HankPym's Trading Journal

Trading Journals
62

So, did some research last night and decided to start playing SPX today instead of SPY, with the larger amount I’ve been throwing into these positions. I did NOT expect this kind of return though…

Was gonna be a green market day after watching the early action, but I was playing the supports and resistances as they appeared. Using SPY/AAPL gave some easy entries/exits to my SPX. Needed a lot less movement to get my gains, and I got way more than I was anticipating. I started off playing 0dte super degen SPX, but slowly moved to slightly less degen friday exp. As long as I was right on the movement, I was getting 30-60% on almost all of the trades.

With the amount I played early, I reined it in. I realize that SPX is a double-edged sword, and definitely will be more cautious going forward. That said, it’s much easier to get targeted % gains from expected movement, so I’ll probably be sticking with it on days where my conviction is high.

Also played some LMT calls off the 486 daily low support and made out well there. Ended up getting out of the longer TSLA calls on Conq’s 300th reminder, as it just didn’t look as ripe for a strong move up off the bottom as it did yesterday.

My best day of the year. Account jumped 55% today. :cheers:

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SPY was down all day, and with VIX skyrocketing, it was fairly easy to play as long as you weren’t buying on the knifes. AAPL was leading SPY along often, and so you had to pay close attention to both. The eventual afternoon reversal was kindof expected, but I’ll talk about that in a sec.

I noticed a bunch of people were getting really heated about their personal opinions on market direction. I’ve been there and understand, but we can’t be doing that. There was a point where puts no longer worked today, and I saw people getting caught going heavier. We can’t be throwing our money away just to try and prove that we were right. We HAVE TO stay light on our feet. Keep position sizes manageable and average in/take profit often so that if/when we’re right or wrong with the direction, we can all capitalize. I switched from puts to calls after it looked like direction had reversed and made a ton more. Trying not to have an ego here. I’d rather make money than be right.

Anyway, really loving playing SPX with a large account. Makes maintaining high profit margins fairly easy (as long as you’re right on your convictions). When it’s not in a great spot for an entry, I just play AAPL or SPY. When it’s setup right, I play SPX. I was right almost every time with the SPX plays because of that (got caught once I think).

I had some 20Jan swing play entries on LMT and AAPL that I should have kept, but chickened out because I was not around much in the afternoon and didn’t want to get caught. Really should have just put a stop in and let it play out. Guess that’s a bit of compartmentalizing that I need to do with regards to plays that are scalps vs swings.

So today was much like yesterday. Lots of really big wins, fewer small losses. I’ve never been able to keep things going this well this consistently for this long. Hoping I’m on to a winning mix for myself. Account was up another 35% today.

Edit 1 - Added 100 AAPL 20Jan 130p when it was trying 132 as an attempt to work on my overnight swing play skills. Not gonna sell until tomorrow just to see how right/wrong I was.

Edit 2 - Looking at the morning to come, I probably picked the wrong day for a swing, considering the news that can swing things hard either direction in the morning. Also, picking puts as a longer play when it’s already a hard down day isn’t the right call normally. I really should have kept the calls I had played earlier at the bottom, but it is what it is. I picked a position and size that I can live with no matter what happens, so I’m not terribly worried about it. I’d like to start looking for more plays that fit the longer play criteria and just have those positions running in the background. It’ll force me to be able to switch hats better and quicker. There are so many times where rolling a good play from a fd to a month out would have been much better than just pulling it all out for profit. I need to be able to identify when I’m in one of those situations and transition properly. Things to work on…

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Today started with me selling the AAPL puts from yesterday and jumping into SPX calls when it appeared to bottom (2nd time). Played SPX mostly, with a few TSLA calls thrown in here and there for some big wins with the support and resistance levels and volume giving me easy reads for entries and exits. Then the market got messy… I was pretty restrained in my afternoon plays because nothing really was setting up very well. I did jump in some TSLA calls for ph with some of you just to keep things interesting, but they ended up being a bad idea. Really my only loss of the day because I was more careful (other than that one play).

