Right, the idea here is to get paid to wait for the stock to come to you so it really is trying to do a bit of both. It seems like that won’t really work well.
^^ are you going to play with your food, or are you going to eat it!
Still playing silly games over here…today sold S&P 2100 calls and 2080 puts, expiring next Friday. If it goes to 2100 I get more short, if it goes under 2080 I close out some of my shorts, get two premiums, and either 0 or 1 gets assigned. Only lose if S&P goes over 2100, in the face of a looming rate hike and the current earnings recession, and more crappy holiday earnings on the way…if it goes higher I stay short and keep grinding away.
Last year the market started to get worried about the rate hike at the start of dec, do things get real next week? Some of my shorts have no puts, those I want to ride into the abyss. Come on, we need some rational fear!
^^ PA, did you get “more short” when S&P was at 2100 briefly? if so, you must be smug… and I’m jealous!
BUT how are you managing you 2080 short puts?
^ Yeah, it’s hard to remember every move, I’ve been churning weekly options for awhile now. Learned a fancy term, I think this is called a “strangle”? Or perhaps a “covered-short strangle”? But I call it “the fed channel”, swin in the channel and have fun boys! But the game is almost over. 
I accumulated more shorts over the last days and was a whopping 175% short my entire account value at the climax, the most short I’ve ever been. When the index got knocked down yesterday I closed out all my Friday 2100 short calls for gains, and closed some shorts, now 125%. The puts expiring today are 2080 and 2060 so that will close out more, will likely be 100% short to end the week.
Gotta save some shorts for the big crash, that’s the ultimate goal here. If it goes back up above 2080 again I’ll start adding shorts and selling Dec11 2100 calls. No more puts though, it’s crash time.
Are you covering your short calls/puts with any further OTM options? I’d highly recommend buying some protection, even if it’s 2200 calls and 2000 puts (depending on time to expiration). I’ve seen your current strategy do very well, very often, until it doesnt. Months or years worth of gains can be wiped out in a day w/ these uncovered startegies. Manage that risk!
Just short S&P futures, plus a strangle with short calls and short puts (mostly weekly). So the only bad outcome is S&P goes over 2100 (unlikely until the rates things gets sorted). I “manage risk” by ditching shorts during market shocks (yesterday) so that I can short more if it goes to 2150, and keep migrating my avg cost upward should this be a slight-up year. It’s not QE anymore, low probability of up up up with no vol.
I don’t hedge every outcome, people outperform by knowing what the market will do. Gotta have that part right.
Almost done with 2016 H2, just ran a realized gain statment from IBRK…
Option trades YTD = 24.
Wins = 23
Losses = 1 (and it was only a $96 loss)
Tickers: ES, AAPL, ASHR, USO.
Options added 4.4% to my portfolio return, the largest reason for outperformance.
For 2015 (my first year trading options) it was 14 of 16 wins. The two losses total to -$16, basically break-evens.
Yeah, I’m a bad ass. This doesn’t seem normal? There is some knucklehead on the other end that I keep beating.
Purealpha Insurance Co. Except without a risk management team or reinsurance protection. I’m actually surprised your still alive. A few of us were speculating that you were killed by shady margin providers in Korea. Though I see you’re now in Canada… Refugee?
Meh, I’m the best risk modeler around, don’t need to pay a team of numbnuts! 
Moving around the planet for fun, international citizen yo. Might immigrate though, pretty cool place.