Derive pleasure from following your trading rules, not from profits

One of the most difficult things in trading is associating pain or pleasure with following (or not following) your trading rules, and not from your day-to-day trading results.

Trading results are random. That is a fact.

For example, let’s say you have an edge that results in you being profitable 60% of the time. This means that you will still lose money on 40% of your trades. Beating yourself up for these losses has zero benefit to you as a trader.

We are battling ourselves

The human psyche is fragile. We are battling our egos.

Sometimes in trading we get more concerned about being “right” than making money. This is why we sit on losing positions, hoping they come back in our favor. This is why we don’t take small losses, allowing them to turn into big ones.

I was stuck in a rut, which I’m working towards getting out of. Today has been a step in the right direction for me. Today my focus is on following my trading rules, not make a profit per se. This is really hard to do. Besides, isn’t the goal to make profits after all?

Associate positive feelings with following your trading rules, not the end results

Accepting that a trade is going against you and cutting it should be associated with positive feelings because you cut those losers early.

No one wants to lose money, and that’s why it’s so hard to associate a positive feeling with taking a loss. Taking losses sucks, and we all wish they were avoidable.

It’s difficult to do this. Losing money hurts. But, it’s important to reframe losses as a cost of running your trading business.

I have to remind myself to be impatient with losing trades. I can’t fear cutting a loser too soon. If trade doesn’t feel right and isn’t going the way I expect it to, it’s okay to cut it.

I have to remind myself to not look back at trades that have been cut loose. This look back bias makes me kick myself for not holding a trade longer. This is detrimental to my future trading performance, because I end up holding losers longer that should’ve been cut the moment they no longer felt like good trades.

I have to remind myself that I can always re-enter a trade if an attractive setup presents itself once again.

Dealing with randomness

Establishing a set of trading rules, and sticking to those trading rules has proved to me to result in more profitable trades rather than focusing on profits alone.

If you have a legitimate edge in the market, a set of good trading rules to follow, then profits will follow as result of disciplined trading.

This week was rough for me

I got my ass kicked this week by the market.

It started early in the week, when I bought WORK and SPCE call options, just before the market reversed course on Monday and sold off in the final hours of the day. Because the SPCE options expired on Friday of the same week, I had no choice to cut this loser. Only to see it rip higher Thursday and Friday.

I started the week in a hole, down $1,100.

I spent the rest of the week trying to climb out of the hole, only to make the situation worse. End result, down $4,000 on the week.

How did this happen?

Getting in a hole sucks. Spending the rest of the time trying to climb out of the hole led me to making sloppy trades, overtrading, and putting on trades that I wouldn’t normally make on SPY and IWM that I told myself were “hedges” in case the market sold again.

I forgot what was working.

I forgot how I made $12,000 in a matter of weeks from May 27th to June 19th.

Nothing seemed to work.

Every trade went against me as soon as I entered it. Or so I thought.

Either way, it doesn’t matter what they did.

What did matter was my mindset sucked. I was in a bad mental state, and desperately tried to “undo” my bad trades from the early part of the week, only to have even more bad trades to “undo”.

I wasn’t doing what works for me.

I started trading options expiring this week. I started day trading more even though I very much prefer swing trading a position for 1-2 weeks.

I cut winners too soon (primarily due to short-dated options being traded).

I let losers run on too long.

I added to losing positions.

I put on positions that were not favorable from the get go.

I spent too much time this week hoping for my positions to go in my favor.

Now is a time for reflection

It’s the weekend. My trading week sucked. But I still live to trade another day.

Goal #1 and always: DON’T LOSE ALL YOUR MONEY. When the money is gone, the game is over.

I’m going to take this weekend to reflect on my trades. I will review past trades further and understand what happened and why it happened. I will try to understand what my mental state was when I entered into those trades.

Trading is hard. It’s hard to tell by all the so-called experts all over social media. They’d have you believe they make profits all day. You rarely see is the hard part of trading. The part where it beats the shit out of you and makes you question why you started in the first place.

I share this for anyone else who had a bad day, week, month, or year. It’s not easy. It’s not supposed to be easy. I knew that. You know that. So take time to reflect, take care of yourself, and objectively review those trades and improve the process. It’s the only thing I know how to do.

Why you need to get better at taking losses

If you have any dreams of becoming a trader, one of the most important things you can do is take losses.

Taking losses is admitting defeat.

Taking losses is means you analysis was wrong.

Taking losses is unacceptable.

These are myths that we tell ourselves about taking losses.

The three most costly trading errors you can make

According to Mark Douglas, author of Trading in the Zone (book notes here) the three most costly trading mistakes you can make are:

Not predefining your risk
Not cutting your losses
Not systematically taking profits

Taking losses hurts. But why does it hurt so much?

On a psychological level, you don’t want to be wrong. Being wrong means losing money, and you don’t want to lose money. Losing money is painful.