I am ending up with 15% profit on the day. This has been a bonkers month for me. If you would have told me that I’d be up over 1900% for the month when it started, I’d have paid you for the comedy bit. The fact that it’s come in such a consistent manner is the part that I’m REALLY excited about though. I hope that my callouts during this time period have helped at least some of you. I appreciate the continued votes of confidence and the help that we are all able to give each other. This really is such a unique trading community and I’m grateful to be a part of it with you.

Have a wonderful Christmas and we’ll get back at it next Tuesday! :cheers::christmas_tree:

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Another good day in the books!

Watched SPY drop to 380 early, bounce off the support there, and then recover and bounce off the 383 resistance. At that point, it looked like we’d be ranging and I started looking for put entries in SPX. Played puts (Friday) until the drop to 381 (on SPY) and saw AAPL holding that 130 support pretty well. Switched to SPX calls, and also grabbed a longer out 20Jan call position for AAPL as it looked much stronger for the hold and climb. Got out during ph for some good profits.

Again, my positions probably would have been only modest wins without averaging, so making sure the initial position size was small enough that you can average in was key. Really have been focused on keeping my feet light and being agile enough to adjust to whatever the market was doing. I did really well today and only had a little while where I felt a little overextended due to averaging. I think I’m getting better at timing these additional entries, and it is making everything run smoother.

I’m out +8% for the day and holding 50 AAPL 20Jan 135c for a potential swing (unless it runs into the eod, and meets my limit sell). Hoping you guys had a great day as well!

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Today was rougher than it needed to be…

Started off poorly with calls on SPX/AAPL while it was nosediving, then averaged down at perceived supports that didn’t hold. Eventually got out. Was looking like one of my favorite days of the month where I give back huge chunks of my gains, but I didn’t give up. I let things settle, took a walk, and reassessed.

Played some call positions off the bottom (once it truly showed support holding) and started to eek out decent gains. Kept with my strategy of averaging and selling averages quickly to stay light, and got back to even after a couple really good runs. Then things got fun…

Started playing SPX call and put positions off single 1min candle movement. 0dte just barely otm. Most of these I didn’t call out as it was too quick. That said, anytime it got to a perceived support or resistance, I bought/sold more and called those out. Won the vast majority of them and with 103 orders today, I was busy. In the end, this got me the most gains today, but was exhausting. I don’t want to do this regularly, but felt like with it bumping up against a pretty good support level and at such a low level to begin with, it was gonna work (and it did).

Thought about buying some further out calls as a continuation, but things just don’t look good for long-term call action right now. I could be wrong, and we are bottoming, but I’ll leave that for other people. I’ll keep doing my scalping in the middle of the day when I can usually see the trend manifest easier. I keep getting screwed when I guess early/late.

Account actually up 20% on the day after going down as much as 15% during todays action. If you’re still trading, good luck on your power hour shenanigans.

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Other work starting to pile up, so gonna call it for the day.

Much simpler trade day today as everything wanted green. Pretty much stuck to SPX, and either fd or near expiry on strong conviction plays off support/resistance. Watching all of the usual suspects, it was fairly straight forward picking when things were going to move, and it hardly ever disappointed. I was in puts longer than I wanted today, but we kept banging our heads against a strong resistance at SPX 3855/AAPL 130/SPY 384.

Kept averaging in and out often with fairly tight stop losses, which kept money regularly coming in and very little that went out. Felt rather degenerate with the 0dte train I was running, so I (eventually) shifted to Tuesday expiry.

Grateful for the other voices in chat that help to bring a clearer picture to what is actually going on. We each can only see so much, so getting the quick snapshots of many viewpoints really helps me determine whether what I’m seeing is actually happening or not.

