Meanwhile TOS updated its software and in the process all my charts were erased. So for a while there I was trading on gut instinct because TOS support claimed that the charts would be available soon.
On Friday I finally contacted TOS support and asked them the status. Turns out you can reverse an update and that is exactly what I did. When I got my beloved charts back I saw that SPX was trading just below 1105 resistance I had found a while ago. Not only that but the Demark countdown and setup hit 13 and 9 respectively. I quickly liquidated my long calls and now I am sitting on a put vertical. I expect the price to drop to at least 1080. However, I may be inclined to cash in the profits (currently at 4%) if the oscillator breaks the downward trend (see red line).
In other news, I am going to try increasing my position sizes. My performance and price reversal predicitions have been very accurate lately and I believe it is because I have finally found a combination of fibonacci trading techniques and indicators that work. So, feeling more confident, I am going to increase my risk apetite. Also, most of my trades have some sort of an 'insurance' policy now where even if I am wrong, I have a counter trade that at least helps me break very close to even. Of course, I am still keeping my positions and max loss at around only 4% of my account.
Finally, I have been considering what has helped me perform better lately (Compared to 8 months ago when I was down 20% of my account). First, I am not trading news anymore. By the time retail traders get wind of the news and act on it, it is almost always too late. It is also no use trying to predit the news because again, if you are making a prediction, you can bet a lot of others are as well and acting upon it.
Secondly, I have been sticking very strictly to my trade plans - taking emotion completely out of the picture. It is tough watching your trade take a 50% hit and having the patience to let it play out. I think I have finally managed to learn that lesson.
Finally, I realize that I am terrible volatility trader. Many experts out there claim that if you trade options you must trade the implied volatility. Also, they claim that since volatility usually operates within a given range, it is easier to predict. I say all of that is a bunch of crap. You have to know the direction of the move unless you are 100% delta neutral (Which is theoretical anyway) all the time. Maintining neutrality alone costs a fortune in commissions.
Additionally, and maybe this is just me, predicting volatility is just as hard, if not harder, than predicting price direction. Reason being that IV is a derived mathematical and theoretical number to which you cannot assign technical studies. So, I feel people are better off just taking advantage of the leverage properties of options to trade the underlying.
-Wown
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