<p>I’m very skeptical about individuals who claim to be successful day traders especially in this market. Several people I know who have been relatively successful over a number of years actively trading have been getting decked. Somebody can be lucky for a while, but these days its going to catch up to them. What I find really amazing is multi X etfs. There is enough volatility without multiplying it by 2 or 3. The street keeps coming up with ways for the individual investor to screw himself.</p>
<p>The people that I’ve seen that have been successful have been either very disciplined or they went short and hold since the summer.</p>
<p>I know someone who is a daytrader for 10-year. He is reasonably succesful, ie he has no permanent job so he must be able to support his family on trading income.</p>
<p>Remember Hilary Clinton built her fortune from trading futures. There are winners and losers in this game. Disclaimmer: much more losers than winners.</p>
<p>Back to main point of focus: how are you profitting from this high volatility ?</p>
<p>I give my own stats: </p>
<p>SPY 88:87 put spread, made 1 point from 0.60 paid, 40% profit
AIG 2.5 call. Sold when trade went against me, broken even except paid 2 commissions</p>
<p>soon as i revealed my trades, everybody clammed up!</p>
<p>I had a few good QLD trades yesterday. Looked like a wall-to-wall jam/short squeeze until the last 15 minutes. I did get out in time. I missed about 15 $COMPQ points after I sold but a bird in the hand…</p>
<p>Yesterday was nice as I didn’t have a lot of interruptions.</p>
<p>"Back to main point of focus: how are you profitting from this high volatility ?</p>
<p>I give my own stats: </p>
<p>SPY 88:87 put spread, made 1 point from 0.60 paid, 40% profit
AIG 2.5 call. Sold when trade went against me, broken even except paid 2 commissions" - How about all your other trades for the last 6 months to year?</p>
<p>Doc, nice try. The subject matter is “how you take advantage of this historic volatile market”. Basically I have been in cash on my trading acct since the downfall began
and only tested the water recently.</p>
<p>Tried gold, but its strange, gold took a slide too bec it fizzled from $1000/oz bubble. Took some hit on AUY but somewhat lessened by covered-calls. Still dont like the idea of covered calls. We are in situation where flight to safety = where is safety ? Cash is king. But cash looks ridiculous where market rebounds. Minor scalping is what’s happening now for me. Your turn.</p>
<p>yourworld: Apparently you’re such a great trader, this is all you do for a living? or you’ve been so successful over time, that you’re retired?</p>
<p>I would agree that scalping is a good way to go in this market.</p>
<p>Gold is trading considerably higher than spot and there’s an effort to get better pricing on physical in the works. Hedgies loaded up on commodities, though, and that has to be unwound. I read recently that hedges were shorting commodities recently.</p>
<p>Why don’t you like covered calls, yourworld? They’re a key part of my recent trading strategy. I’m mostly in cash at this point, but have a couple of stocks that I’d like to keep for the long term. I’ve sold out-of-the-money calls on them a couple of times each, on days that the overall market has rallied. I sell relatively short term, like 2-3 months out. The calls expire; repeat process. The gain isn’t large, but repeated 2 or 3 times a year it generates some income. And the strike price is set to be a price that I would be happy taking a gain on the stock if it actually hit that price.</p>
<p>These are stocks where I own a minimum of 1000 shares. Anything less that than is probably not worth writing covered calls on.</p>
<p>looks like the latest meltdown was induced by mutual fund redemption and hedge funds unwinding. And it successfully tested DOW 8k. Now hopefully mutual fund inflow is positive.
Midday reversal makes it harder to call these days if you are scalping. Maybe I should set a rule trade only after 2pm.</p>
<p>covered calls means you own the stock, a greater investment (than the opt) and therefore more risks. And because you have short call on it, you can’t stop loss your stock. So when it tanks, the premium I collected wasnt enough to cushion the fall.
Dont get me wrong if its working for you, thats great.</p>
<p>Its midday reversal that i most worry about. How are you dealing with it?</p>