Whew! We're Back!

After a false start yesterday trying yet another slight format change in the day trading room we hit the rhythm today. $739.75 profit, basically enough to add one more trade at my current reduced trade size setup as I toy with the same value trades and place trades in the $600-$700 range. I thought that this would take up too much time in the order placement arena, and I was correct, except that with the new format that is a moot point.

On a performance note, my heavy loss taking on Friday has been at least balanced as the month is now back in the green even if only by a little over $100. There are still 6 more trading days left... in theory I should be able to see a few thousand dollars to finish the month off.

OK, the format now includes getting setups ahead of time, like we used to, having trades called out in quick succession, like we used to, relying on our own discretion for trade sizing, like we used to, and relying on our own discretion with respect to market vs limit for exits, like we used to.

Well, seeing as everything is back to the way that "we used to" do it I guess there is nothing new other than a return to the old format. Cool.

There is one difference this time in that John makes one, two or three recommendations with respect to the possible strikes traded and we can choose which we want into. This is an effort to spread out the trades so as to not affect the one strike too heavily. Personally I will always choose the smaller of the priced option (a little farther out of the money) due to the increased trade size based on my small capital. I would rather trade 5 contracts at $1.50 over 2 contract at $2.50 even though a 20% profit is similar it lets me bump the contract count up in small cost increments. the respective trade values of the mentioned two are $750 and $600. Bumping the $2.50 up turns it into an $850 trade... outside my zone.

I changed my format as I have only two option chain windows available on my platform but I have 5 stock order windows. Loading the entire option chain for a stock takes a few moments whereas loading only the specific option in a stock box takes milliseconds as it is only one item. I can use my market window to preload all of the possible option selections called out pre-market. Then all I have to do is select a stock box (I can use only one if I want here to save one click) click on the option in the market view...it autoloads my pre-set contract quantity and order type (market today) into the stock box and now all I need to do is click on "Buy" or "Sell" depending upon which end of the trade I am on.

Fast, Fast, Fast. Today we entered 8 trades in 3 minutes. One more was added later. All trades were closed by 1030h so we all closed flat. A few who were trying to get limit orders in got less profits and may have gotten stuck in a few trades... speed is of the essence here.

It was mentioned off the start that all trades were going to be market orders and that is exactly what I did in all cases.

Tomorrow should prove to be even more interesting as we pick up the pace with up to 15 trades.

Due to the increased volume and the climbing commission rates I am considering looking at a more option oriented broker. The rates actually aren't climbing but they are just large. Today I spent over $200 on commissions... that is about 20% of my profits eaten up. I know that I get decent service and all with Questrade and I didn't really mind paying commissions based on the fact that I am making money, sort of like taxes, but any decrease in cost is easier than increasing the profits.

The other factor will be ease of trade entry. An option-centric service may have better spreads, more flexible order entries and other "features" that make them better for this sort of trading. I would love to have 10 order boxes to pre-load my orders into. Even though what I have set up is fast it could be less cumbersome to execute.

I'll do a comparison this week and see what the difference may be.

Jeff.