Friday Alpha!

Let's Talk $LRC

1/ #ETH fees are painful these days. Anyone who interacts with #DeFi has tears in their eyes when approving a transaction.

FINDING EDGE IN OPTIONS

24/08/15: Nifty gap down 250 points & another 250 after that. Previous few months return gone, but since I'm quick to take my losses, was saved from ruin. Before that my only edge in option selling was adjustments & my forever edge of following PA. (1/n)

I soon realised that theta decay with sound adjustments is not an edge, which i earlier thought was & which gave me good returns over the years. After that i went deeper in understanding volatility behaviour, how/where it manifests & all the discrepancies in option chain. (2/n)

With finding edge in logistics i mean how to keep the greeks in check, SL in place & optimum ways of adjustments with minimum slippages. So the main aim here is to write theta without following vol behaviour & having any actual knowledge of what's going on in the markets. (3/n)

A dedicated trader can learn all this in few years & it is something which is 'obvious' to become successful. But majority can't reach this level, as this also requires consistent hustle in live markets. All the seminar/webinar business teaches you till this level only.(4/n)

If you get passed this level though, the real work starts, when you have to find your real edge. This can't be taught in a webinar. It needs serious introspection of your trading skills, psychology & strategies in use, which ultimately allow you to book excellent profits. (5/n)

“In search of the holy grail”

A thread-

Holy grail- A strategy Which can make money all the time.

After going through two phases of a traders journey, the initial success phase, and Only why do i get loss phase, Traders enter the third phase -

THE SEARCH FOR THE HOLY GRAIL PHASE.

This phase has no limits, It can end in 1 month and it may not end till lifetime.

What exactly is this phase?

When a trader covers all the basics, they know how to lower their losses, they know the power of risk management.

And few of them may even develop their edges and systems over time.

But after some time, they feel that they are doing something wrong and there is more to trading than what they know.

THEN COMES THE HOLY GRAIL PART-

Few of them start to Read more books about trading,finding articles about “How to win 100% of the time” and listening to Youtube videos of few big traders who make big in trading.

𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐎𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬
The entire thread will have some quick pointers on options trading. These bullet points are based on experience and learning and even if you are completely new,will help you to build some perspective. So,lets go :

-When new,prefer trading monthly options over weekly options to reduce risk
-Set up your trades with greater than 50% Probability Of Profit
- Use implied volatility in your decision making process
-Book some trades at 50% of max profit i.e. locking of profit incase u are buyer

-Don’t adjust losing defined risk strategies. A lot of people get into the bad habit of averaging and run the risk of losing a lot
-Diversify your portfolio across product, direction, and time,this has to be considered while you are planning to put in multiple strikes in folio

-Short Strangles are one of our go-to strategies because of their high probability of profit and increased profit potential.A little effort with understanding of volatility would help
-Allocate no more than 5% of your account to any one trade

-Trade small, trade often to increase your number of occurrences. Some might deny but this works
-In options you might have heard of spreads.Multiple options legs create an options spread. For example, a short strangle consists of selling a call and selling a put simultaneously.

This is the most important concept which made me great money in 2022.

This is the skill which is GUARANTEED to make you a better trader

Banknifty moves in 2 phases.

1: Consolidation
2: Trends

An understanding of both of these phases will take your trading to the next level.

Let's start with consolidation phase

It looks like this when Banknifty is stuck inside a range.

This is phase when you shouldn't be taking directional trades.

As market is mostly choppy and is good for mean reversion scalpers.

An option seller can initiate neutral strategies under such an environment.

Trending phase will look something like this

The price action is quick and furious at this time.

As you can see after a consolidation there is a strong breakdown.

Working on some execution optimisation related backtesting. I have so far been executing with market orders only. Going towards higher lot sizes, I'd like to optimise for minimal slippage.

First off, on NSE, if you place a market order, you get filled at the best bid/ask right?

If we want to optimise this, the first non-creative idea one can think of is, slicing the order into different lot sizes, and placing a limit order for each slice at the mid point of current best bid & ask.

But this requires your latency to be the least.

Why would latency affect it?

I looked at tick historical data, and there are more than 18-20 ticks in a second (auction and quote combined).

Even if you keep 10 ticks per second, your best bid/ask can shift from the time you place to the time exchange receives the order.

So, the next best thing that people can do is place tranches of orders every 1s, 3s, 5s, 10s, 15s - in their preferred time range, and get filled at the midpoint or best-bid+1/2/3/4/5 in the depth.

What you need is liquidity.

But if you're trading breakouts, then it's highly likely that your limit orders may not get filled if the action is too fast.

So, a retry mechanism is required in such cases.

If nothing works, you convert your orders to marketable and get filled at worse slippage.