Up 15% on only 43 transactions. Today felt much more efficient and easier to manage. Looking forward to more days like today. Good luck with the rest of your trade day! :cheers:

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Alright, end of year post for me…

If I’m being honest, I had absolutely no clue this past month was possible. I have worked hard on getting better at the little things all year. Cleaning up my mistakes when I figured out what I was thinking that made me act in the way that allowed for the poor handling of a trade. Most of the year was a struggle with refining processes and mentality. It seemed to culminate for me during Thanksgiving weekend, and it’s been a helluva journey since.

Everyone is built differently. I find that I do my best trading when I’m right at the edge of what is possible. I’m actively engaged and the juices are flowing. I can assimilate information quicker and turn it into a potential winning play.

That said, maybe the biggest part of my learning this year has come on the back of big losses. Refining my exit strategies to the point where I rarely have those, even when I’m wrong, has been the biggest change that made this month possible. I know Conq probably is still shaking his head at my position sizes, but that’s what has made it work for me; I need to have enough in the game for me to feel it, but not so much that I fear it.

As far as today’s trades go, I spent most of the time micromanaging little candles, eeking out small gains regularly while SPX tightened between 3820 and 3825 and quickly stopped out when it finally fell below. The one big play I made was that deadcat bounce off 3800 SPX, and I definitely went too heavy, which made me get all the way out too soon (I was out at 3805 and it went to 3815 before coming back down). But that was the play that put me over the top, and I just couldn’t trade again after hitting that big mark.

I wish I had kept better journals early on when I was really struggling. Thinking back to a year and a half ago, when I first started trading options, I was a buffoon. Threw away money like it was toilet paper. That said, all of those experiences got me eventually here.

I also know that I won’t be able to maintain this trajectory forever, and need to be thinking about how to manage that (along with what to do with the account’s size). I think this long weekend is the perfect opportunity to go over what was, what is, and what could be. I hope you all take the time to do the same. Have a happy and safe New Year, and I’ll see you all on the other side. :cheers:

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I don’t think I will ever achieve in a month what you have, and I’m amazed at your abilities! I haven’t seen that kind of balance in my accounts before, and hope that someday I will, but I know my risk tolerance is way lower than yours and that kind of high risk/high reward investing style doesn’t mesh so much with mine. I hope to learn more from you during our stays here.

What you’ve been doing clearly works for you and I don’t think you should really change that style up much if at all. However, as you say, keeping up with this kind of trajectory will be challenging if not impossible. At this rate, you’ll be a billionaire by next month! But that’s not exactly realistic, right?

So although I may not be able to give advice on your trading style (and you shouldn’t take it anyways! What you’re doing works!), maybe I can offer some advice on what to do with those gains to hold on to them and not have that kind of balance be put at risk. One thing you could look at is capping your account at a certain level and pocketing a certain amount before resetting.

For example, let’s say you set a cap for yourself at $100k $200k, $500k, whatever. Any time you hit that cap, you take out 50% of the account and start again. Invest what you take out in safer vehicles. Long-term holds, GICs, index funds, real estate, boomer stuff. Or treat yourself. It’s your money. Then with the 50% still in the account, you continue trading as you are and you may find the smaller balances are more manageable.

I can only dream about having that kind of success but that’s always been my plan if I ever got to that level. Interested in seeing what you do moving forwards from here! And again, congratulations!

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Thanks @dibbles

After spending the weekend going through options (and consulting with my accountant, who couldn’t believe what I’d done), I’ve settled on withdrawing 90% of the funds when it reaches 1mil (if I can repeat that feat…) and rolling those funds into longer term accounts. I felt like, my success really started to take off after reaching that 100k marker, as it allowed me to lean into SPX options a little more when I felt strongly about the movement, which seems to be where I’ve been most successful. I still will play my SPY and AAPL and whatever else is setup well, but towards the end of the month it became clear that, if I was feeling strongly that the direction of the market was going the way I was choosing, that SPX was the vehicle of choice.

