Watch HowardCohodas Trade Index Options Credit Spreads

[HowardCohodas]

What's the deal with you old geezers and Latin? I thought that was only for ponces in this day and age?!

With questionable wisdom, I took Latin in high school rather than French. The only two languages offered in my small town school system.

OTOH, Latin taught me more about English than I learned in English classes. And I can still quote the opening sentences to Cesar's Conquest of Gaul.

 

[arabianights]

What's the deal with you old geezers and Latin? I thought that was only for ponces in this day and age?!

I don't see how you can be properly educated without a smattering of latin... amo amas amat at the least...

 

[scose-no-doubt]

I don't see how you can be properly educated without a smattering of latin... amo amas amat at the least...

Tell it to Boris Johnson.

 

[robster970]

What's the deal with you old geezers and Latin? I thought that was only for ponces in this day and age?!

It's a consequence of a good education.

 

[scose-no-doubt]

oooooh harsh

 

[robster970]

oooooh harsh

Actually it's not really, its is more to do with age unfortunately.

 

[scose-no-doubt]

Awwwwww you feel bad for me

 

[meanreversion]

I don't see how you can be properly educated without a smattering of latin... amo amas amat at the least...

They don't even teach English in this country any more. Somehow grammar and syntax are stifling, and restrict creative thought.

 

[scose-no-doubt]

Grammar and what?

 

[masnachu]

I don't see how you can be properly educated without a smattering of latin... amo amas amat at the least...

disagree, Romanes eunt domus !

 

[robster970]

Grammar and what?

Grammar and ting.

 

[Martinghoul]

Where the hell is martinghoul with his damned maths?

In Windows 7 hell all day today, I'm afraid... As I mentioned, my machine suffered a catastrophic Windows upgrade yesterday. As a result I only had sporadic access to most of my tools pretty much all day (and it was a relatively busy one).

At any rate, after MrG's excellent summation that HC endorsed, I think I have an idea of a) what HC Is doing; b) why it's worked; and c) what mkt conditions will cause it to break. It's not rocket engineering, but I think I should be able to formulate it in a reasonably quantitative fashion. Apologies for the delay and pls bear with me.

P.S. Ceterum censeo ODT esse delendam (as long as we're on the subject of Latin and all).

 

[scose-no-doubt]

I like 7

 

[HowardCohodas]

I like 7

7 came on my new machine. No problems, but getting things transferred had a hiccup or two, mostly induced by me. Once I got the setup right, Carbonite did it all my magic.

Also upgraded to Office 2010. That was an easy call as my daughter works for MS and she gave it to me as a Hanukkah preset.

 

[HowardCohodas]

NDX JAN1 11 Vertical 2200/2175 PUT (Weekly)[/B]
2200
2175
Sold @ .80
100 % of potential profit
PoT 0%
Return on capital at risk 3.3%

Tomorrow we look an using the freed funds to go into the next weekly.

 

[HowardCohodas]

Weight in on this so I can decide where to go from here.

In the last several days we have honed in on one particular trade to help analyze what is going on with my trading methods. During that time I have become a bit of a slacker in posting the summaries and plans, which is the essence of a journal as I envisioned it when I was asked to start this thread.

One poster was able to nicely summarize my method into a simple flow chart. (Wish I had done that ) We now have some pretty experienced people digging into what is going on and explain it to us.

This thread gets a surprisingly large number of views (surprising to me anyway) so most viewers have been silent. I'm trying to figure out what holds the most interest of the viewers. Is it the strategy and the journal posting, the strategy analysis, the sometimes testy back and forth, the lulz or some combination of them? Is it still useful to the readers for me to continue to do the journal-type postings of end of day trading summary and beginning of day trading plans?

Let me know what interests you so I can decide where to go from here.

 

[meanreversion]

7 came on my new machine. No problems, but getting things transferred had a hiccup or two, mostly induced by me. Once I got the setup right, Carbonite did it all my magic.

I signed up to Carbonite a couple of months back. It took about a week for the machine to backup, and now (I believe) it backs up files occasionally. Are you a fan of this software?

 

[DionysusToast]

NDX JAN1 11 Vertical 2200/2175 PUT (Weekly)[/B]
2200
2175
Sold @ .80
100 % of potential profit
PoT 0%
Return on capital at risk 3.3%

Tomorrow we look an using the freed funds to go into the next weekly.

Risk $25 Return 80c.

Number of winning trades to make up for a $25 loss on this trade - 32.

The reason for the popularity of this thread us the same as those that went before it. It's like watching a car crash in slow motion.

Has Howard been brushing up on his Spanish?

 

[meanreversion]

The risk/reward looks fairly poor, but don't forget the crux of the system is that full loss is never allowed to develop, i.e. the stop out here would be around $8 ... that's the theory.

As I've said before, the way in which good-spread-gone-bad is handled is of overwhelming importance to this strategy. Furthermore, because HC places similar trades in 3 indices, if the market does tank, he'll be fighting fire all over the shop.

It's the primary reason I don't like this strategy, aside from the fact that I can't discern any positive expectancy. It exposes the trader to one of the strongest biases - allowing losers to run/can't admit to being wrong. HC has already given us an example where he had reached a cut out point, but then decided against it.. as luck would have it, the market then bounced.

 

[robster970]

The risk/reward looks fairly poor, but don't forget the crux of the system is that full loss is never allowed to develop, i.e. the stop out here would be around $8 ... that's the theory.

As I've said before, the way in which good-spread-gone-bad is handled is of overwhelming importance to this strategy. Furthermore, because HC places similar trades in 3 indices, if the market does tank, he'll be fighting fire all over the shop.

It's the primary reason I don't like this strategy, aside from the fact that I can't discern any positive expectancy. It exposes the trader to one of the strongest biases - allowing losers to run/can't admit to being wrong. HC has already given us an example where he had reached a cut out point, but then decided against it.. as luck would have it, the market then bounced.

+1

I not sure whether HC understands just how correlated his 3 indices are. I also think that HC's trade mgmt under crisis has never really been tested and these two reasons alone for me question the viability of the strat.

On a more personal note, I am suspicious of a strat that has such a high win% simply because 'it does not feel right' in what we all know to be a -ve sum game.

On the other hand, I know more about Options, BSM and IC's than I did before this thread started.