Being wrong is a hit to your ego. It means your analysis failed.

Too often traders allow themselves to sit on a losing position, waiting for it to come around in their favor. I can speak from personal experience regarding this.

For about my first year of trading, it was so difficult for me to cut losing trades early on.

I didn’t know when to cut a trade. I thought to myself “if I just wait a little longer, the trade will come back my way. I just know I’m right.”

Frame losses differently: the cost of doing business

Losing trades are a business expense.

They are the cost of doing business as a trader. Don’t look at them as anything else. They are not a reflection on your analysis. They are not a reflection of you as a person.

Losses are merely the cost of doing business in an uncertain environment with uncertain outcomes.

Dave Portnoy is playing the media like a fiddle

For those of you who don’t know, Dave Portnoy is the CEO of Barstool Sports, and has taken on the persona of Davey Day Trader since sports were cancelled in March due to coronavirus.

Dave’s an avid sports fan and sports gambler, and trading stocks have given him and many others an outlet as the sports world is put on hold.

Now that Dave has gone on a winning streak, he’s called out the likes of those in the FinTwit community, including calling Ross Gerber a “SIMP” and Warren Buffett “washed up” and an “idiot”.

At first, financial media thought what Dave was doing was pretty cute. Fast Money would have him on their program and their panel of experts would give Dave advice on stocks.

But now they’re fed up with him. Interviewers appear to be defensive. Portnoy continues to remain brash as long as he continues to make money in the market.

What the media doesn’t realize is that they are being PLAYED by Portnoy for millions of dollars in free publicity.

And you know the sad thing?

This is the same playbook that Trump used to get free publicity through his 2016 campaign. The media believed there was no chance Trump could beat Hillary, so they built up Trump as the candidate so they could rag on him every time he said something stupid. Then he won the election and it wasn’t quite so funny.

This was the same playbook used by Lavar Ball to get free publicity when his son Lonzo Ball was at UCLA and getting drafted by the Lakers. Lavar was building up his own brand, Big Baller Brands, and leveraged media attention to try to monetize this idea.

He used his son’s hard work and accomplishments to push his own thing. It only ended once Lonzo Ball rolled his ankles multiple time in Ball Baller Brand shoes causing him to switch over to Nike, and suing a former brand partner.

The media gets played so hard. They fall for these electric, brash, loud personalities who say whatever is on their mind. Then they get defensive and attack when those loud people don’t do what they want them to do.

That’s what’s happening with Portnoy. As he continues to brag about his stock market gains, financial media and those in the financial space grow more and more resentful of the man.

Thing is, Dave doesn’t care about making money in the market. Once the world goes back to normal, and sports come back into our lives, Dave will go right on back to running Barstool sports. Except now the Barstool sports brand has been exposed to tens of millions of people who may not have otherwise heard of them.

So, financial media, you are being played. You fed the beast, the beast has become bigger. Now you are upset that Portnoy is making a joke out of the financial industry.

To the mainstream media in general: you get played so hard repeatedly, and you don’t even realize what is going on. While your attention is on Dave’s trades, he’s busying enjoying all this free publicity at the benefit his brand.

Don’t like it? Stop giving him attention. That’s it.

I’m sorry for anybody shorting this market

This is a difficult market to get a read on, that’s for sure.

Shorting the market right now is a fool’s errand. Whether you believe liquidity from the Fed is driving the market higher or not doesn’t matter.

The market wants to go higher. That’s where the path of least resistance continues to be at the moment.

Selloffs are very few and far between. You have to be tactical and quick with any shorts in this market. They can payoff, as they did for me on Thursday and part of Friday. But they stop working very quickly.

We are all waiting for the next big selloff. It may come. It may not. For that reason you have to be careful until we get there.

I learned my lesson last year

I got burned time after time shorting the market for the larger part of 2019.

I was focused on fundamentals, trade war headlines, and a seemingly deteriorating market.

So I shorted consistently all of last year. I came very close to blowing up actually. I was down 80% at one point.

It wasn’t until March of this year that my short positions paid of very handsomely and actually got me back to even despite the horrible 2019 year.

In recent weeks my trading has improved

I’m more focused on what VVIX and VIX are telling me in terms of volatility. If I believe these are trending higher, then I’m going to be biased to mix in long and short trades to capitalize on a move in either direction.

However, if VVIX and VIX are trending lower, them I’m biased to hold a majority of my positions long in the market, depending on what is moving on that given day. In recent weeks, I’ve been able to make good plays on the likes of XLF, GS, JPM, BA, UAL, RCL, CCL, F, TSLA, XOM, AMD, NVDA, VIAC just to name a few.

Take profits and cut losers

I like to play options that are 2-4 weeks away from their expiration date. Weekly options (5 or less days to expiration) are too risky for my style right now. I like to give my options a little breathing room.

