Maji

I am glad that things did not get worse but I am sorry to hear about your losses too. On a lighter note, you were just too big to fail and TT helped you out. It is a lesson to all of us... stick to position sizing.

Someone in my family wants to learn swing trading stocks. Is there any suggestions from the community? Thank you.

Congratulations to @Yowster. His insights and suggestions has helped me and I am sure many other members here.

You are a Caucasian Texan in the investing industry and you have a liberal slant!! Are you an unicorn?

@Rob by demo you mean paper trading account?

TT does not have charting of spreads... they are “working “ on it is what I hear from their customer support.

Based on what I read on IB's website, if I fill in an account opening paperwork, I am allowed to start paper trading. After I fund the account, I will then get to live trade... obviously! My question is: 1. If I don't fund my account, how long can I have the paper trading account? 2. Does the paper trading account have live streaming quotes or are they delayed? In reality, I am just trying to find a way to plot the intraday charts for mainly calendar spreads. I trade with TT and don't have that ability. I also don't need live data, I can just plot the intraday charts at the end of the day and check what the general minimum and maximum values of the Mid prices. If someone knows a better way that is free, please let me know. Thank you.

I believe IB has intraday options spreads charts where you can plot the mids of calendars etc. Is that possible on ThinkOrSwim or on TastyTrade? Thank you.

Bye but hope to see you back soon.

I never put real money to test it. The stop losses can get triggered more frequently than the deltas suggest during gyrations we are seeing currently.

Congrats... you won a small lottery... now time to buy Lotto tickets

man... you are brave to take up those trades...

No he did not... I guess that is something he found out through backtesting...

@CPO... please take a look at the second image in my initial post. The purple line shows that the spread is making money even when the market is crashing as the IV has increased. Compare it with the first picture. The risk is around $1800 per spread and the reward is $200. So, in order to prevent those kind of large losses, the deep OTM put comes to use. Actually, the person who made the presentation showed his PnL curve during last February's mini market crash..

@scubaskeeter The protective puts are really in case of crashes... they are basically cost of doing business. For SPX spreads, where each spread risk is $1800, a $20 insurance is cheap. For the sake of the system, a May 18, 120 Put for 0.02 will be the insurance. Remember, this will not protect you from the normal stop loss being triggered, but will come into play if the market crashes and the market has gone through your stops. The elevated volatility will increase the cost of this put which will help to offset that loss.