Because it's safe, although it's just a small market making activity and not my main focus. I make $0.10 per trade minus commissions, so need 100 of them to make less than $1K, but I'm also using this activity to observe how prices and volatility change, and learning too. I mean I don't know everything that I need to know yet
Simply sending orders to CBOE via Interactive Brokers. I can see my orders sitting at the exchange due to bid/asks prices. (I get fills once a week or so, so not much trading going on, just large orders)
Yes, those are my bots/algos. They just stream my algo trades to Twitter while I'm developing my trading system. (free, I mean I'm not selling anything)
Thank you @Herkfsu for starting this thread. Very interesting to read how professionals think and trade. I just buy or sell single legs based on my opinion. It is gambling/guessing not trading. I feel so inadequate. What should I do? Need to go back to school to learn some real greeks, but you can't teach an amateur old dog new tricks. Appreciate any suggestions any one has.
If that’d make you feel better, I probably paid the highest tuition (lost often) trying to figure out how to trade these ratio spreads. I’m still experimenting with them in terms of basic ratio spreads on regular stocks, and still lose. Only occasionally I may find a rare edge or clear mispricing that pays for those losses. Though there may be better setups to trade, so it’s like looking for the holy grail and finding a few clues, while the actual holy grail may be in a totally different place & direction, if it even exists.
It's through no fault of your own. You are not going to understand something you never do. Pick a high vol product... Shove 100 straddles in a sim, set vol to where the market is. and don't move it. Sit there all day watching the market and trying to flatten your deltas when price moves to capture your gamma and cover your daily theta. One day hedge every hour, one day hedge every x%, one day hedge every freakin tick, one day look at charts and hedge on support and resistance... Welcome to the world of coulda, shoulda, woulda. Do that for a week. You'll learn more about Greeks than you have in the past year. Next week do the same, but now move vols with the market...