Options Trading Monthly Report April 2020

I know this is a cliche and probably a lot of people are already doing this but I have decided to share my monthly options trading results for a year. I am hoping that this will make me a more disciplined trader now that the public can see and critic what I am doing.

I know a lot of us who trade options are data-driven, yet we tend to keep making the same mistakes again and again. It’s easy to just say “hey, I am only human” but I am sure that if we discipline ourselves and let the numbers do the talk (NOT emotion!) we should become much better traders. My hope is that by sharing some of the data and put it on a blog post about what I am doing every month, I will be able to see it objectively at what I am doing.

What’s shown here consists of about 70% of the trades. Volatility trades (UVXY, VXX) are not included here since those tend to be longer-term trades.

April – Monthly Breakdown

The PNL is based on the trades that were closed in April, which means some of the trades were initiated in March.

Single: Primarily selling single-leg Puts. Most of them were out of money and got out as soon as the profit hit around 10% of the capital used unless it’s very close to expiration, in which the position might be held until expiration.

Strangle: Traded airline, cruise line, and car maker. The primary reason for the negative PNL was lack of strategy formulation, especially for the airline positions in which I got in right before they started trending higher and hit the upper limit so I had to get out. In other words, the execution was good with the entry/exit point but did not have a good reason why the positions were opened in the first place. I guess I was just looking for some actions.

Vertical: Opened a position on EWJ as explained in this post. Based on the feedback I got from other traders, apparently, EWJ follows closely with the S&P 500 rather than the Nikkei index.

Cumulative PNL for 2020 (March-May 5th)

I should just focus on selling single-leg Put and forget about the other two based on this data. There are some single-leg Put positions that are negative right now so it will be interesting to see if those positions will be ended up being positive in the coming months.  Especially the USO positions were a bad idea. I did manage to catch a short spike for the USO at the beginning of April and got out right away, but jumped right back little before the oil price collapsed in the latter part of April.

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Tony

I have been trading options since 2010 and have been testing and experimenting with various trading styles. Fundamental Analysis based, Technical Analysis based, Trend Following, Day Trading, Swing Trading, etc.

My primary option trading strategies incorporate volatility and I am constantly experimenting with various trading strategies to improve my PNL.

I hold two Master’s degrees (MSc and MBA) with career experience as a cancer research scientist and a digital marketer.

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