If you are not aware, you will be after reading the next sentence. There are quite a few people who approach and use the stock market as a “stay at home” Las Vegas. They believe trading is all about luck and is “a gamble”, so that’s how they conduct their trading. This of course leads to all kinds of stupidity and dumb decisions, and our guest in this episode is geared around taking advantage of these opportunities. We’ve talked with Chris a couple years ago on the podcast, but we’re bringing him back for his update. If you’ve been around the community for any amount of time, I’m sure you know him better as his chat room alias “gocubsgo”… or as I refer to him as, “cubs”. Even if you have no interest in trading options, there is still a ton to be learned in regards to what it takes to set up a strategy and system that you can have full confidence in due to its consistency. Chris has been doing very well and it’s all thanks to the system he has built himself… which, is essentially a casino to take advantage of degenerate gamblers. Let’s go!
Notes:
In this episode we are re-interviewing Chris. He started trading 2 years prior to this podcast and as we left off last time, Chris had just begun his journey into selling options instead of buying options. This strategy worked well for him since it is a swing traders strategy and he didn’t have time to watch the market intraday.
As Chris learned more about selling options, he started to narrow down his risk profile from quite conservative to much more aggressive as time as gone on. This also leads him to not fear being assigned stock as the names he trades, he is willing to take shares of the company (most likely a good dividend stock).
Keeping trade sizes small to start ensures that no big losing trade can do any real damage to his account. He is also well versed in defending losing positions using various option strategies. The big emphasis he makes is repetition is key.
Chris has no desire to nail tops or bottoms but he can structure his trades to give him a much higher than 50% success rate with his usage of time (in the event he is wrong initially).
For newer traders, Chris recommends using the probabilities that are built into the option chain to spot high probability setups and to swing trade instead of day trade. With time you’ll start to understand the nuances and what you are most comfortable with in terms of risk.
Quotes:
It’s one thing to learn the basics but when you get comfortable it’s about efficiency and small tweaks.
I like finding those kinds of plays, doing them often and staying small so that you keep your account uncorrelated.
The longest roll was probably a year. Fitbit didn’t have an uptick since its IPO. Be reasonable about it and don’t size up.
UVXY accounts for 10% of my portfolio but it accounts for over 20% of my gains on the entire account.