I watch my positions like a hawk. When I begin getting down 20% I seriously have to consider cutting this position and taking a loss. Once I’m down 40% I cut it no questions asked.

I also try to take profits on 50% of the position around a 10% gain (or more if it’s there). Then I take off another 25% around a 20% gain (or more). The I leave the final 25% of my position to run to see how far it can go.

Last week I had a SPY put option that I let run, that went from $90 to $630 in a matter of days. In the past, I would have never let it go that far because I would’ve booked all of my profits too soon. But because I had already closed out 80% of the position at a gain, that last contract I was holding was essentially risk-free and I had no problems holding it for a little longer.

If you want to learn more about trading psychology, I highly recommend you check out my notes on Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas.

Been playing lotto calls on big movers…

This market is insane. For that reason, I’ve been playing short-term call options on those names getting bid the most recently.

Banks, airlines, cruise lines, oil, casinos, retailers, are all industries I’ve dipped into and out of recently. I’ve traded it on short-term call options about 3-7 weeks out.

My main focus is to take of 1/4 of a position at 10% profits, another 2/4 position at 20-30% profits, and then let the remainder of the position run. Taking profits is critical to setting up risk-free trades.

That’s the way it has to be played right now.

It’s very very very easy to adopt a bearish mindset right now.

The market is going insane.

But I’m thinking about it like the tech bubble.

My main focus is to keep my holdings short. I never held any of my lotto positions past 2 days unless it was the 1/4 winning position remaining.

It’s much much easier to let winners run when you booked 3/4 of your position at a profit. Those runners have ended up making up my big home runs in recent days.

My best trade was UAL last Friday, which I booked at 361% profit. F also netted me 192% profit.

I cut losers at around 20-40% drawdown on these positions without any regrets. It’s worked out well so far. But that can change very quickly.

I was wrong

A few weeks back I was dumb enough to think selling would return to this ridiculous stock market.

I want to catch the next downturn. I think we all do.

Downturns provide opportunities for large profits.

Volatility events have been some of my most profitable times. The hardest part with shorting any market is being patient and strategic.

My gauge to short flashed

I have a few different metrics I monitor to gauge when are better times to short than others.

They began flashing on May 11 and 12, and sirens were going off on the 13th and 14th.

On the morning of the 14th, the market miraculously recovered. I felt like OPEX and VIX expiration would loosen up this market. Alast I was wrong. But, I ended up minimizing my losses from this due to position management.

Position sizing and profit taking

This is why position sizing and profit taking are key to succeeding in overcoming your emotions in the face of an uncertain future.

On May 12, I put on 100 SPY July 17 puts at the $110 strike for $0.03 per contract, totaling $300 (small bet).

On May 13, I took off 20 contracts at $0.06, for a total of $120. That was a 100% profit from the previous days price. Now, my cost minus proceeds received from this sale is $180 ($300-$120).

On May 14, I took off 20 more contracts at $0.10, for a total of $200. That was a 233% profit from the previous days price. Now, if I take the $180 above, and take off the $200 here, my cost minus proceeds now equals -$20 ($300-$120-$200). This means my remaining position is risk-free.

Risk-free? No way…

Yes way. I had 60 contracts left that could literally expire worthless, and I would have still made a profit on the entire trade. This is why it’s important to take profits along the way on any position you’re playing

Turned out I was wrong. But I played my signals, managed around the situation, and came out with a small profit (which actually turned into a small loss because I later added to it…).

But…I ended up with a smaller loss because I managed around an unknown future. At times in the past, I would’ve ridden the entire trade from top to bottom and loss damn near my full investment.

The return of selling in the stock market

I believe we are about to see heavy selling in the market once again.

We have seen the return of some selling, with the S&P 500 down 4.7% this week as of my writing on May 14th.

Why do I believe this?

Coming into this week, I expected a calm week with usual options expiration (OPEX) week behavior. From my observations, market makers can usually move markets and control price action more strongly some weeks than other.

Market makers can influence markets especially in times when volume is low and volatility is low. This week, the market has seen more selling than usual during OPEX week from my experience.

Not only that, but we haven’t seen the drastic moves in the S&P futures contracts overnight. Last week, it felt like every day we were seeing moves higher after a day of selling off during regular trading hours. See tweet below:

on moves 5-14-20

The last time I remember feeling like this during an OPEX week was for the trading week ended February 21, 2020 and we all remember what followed over the next month.

What are gamma levels saying?

On May 11, 2020 I noted that $2.2 bn in positive gamma was coming off books this opex Friday.

tweet 5-14-20

Now these options could have been rolled out or closed altogether. We never really know. But I expected much of this gamma exposure to be moved in a manner that would bring us closer to zero gamma.

