed to me. I don't believe anyone will succeed at this without putting in a lot of effort but I have certainly succeeded with what I've learned here and I'm still learning. I have looked at other trading sites and actually tried memberships in some recently, trying to learn whatever type of trading they were claiming to sell. In every case, they were a failure. But if I can succeed here, and am willing to put in the same effort with those other sites, why did I fail there? Maybe said failure wasn't me, so I dropped the memberships.

I think a lot of people, myself included, tend to be lurkers and quiet readers more than active posters, so there's probably some selection bias happening either from those who are totally new and suffered multiple losing trades in succession and want to vent about it, or experienced traders who are actively contributing setups along with their trade history. I joined SteadyOptions exactly 2 months ago today so I realize I'm still very new. But in that time, I've sustained an 80% net return over 66 trades (mixture of official trades and my own simple overnight long straddles/strangles). There have been some rough moments (case in point, the DIS hedged call fly or various failed calendars), and I have no expectation of ever attaining the official returns because they don't account for commissions or slippage, but I am still extremely pleased with the performance. Attached is my SO trade log if you'd like to see how I arrived at that number. Cheers, and happy trading! SO_trade_log_FlingThorn.xlsx