I’m a 19 years old boy from Germany studying mechanical engineering.
I’ve been here for quite a while lurking around and picking up some things along the way.
The only trading experience I have is with shares and I’m looking forward to making my very first contact with options.
For that reason, I opened an account with Interactive Brokers which will be funded next week.
Before I wanted to start with that, it was important to me to build a solid financial foundation.
Now I have a ~ 3500€ ETF-Depot linked with a monthly savings plan and a cash reserve that covers my expenses for 3 months. In Addition, I have ~400€ which I will use for funding this Depot, but I will only use 150$, for now, to try me out.
It took a considerable amount of time to build this foundation but I finally feel comfortable enough to make my first Option trades.
My focus is on callouts and dd from tf (and probably jb’s scalping alerts since I have some experience with those).
When I will be successful, I’m planning on continuously taking out chunks of profit to pay for my expenses.
On that note, my first goal will be to make 20 bucks to pay for my annual Dinsey+ subscription.
I will probably start trading the week after next, depending on how long it will take for me to get comfortable with the UI since it is a bit overwhelming.
Sooooo I’m really happy to share my journey with you guys and really eager to keep learning from you.
I’d enjoy some tips and opinions along the way
Edit: Got to postpone the start a little bit see you soon
Edit2: IBKR doesnt allow Option Trading under 21 so i will look for another option
Hi, sorry for the long absence, I had some exams and it was time-consuming finding a broker and setting everything up.
After looking around I decided to go for tastyworks since they will allow me to trade options.
It took me a while to figure out how to fund the account from the EU without wasting too much money on the fees. The cheapest option for me was to use IBKR as a US Account and wire the money from there to tw (for some people Wise with an ACH will work too - unfortunately, this wasn’t the case for me).
Since I don’t want any bad faith with IBKR I will use it for trading shares.
Currently waiting for the funds
Looking forward to buying the first options this week
Today was a bit meh, only a few thoughts and notes:
I missed out on like a 300% gain on RAM because tastyworks didn’t allow opening positions on low liquidity
Had a small order of 5 shares at 10$ for the STBX IPO play which didn’t fill
Felt very hesitant to open any other position because I didn’t feel good enough about other entries, will definitely need to improve on that. I feel like my decision-making is too slow atm, will invest more time in learning about strategies, and even tho I have tight stop losses there is still an indecisiveness. Don’t have these problems with shares, probably I’m a bit too overexcited and inexperienced with Options - That will settle with time ig
Received the rest of my funds today, so starting at 480.73$
Played DG today, the first 3 calls I got at 0.50 and sold at 0.65 - Really should have held longer since they were ‘bangers’ but I was happy with the temporary 45$ gain and wanted to call it a day.
But…
Wanted to play DG again and was expecting a bounce which didn’t happen and I messed up my stop loss order so this one went downhill. Shouldn’t have bought 3 calls on that position and if I didn’t mess up the SL it still would have been a green day.
After that mess, I took a nap, and then the post-nap-clarity hit me
DG: Play didn’t work out, was too slow to get out. Decided to average down a bit hoping for a small bounce at 403 to cut but didn’t work out. Also didn’t get any fills to close anymore so a big L
ULTA and MRVL: Tried making up a few losses after DG, was green a few bucks but messed up taking the profit - no fills at the top for me and missed those on the way down too.
Closed all positions and stepped away after this.
Kind of did exactly what I was learning not to do and that’s on me.
Still a big takeaway for me here for the future. I’m planning on playing single positions only for now and not trading half asleep.
I was moving my SL constantly downwards so will try to stick to one. Probably would have saved half the loss with sticking. On that note, I’m realizing it’s the same with profit taking too.
Easily avoidable mistakes just by implementing those few things
Not the start I was looking for obviously but seeing all the great plays this week and the work you guys put together is amazing - Just have to learn to play them right. Looking forward to next week’s plays!
SPY: Put would have been very profitable but it hit my SL before SPY decided to dump again so really frustrating for me. Was tempted to move the SL down but didn’t want to end like last week so I stuck with that one.
Bidu: took a small position but the play didn’t work out and I closed before it turned worse
Idk how to assess today, I think I had to give myself more downside buffer, especially knowing that spy will probably scratch the 400 again. Not placing the SL down a few cents using this information was straight-up dumb.
So the takeaway for me would be:
It’s okay to move the SL according to news/trends… especially if it’s just a small correction.
It’s not okay to do it out of emotion or gambling like I did last week.
Just have to adapt according to the situation I’m in.
Wasn’t really active last week, gambled away 20$ which wasn’t really necessary
HPQ: Puts would have printed a lot but I had to cut early since I was busy and messed up profittaker/stoploss in a hurry
AVGO: Expired worthless, was definitely a gamble from my side
Today I had more time
SPY: Scalped it 2 times in the same area, could have been more profitable but green is green
Placed a small gamble bid on TWND but just realized it’s up a decent amount already. (Put in the order via live chat, tastyworks support was friendly, and is working on whitelisting my account for those lower liquidity trades)
Looking back at today I think it was a good decision to pause a few days and lurk around. I didn’t force anything and was done after half an hour. Although I only made back the balance of the last post, still an important day for me. Working to continue on that.
Thanks to everyone contributing to this server
ZUMZ: puts play went the wrong way first but today was a big recovery
I put in a sell order for 0.7, after seeing more downward potential I decided to cancel it and go for a stop loss but the order got filled before I could cancel it. ( I WAS HALF A SECOND TO LATE FFS)
Just closed the other call too
SPY: Didn’t enter puts, waited too long, and didn’t want to force it . Congrats to all who won big time
It’s frustrating to see it move to 2 afterward just makes me wanna EERGRGGRAAAAAAMHHMMHHHUUFFFFF
really hungry for a banger - hope ill get it soon
I’ll be having laser eye surgery tomorrow, will trade as soon as vision allows it (bye-bye glasses)
I think I’m doing sth wrong with my limit stop losses because it didn’t do what I was looking for.
Will need to be enlightened on that. There was a better entry if I had waited a few secs longer but I am happy with the green.
I have found that using stop market almost always triggers when setting stop loss on SPY vs stop limit. I had many times that my order didn’t execute because of movement or it just didn’t trigger and that is normal. I also studied how close the stop market would trigger and in thousands of trades I almost always got the stop loss to fill within .01 to .03 price difference from my stop loss. TL;DR - I always use market stop on SPY when scalping vs stop limit to make sure order triggers each time. Not for all but saves me a lot. @ibos
Played FOMC for the first time and nice profit - continuing my green streak!
Big thanks to you all
I had 5 calls with an average price of 0.61, I put in a 0.7 sell order for 3 of them. As u can see this one got filled after 4 seconds. That was as smooth as it could get.
However, the remaining 2 calls I had in for 0.8 and 0.9. I wanted to adjust them but those movements are too quick. So I canceled those two and hoped for a slight pullback. Got lucky - then realized I just sold one and my P/L is still moving. Happy that I could sell the other one for a decent price too.
Those higher sell triggers were a gamble, and I used 40% of my port for it which isn’t smart - I need better risk management.
Overall a nice experience, learning a lot from you guys
messed up big time - didn’t set stop loss because I wanted to sell it manually at 1.8 but just got blown away. Had the opportunity to sell at 1.6 too but didn’t take it hoping for a pullback.