I want to try and refine what I’m doing to the point that others are able to duplicate it all, not just ride my callouts. I’m not exactly sure what the secret mix was this last month, and spending a good long break contemplating it really didn’t help me get closer to working it out (which tells me that I’m not looking at things correctly). It feels like it was just a combination of my trading style mixing with my daily plans in just the right way, but there may be a lot more too it. That said, I’m sure I’ll be able to get some help from the community in trying to pinpoint what I did (or hopefully, am still doing) that was working so well and hopefully finding ways to quantify and duplicate it.

I’ll be starting this all fresh come the morning, and will have to get back into trading smaller amounts again, but the focus was always on %, so it shouldn’t be too hard of a transition. Here’s to the start of a (hopefully) prosperous 2023!

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So um, guess I get to pick right up where I left off in 2022 :pepecelebrate:

Have to run, so this will be short (may update later with more detail). Bleeder of a day. VIX rocketed and DXY marched upward with tech in the doldrums, so stuck to SPX. Ran SPX calls off of supports for quick scalps all day. Bollinger bands and VWAP did a good job showing what was going on. Had a few puts here and there when I’d sell at what I thought was resistance and playing it both ways worked great, but I wasn’t able to stay too focused today as I kept getting pulled away from my desk. That said, with stops in place, I rarely had anything more than a small 2-5% loss on a failure. Almost all my plays were pretty significant gains. I only went heavy when it was near daily bottom for a bounce play.

166 trades today. Didn’t really feel that heavy, so either the break did me a solid, or I was trading smarter (or both). Either way, ended up a huge day… up 200% for the day.

I saw some good profit taking from others today as well. I hope everyone had a good one. Good luck with the rest of your day and let’s do it again tomorrow!

Edit 1 - Always fun to see that my last callout went over 100% gains if sold at close. No regrets though, it could have just as easily lost everything I’d gained while I was afk. Not sure whether I’m comfortable rolling gains out to further dates as a way of hedging me not being able to pay attention in this market. I really should just keep selling when I can’t stay on top of things. Maybe once the market has actually told us which direction we’re heading for the next while, but for now I’ll just keep taking profit on these smol technical movements.

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I knew today would be busy, I just didn’t expect it to be that busy before FOMC…

Tried to streamline my trades into SPX today with mostly 1dte, and had a few AAPL/SPX 20Jan calls late in the day. 132 trades, so again with the very active trading session, but this felt like more work than yesterday (figured it would tbh).

Before FOMC minute drop, mostly just played support and resistance lines. Looked for indicators to line up and then pulled the trigger. Again, I was significantly more right than wrong. Early on, I had some 0dte winners and quickly switched to 1dte after I had quick successes and volatility had dropped off a bit.

Had one real bad trade where I just left a limit order in while I got busy with some other work stuff and then sentiment shifted away from the play. I then doubled down on it with averaging… Gotta stop doing that, especially when I know I’m not focused on that trade. Other than that though, had some really big winners.

I think my favorite play today was the actual FOMC play that I ended up turning into an after play. I picked SPX calls, but as I’d stated beforehand, wasn’t super convicted about this FOMC having a strong effect like others had, so my position was small. The algos dropped hard, and I decided to go heavy averaging in at 3840. It almost immediately jumped from there, and I made a little over 42%.

I had a few callouts that came in later than I wanted, but hopefully they gave an idea of my thoughts on why I was doing what I was doing, in addition to the when.

With the FOMC being muted or at least closed to priced in, I’d expect us to have a green day tomorrow, so I grabbed some longer dated calls on SPX/AAPL. That said, I didn’t want to hold calls that were profitable overnight, so I sold them when they were decently green.

So, I still don’t exactly know why I’m so successful right now, but I’m not going to complain. FOMC had a lot to do with it today, and that’s not happening again for a good bit. I’d like to see me get my trades/day number down, but with my style of constantly averaging in/out, I’m not sure I can. Maybe I just have to shorten my trading day. I definitely felt a little overextended by the end today. But 130% profit on the day makes the exhaustion feel well worth the energies.