With all the selling this week, gamma levels have now turned negative across the board according to spotgamma. This is not good if you are bullish equities right now.

spotgamme 5-14-20

While component gamma is still positive, per Squeezemetrics, and DIX signals that Dark Pools continue their buying binge, I can’t ignore headwinds that we are going to face in the next week or two.

squeeze 5-14-20

What headwinds are we faced with?

Will we see a second wave of infections?

What businesses are going to go out of business for good?

How many of the now 36 million lost jobs will actually be recovered?

What will be the recovery time of those lost jobs?

What kind of demand shocks are we in store for over the next year or two?

How far is the Fed willing to go with their monetary policies?

Will the Fed buy equities?

With all of these questions unanswered, it’s very difficult to be bullish right now.

The rise of the carry trade

One great book I’ve been reading lately is The Rise of Carry: The Dangerous Consequences of Volatility Suppression and the New Financial Order of Decaying Growth and Recurring Crisis by Tim Lee, Jamie Lee, and Kevin Coldiron (Amazon affiliate link)

This book has been eye-opening to me. The authors have elegantly connected the dots between Central bank interventions, interest rates, the carry trade, bringing all of these elements together.

The concepts explained in this book made me understand why fundamental analysis seems to matter less these days and why Federal Reserve press conferences garner so much attention.

What is the carry trade?

A carry trade is a type of trade that makes money when “nothing happens” or when volatility is low (variance of price is low). This trade is similar to selling insurance, where you collect a premium in exchange for taking on downside risk of some event taking place.

A carry trade can be done in a number of ways. The term “carry trade” is a broad term that groups these different types of trades together.

What are the features of a carry trade?

The features of the carry trade include leverage, liquidity provision, short exposure to volatility, and a “sawtooth” return pattern of small steady profits punctuated by occasional large losses.

What is an example of carry trade?

One type of carry trade is a currency carry trade. In this trade, you borrow a currency that has a low interest rate, then use that money to buy another currency that pays a higher interest rate.

The goal of this trade is to profit on the difference between the interest rates.

However, one problem with this trade is that on its own, it doesn’t have high yields. The payoff for this trade is small, so to increase returns and make these investments more attractive for investors, those who do these trades employ significant leverage. Leverage on such trades could be 10 to 1, 20 to 1, sometimes even 60 to 1 leverage.

Why are carry trades popular with investors?

Carry trades generally will return steady profits for extended periods of time. This is what makes them attractive to investors. During boring times in the market with low volatility, these strategies are profitable.

What are the drawbacks to the carry trade?

When the carry trade loses money, it has the potential to lose a lot in a hurry. This massive loss potential is due to the amount of leverage used in a carry trade. Because the carry trade relies on stability in prices (low volatility), any behavior outside of “normal” behavior leads to high volatility and high losses.

In addition, carry trades have an effect of increasing liquidity as the carry trade expansion phase goes on. This leads to a carry bubble. As the carry bubble pops, the carry trade has the opposite affect on liquidity. The decrease in liquidity in the market happens because carry trades are forced to be reduced or closed altogether.

In this sense, the cycle of the carry bubble and carry crash and the economic cycle have become one in the same.

To be continued…

Good articles for more information

The World Is One Big Carry Trade – institutionalinvestor.com (intro below)

As I watched a 2,000-point sell-off in the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Thursday, March 12, I realized that Tim Lee — the founder and chief economist at piEconomics — had got it all figured out before he recently retired.

Along with co-authors Jamie Lee (no relation) and Kevin Coldiron in The Rise of Carry, he laid out his theory of how unprecedented levels — and types of — central bank intervention in financial markets over the past few decades have turned the global economy into a series of overlapping carry trades…

This article and series of articles continues to be a work-in-progress.

Back to work here…

Hello friend!

I’m back to working on this blog starting this month.

This is what I’ve been up to

The months of February and March were crazy with the coronavirus and its impact on the market. I was busy most of the time in these months trading, documenting, programming, and continuing the improve and refine my trading processes.

2018 (with emphasis on the last three months of the year) was extremely rough for me. I fought the Fed multiple times on trades and I lost. I was actually looking for jobs in January and February because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to continue trading.

That changed, fast

Volatility in the market took off. I held short positions that profited insanely. Negative gamma had proven to be my ally. Convexity won out.

This extended my runway another 4-6 months at a minimum. It’s been a scary ride but I’m loving every minute of it.

What’s to come

Anything that I’m interested in. I’m currently interested in the following things, in no particular order.

Understanding gamma exposure deeper
Other options greeks and their effects on markets
Higher order options greeks (vanna and volma)
Game theory
Kelly criterion and position sizing
The rise of the carry trade
Federal Reserve operations
The current state of the economy
The current state of politics in the world
Python programming
Calculating gamma exposure from easy to obtain information
Building trading dashboards

That’s just a few I can think of off the top of my head.

Follow this blog to stay updated.