MAY'24 and JUN'24 - Reflections and Results

Results

Reflections

We have come to the end of Jun'24. This means that we are halfway through the year and it is a good check point to reflect on our results.

From a purely results perspective, we relatively did not do well. The $SPY returned 17% from Jan'24 to Jun'24. For our trades shared, we landed flat so far (if you sum up Jan-Jun results on a 1 contract basis). This means that we are currently under-performing the market because had we invested the capital solely in $SPY, we would have gotten a 17% return vs a 0% flat return.

From a learning perspective, I actually feel that we did pretty well.

I'll explain why.

Despite the fact that we did very well last year (returning 145%), the same strategies which we executed last year didn't seem to work as well this year, especially for the Q1 and Q2 earnings season. Somehow the market responded in an different way. And because we were focused on mainly buying option strategies, it prompted me to re-evaluate the feasibility of deploying selling strategies again. That brought up a ton of memories / past experiences of how selling options can be risky due to the skewed risk reward ratio against us. At the same time, it made sense to do some selling strategies because when the market is rangy, selling can be a great passive strategy.

The only thing which was blocking us from entertaining the idea of selling options again is the risk factor.

The good news is -- after a studying the prices and re-thinking the way we can do things, we have discovered a nice strategy to implement.

Hence, we have made considerable progress in the learning aspect, curating custom strategies like the Tailored Strategy which can never lose and the ATM Cash Secured Puts.

Spending the time to churn out the data and analysis and really doing some deep thinking to discover these 2 strategies really taught me a lot. Had I remained content and satisfied with our current arsenal of strategies, and had I not pushed myself to brainstorm a better strategy, I wouldn't have discovered new strategies which would change the way I trade options for the future years to come.

I am glad I challenged the status quo and did not simply conform entirely to what everyone else was already preaching online (for example, selling OTM puts instead of selling ATM).

I thank all Arete community members for sticking through this 6 months this year despite all the headwinds and challenges. The more we learn now, the more we will continue to earn in future; these 2 strategies will work really well for us as our accounts grow bigger.

What's next ?

Is that even a question - Back to work ;-)

Godspeed,

Arete