Day 49

Market Recap

The market moved down today.

• SPY declined by ~2%.
• QQQ declined by ~2.62%.

Trading Update - Meltdown

On Thursday this week, I wrote that:

I will evaluate whether I can double down on my winning tactics or if these results are just a function of my overall trading personality

I saw too much red on my page and made some impulsive and not so well thought out decisions.

As I am writing this down, I realize I do not know how to manage LEAPS. They have been the single biggest reason of the drawdowns in my account this year.

• Closed AMZN Call Credit Spread
  • Sold when position had already provided over 50% of original premium.
• Rolled MSFT Long Call
  • Tied in the loss ($423, ~8.6%) at a $680 Credit for selling the LEAP and buying a new one.
• Rolled GOOGL Long Call
  • Tied in the loss ($572, ~25%) at a $220 Credit for selling the LEAP and buying a new one.
• With the new credits received due to rolling the calls, and the cash released by closing the AMZN Credit Spread, used the new Buying Power to Sell 1 META Put Credit Spread
  • Sold a 14∆, $10 wide PCS, receiving $134 in Premium

Portfolio Status

• Today's Change: -10.42%
• Year-to-Date (YTD): -12.45%
• All-Time: -26.27%
• YTD Comparison:
  • SPY: -5.98%
  • My Portfolio: -12.45%

As I said in my previous post, I have now spectacularly fallen behind SPY.

I am barely ahead of SPY. One more down day, and I could fall behind.

Here are the open positions.

Trade History

Here are my last 20 trades:

Plan for Next Week

I need to find a way to crawl out of the hole I am in.

Mostly, I need to find a way to exit out of the LEAP positions.

The LEAPS take far too long to go in green and I keep making mistakes in rolling them out. So they are not suited to my trading style. I almost feel it is time to not fight that fight and instead just focus on Selling the 45 DTEs Puts or Diagonals or Vertical Spreads. Today is telling me to double-down on my winners, as I mentioned yesterday.

I reviewed my trade history and found some key insights:

1. Overall Performance:
   • Excluding all Buys, LEAPS, and Hedges, I’ve realized a total profit of $1,359.76.
   • That’s an average of $52.30 per trade across 26 trades, with 80% success (5 losses).
2. Performance of 21+ DTE Trades:
   • Filtering for trades entered at 21+ DTE, I had 8 trades.
   • Total profit: $925 ($115.63 per trade).
   • Only 1 loss, which was well-managed - closed when the loss as a percentage of premium received breached 100%.

There is still a silver lining amidst this madness. It is almost Day 50 and I have managed to not vaporize ~90% of the capital I started with. See my Day 1 post for my starting point of this journey.

Tune in next week for more on my foolishness!

📌 Disclaimer: Nothing on this site is financial advice—I’m just here to entertain! Here’s my introduction, my trading philosophy, and some ground rules.