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So, I did in 4 days of 2023 what I did that whole month run to end 2022…

I may have to take a break from trading to celebrate with the wife and maybe let it sink in. This has been absolutely an insane trip. I don’t want to lose what I’ve been doing, but I really need to step back for a bit and enjoy this.

Was incredibly fun watching so many people get in on the plays and seeing the profits roll in. I don’t want that to stop either…

73 trades in a very early day, 65% to the green today. Gonna reset the account again and will be taking the wife out for the evening to assess. Good luck with the rest of the days trading!

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This is a great idea. Honestly from the bottom of my heart, congratulations on the gains. Phenomenal trading and getting to see it via the positions system has been incredible.

With that said, it’s definitely time to take a break. Streaks end and they often end abruptly and with your position sizing you’re only a couple bad trades from it all going away.

The best advice I can give to you is to get that money out of the account, take some time and come back with a much smaller account and “do it again”. Over the course of my time here, I’ve watched many people hit similar gains only to start running through them as quickly as they got them. Don’t be one of those people.

Incredible work my friend and I look forward to watching you trade more in the near future, after a well deserved and REQUIRED break.

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I can see when I’m not wanted anymore :joy:

Seriously though, I appreciate the nudge out the door. I’ll be back in a couple weeks. The wife has had a cruise she’s been wanting us to take, and now feels like the right time. Gotta completely disconnect for this to really sink in.

The plan was always to duplicate and take out 90%. I’ll keep doing that. Considering how correct I was about me being more effective once at 100k, the 100k to 1mil plan will likely stay in effect until it stops working. I’m curious how I’ll manage things once I hit a really bad run (bound to happen), but for now, I can just let this success sink in along with some extra sunshine.

I also want to take a moment to personally thank @Conqueror for making this trading community possible. I often find that people are only limited by what they believe is possible. You (along with @PaperhandsJB) made this possible for me by allowing me to see what you see. I’ve been able to take the best parts of what everyone shares on here (that speaks to my trading style) and incorporate them into my strategies, making them more and more effective as I go.

See you all soon (but not too soon). :heart:

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Congrats @HankPym! Enjoy the time off and I look forward to you re-joining us in a few weeks.

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Very well put and I strongly advise the same. From personal experience and losing a lot lol. Well done and looking forward to trading more with you.

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Also set some out for taxes if not in retirement account and don’t touch it. Don’t be a jackass and bet your tax money like so many here have done and been screwed by end of year. Always over estimate what you will owe. Develop your tax, attorney, estate, insurance team once you reach levels and keep a good team around you. Won’t go into more details and will try to post more on forum about finances etc soon. And congrats man. Hope this changes you and your family from here on out.

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Hope your time off has been going well!

Been re-reading your journal sometimes and I’m still not sure what you are doing.

You mentioned various indicators: Bollinger Bands, SMA 20, VWAP, RSI, and s/r levels, with emphasis on bollinger bands, s/r, and VWAP.

You mentioned watching SPY, AAPL, DXY, and VIX.

But how do you decide when to enter a trade? Is it kinda like you see >70% of your indicators pointing at one direction and then you enter the trade?

So for example, I’m wondering if it goes something like this:

  1. SPY is falling towards your s/r line.
  2. You are considering SPY/SPX calls or puts at the s/r as a pivot point.
  3. You analyze your indicators and tickers. Let’s say bollinger bands, SMA, VWAP and AAPL are bullish, but DXY and VIX are bearish.
  4. That’s 4 bullish vs 2 bearish. Enter SPY calls?
  5. Would it be SPX calls if all indicators/tickers were bullish, for example since you said you go SPX when conviction is greater?

Trying to see what you’re doing. Today I traded with this mentality of “stay simple. look at my few indicators/tickers” based on your journal and managed to get 2 out of 3 trades green. But you’re trading over 100 trades per day. Perhaps with the probability mentality that I laid out (as an attempt to deconstruct your analysis), that’s how you’ve found consistent success?

Thanks.

