r/thetagang

each will have 12% of my $120,000 fund

Keep it friendly and civil; this is not WSB and automod will censor your posts at will for unsavory and unfriendly remarks. Try to keep shit posting and bragging to a minimum.

Keep it friendly and civil; this is not WSB and automod will censor your posts at will for unsavory and unfriendly remarks. Try to keep shit posting and bragging to a minimum.

I have a joint account with a buddy. Usually trade one spread a day (iron condor, put, or credit spread usually). Usually we go 1 or 2 weeks making $50 to $100 dollars a day, and then we get a loss that wipes out all gains or, like in the case of that huge drop on QQQ a few fridays ago, we lost nearly half the account. The account was 11K, and with that loss, it's down to 6 K.

My friend is the main executor, while I continue adding money to the account from other sources of income. So I see that he's lost us 5K am an incensed. So, we talked and determined to set a stop loss. For our account size? Not sure what the stop loss should be, so we said about $200. So another couple of weeks go by and we make our usual daily gains and then yesterday I see we lose $800 on another spread. He told me he had moved the stop to $500 for leeway.

I said, "I thought we had a $200 stop?". And he said "from now on, very strict" etc etc.

But I am monitoring our progress. Usually we only go into the red on these spreads anywhere from 40-50 bucks at the MOST and then end up green on those winning days. Keep in mind our account size is 6K.

Is it hard for a spread trader to set a stop loss? I am thinking, "dude just get out at $200 in the red, what's so hard?" but it clearly is hard. And I am doubting his ability to manage our losses, which usually happen on a Friday and are 10% or more of the account lost (we've had 3 major losses now in 2.5 months, $800, $5k, and now $800 again.

If you are experienced with loss management in spread trading please give me some advice on how to minimize these horrible losses. Is it a matter of just setting a stop loss and sticking to it? Please let me know what we can do to improve on this matter, and I'll be very grateful!

I recently got into trading options on a $600 account. In the past 2 weeks I’ve turned into $1400 on SLS and DRTS 30DTE. Now that I know enough to know I got pretty lucky so I’m trying to understand how I can use the Greeks to find some asymmetrical plays.
My question is, what do you look for on IV and theta on a 60-180DTE? For example, would an IV under 80 with a theta of less than .004 bite me in the ass if it trades sideways for a month? Can Vega save me or should I only target high IV and play a strategy to capitalize on IV crush?

Keep it friendly and civil; this is not WSB and automod will censor your posts at will for unsavory and unfriendly remarks. Try to keep shit posting and bragging to a minimum.

been reading about the wheel for months. feels like the most "can't lose" strategy when you're just watching youtube videos about it

Decided to actually run it on a trading game sim first before committing capital. 30 DTE CSPs on SPY, 0.3 delta, the usual boring stuff

first week was great. collected premium, felt like a genius
second week SPY dropped 2% and im sitting in a sim position that's red by more than the premium I collected

obviously I knew that could happen. but knowing and feeling it are different things. Seeing those red numbers even on fake money made me realize I was way too confident about getting assigned at a strike I "didn't mind owning"

Sim doesn't teach you the real emotional side but it does expose holes in your thinking before real cash does. I would've been that guy panic closing a CSP for a loss if I went live immediately

gonna run it another month. see how it handles chop. the boring stuff is the point I guess

Trying to get more disciplined about portfolio-level risk instead of trade-by-trade. The setup that makes sense to me: beta-weight every position's delta to SPY, then run the book at −5% / −10% to see aggregate P&L, margin hit, and how many assignments cluster.

Problem is my broker won't give me that view cleanly and doing it in Excel is pain. For those who actually run scenarios like this what's your process? And for the folks worried about correlation breaking in a real tail where beta-weighting arguably lies to you, how do you adjust?

Keep it friendly and civil; this is not WSB and automod will censor your posts at will for unsavory and unfriendly remarks. Try to keep shit posting and bragging to a minimum.

been reading about the wheel for months. Feels like the most "can't lose" strategy when you're just watching youtube videos about it

Decided to actually run it on a trading game sim first before committing capital. 30 DTE CSPs on SPY, 0.3 delta, the usual boring stuff

First week was great. collected premium, felt like a genius
second week SPY dropped 2% and I'm sitting in a sim position that's red by more than the premium I collected

obviously I knew that could happen. but knowing and feeling it are different things. Seeing those red numbers even on fake money made me realize I was way too confident about getting assigned at a strike I "didn't mind owning"

Sim doesn't teach you the real emotional side but it does expose holes in your thinking before real cash does. I would've been that guy panic closing a CSP for a loss if I went live immediately

gonna run it another month. see how it handles chop. the boring stuff is the point I guess

Keep it friendly and civil; this is not WSB and automod will censor your posts at will for unsavory and unfriendly remarks. Try to keep shit posting and bragging to a minimum.

Trades I took today as an option seller (07/02):

Closed Positions

• OUST → $52 Call (opened on 06/29), premium 3.40 → closed at 0.55. Net premium profit = 2.85 (~84% of premium captured, ~6.7% of capital). I was assigned OUST at $42.5.
• CRWV → $120 Call (opened on 06/29), premium 0.90 → closed at 0.18. Net premium profit = 0.72 (~80% of premium captured, ~0.6% of capital). I was assigned CRWV at $120. CRWV has been bearish since the META news, but I think we need more time for this to pan out. Does not hurt already existing contracts and this is an expaning sector.

New Positions

• AAOI → $175 Call, expiry 07/17 (2 weeks DTE), premium 3.30 → 330/17500 = 1.8%. I was assigned AAOI at $175.

Thoughts on Market

Today the market sold off heavily, especially in the AI and semiconductor names. I think this was a combination of profit-taking and options expiry. I am not rushing to roll down any positions. Instead, I focused on booking profits where it made sense and closing covered calls that had already hit my premium targets. I am not too concerned about this pullback. I will wait and see how things develop next week before deciding my next steps. The NASDAQ looks like it's forming a descending triangle and is currently testing the 25,825 support level. For now, it's a wait and watch situation for me.

https://preview.redd.it/bw3fmr57ovah1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=6e834600571b5a0be51bd7e01c686f256294d5dc

I keep sharing my daily trades in my account and the Excel file to my full list of positions is linked in my profile description. Happy to hear thoughts on my positions. What are you guys wheeling or watching right now?

PS: Not financial advice. Do your own research.

Keep it friendly and civil; this is not WSB and automod will censor your posts at will for unsavory and unfriendly remarks. Try to keep shit posting and bragging to a minimum.

I bought MU shares in my PM account with the plan to sell calls against them. A long term position.

Right before the close I bought 200 shares. Then MU went straight up. Tasty allows 24 hr trading so I closed them at about 9 pm.

https://preview.redd.it/db7bnmswsiah1.png?width=1365&format=png&auto=webp&s=966feb465d7dc706e9529a867ad466677fd57c61

Easily the best scalp that I have ever done. $36k profit in about 7 hours.