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It’s been a blast tbh. We decided to extend our time, so I’m not coming back just yet. That said, let me go over how I was looking at things, and maybe it’ll help clear up what I was doing.

So, as you had mentioned, I use the specific indicators and watch specific charts outlined, but it’s how each relates to each other on any given day that I think wasn’t being conveyed. Is AAPL leading or following SPY? Is VIX or DXY tracking what the overall market is doing or are they going in a different direction (leading me to think that the market may not stick with it’s plan)? Are we in a range day or did bad/good news come out forcing things down/up regardless of technicals? This is part of the reason I stopped trading during the first hour (and usually the last hour) of the day, so that I can take time to see the trends and relationships and make a game plan for the day. I call it framing my day, and it’s been really important for my success.

The market doesn’t always stick with the plan it outlines in the morning either, which is where I had seen the bigger losses during my runs. That’s why I also have gone heavier into conviction, take profit quickly if I can, and then average average average. This is where my large volume of trades really comes from. I may only have 10 actual plays in a day, but those 10 plays can turn into 50 averages (with 50 exits…) very quickly. I have been trying to figure out the best way to reduce this number without losing my mobility, but I’m okay with the high trade volume as it facilitates my staying green and being able to capitalize on momentum when it shows up.

As the account grew in size, timing the initial entry has been less about getting the exact right moment (although I have to say, I loved that I was doing that a lot…) and more about making sure I didn’t miss the ride. I often have seen people bemoan the trade they ALMOST got in. Because I could always average in on a trade I felt was right, I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss that jump. And this brings me to the one indicator I pay close attention to that you didn’t mention, which is volume. Volume has been crucial in seeing when to enter and exit a trade for me. Asking questions like “does it look like there’s enough volume (interest) to push through the upcoming resistance?” or “has this run been spent?” are critical so that I could derisk what I was doing. The more volume fell in-line with the play (as I understood it), the more conviction I’d have to stick with it, and vice versa.

The only other thing I want to mention is that I usually put SPY on a 1min chart and SPX on a 5min and have them super close to each other on the screen and watch them together (even though I am trading SPX more than SPY). Try it and see if it’s as useful to you as it is to me. I feel like it gave me a half-second lead on what was going to happen next, and while that doesn’t mean much in grand scheme, it seemed to help a lot in timing those entries/exits.

If you do trade using what I’ve been doing again, please let me know how it goes. I’m excited to see if we can duplicate what I had been doing and make us all have to go on vacation. I really hope everyone has had a great few weeks of successful trading with many more to come.

Edit 1 - I forgot to mention and call out @swoleappa as I took a big chunk of the profits and bought 5000 shares of MSFT in one of my retirement accounts before I left on vacation. They already have paid well, but we’ll see what today has in store for us… :pepepray:

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Just got home and I’m excited to start back in on my trading. :pepecelebrate: Hopefully the time off did me a solid and I’ll see a lot more success from the much needed reset.

Was nice to see MSFT do so well while I was away, but this journal isn’t about my retirement. Speaking of retirement, I took extra time off in order to decide some major changes for my family, and one big one was that I’ve decided to sell my company now. I haven’t felt inspired to move it forward in a while, and this vacation really helped me get some perspective on that and be okay with letting it go. Anyway, that transition will be taking up a ton of my time for a while, but I’m excited to see how the change and eventual lightened load affect me.

Another big change is that I’m going to try to be more insistent with myself on cutting down the total number of trades I’m making each day. This may lead to a few more losers, but hopefully more significant wins in the end, as well as less strain mentally. I didn’t realize at the time, but I was really burning out with the volume stress I was putting on myself. I don’t want to HAVE to take vacations every other month just to be able to maintain my mental health. I’ve always looked at day trading as a lifestyle choice that I wanted, and I need to make sure that it’s a lifestyle that builds me up and not tearing me down.

Anyway, from the chat logs, it looks like today was a good one for me to miss! Hopefully tomorrow will be better and we can all make some money together doing what we love. :pepepray:

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