Yes, would like to hear more from someone who's used his system longer. I always thought using the closing price of the signal day was only for entries. As far as exits, my plan is to get out at the next day's open if I receive an email alert after the after-hours session is over.

I prefer to enter/exit at the closing price of the signal day. But I can only do this if I get the email alert before 8:00 PM/EST (Close of the after-hours session).

I just started using his system. But his system is made to catch the big trends in the market. It'll go long when the market is overbought already or short when it's already oversold. Think of it as like buying breakouts or shorting breakdowns. For this reason, it'll have its share of false breaks. In this way, it takes a different approach as the SPY System.

The reason why its had so many whipsaws is because the successful approach the last couple months was to short resistance, and buy support. Marco's system doesn't use this approach, and thus has been whipsawed. When the market starts trending again, then that next trade will be a winner.

As far as this upcoming trade, if the market bounces for a month or two, then this will be a winner. Otherwise, it may be another whipsaw.

Yes, but that's the main point of options. Most do the opposite, and that's why the majority go broke. They trade them the wrong way. They want to gamble and make money fast. Maybe they get lucky in the beginning, but it later catches up to them. They don't understand risk control. Yes, there are tons of option strategies, but most option player are option buyers. Many don't even know why the price of an option goes up or down.

"options are actually made to CONTROL RISK... not to make more risk".

Exactly, but most traders do the opposite when they trade options; which is why the general public gets the wrong picture about option trading.

Yes, these are option strategies I do all the time. Don't want to say easy money, but easier money. When you write options, time decay is your friend.

I think maybe 30 or more points down on the ES, and it would have bought. I'm just surprised that no one on the blog has mentioned the 3:00 PM EST buy programs that have been hitting almost every day for the past week. They've burned the shorts badly a couple times now. Those buy programs work the best when too many are loaded on one side like yesterday.

In the past, I mentioned a simple strategy in the past how to protect profits, or hedge against an underwater system trade. If you're interested, you can do a blog search for it. I'll use last week as an example.

Last Friday, if you wanted to protect some profits on the system trade, you could have written some ES weekly puts. The ES SEP EOM 1030 Puts were trading at around 5 last Friday. If you think the ES will settle above 1030 on SEP 30, then short some of these contracts with appropriate position size. As long as the ES closes above 1030 this Friday (4:15 PST), then you make 5 ES points. The market could go down a decent amount, and you still make money with this option position, and with the system trade. If the market bounces like it has so far this week, then it becomes a nice hedge for the system trade. This is a way to stay in the system trade and still make some money back if the system trade starts going against you like this week.

Personally, I prefer not to have all short positions or all long positions in my account. The out-of-the-money puts were selling at good premium last Friday. I wrote some ES and SPY out-of-the-money puts last Friday in case the market decided to bounce.

Volatility spiked on Gold. Premiums rise also as a result. If you haven't yet, read about how delta, theta, and the other greeks affect the price of options.

I remember replying to a similar question a while back.

http://breakpointtrades.com/blog/post/157302/

It won't go short. I think it'll be in cash. The BPGDM was never above the 8 ma, therefore, it can't cross down to give a short signal.

Susan, sorry to hear that. Maybe cut down your position size a little bit will help you stay in the trades and stay disciplined? Or do a trailing stop instead of a straight exit?

Imo, better to just short GDX if you can borrow the shares.

There's a 2X bull/bear gold miners etf, but the liquidity is low. You can allocate half the capital for the trade as you would for shorting GDX.

DUST- 2X Bear Gold Miner

NUGT- 2X Bull Gold Miner

Son of a bee! Sorry to hear. That sucks.

Gold minors showing relative strength against the physical. The physical down 3%, but GDX flat. Minors usually lead. I know we're way overextended and due for a pullback. But one possible scenario is a short squeeze and a divergent high on GDX 60 min. The system is long, but I wrote some GDX weekly out-of-the-money calls as a hedge.

Has been quite a move down. From a quick calculation, SPX has been down 11% since beginning of August. DAX, down 27%, so over twice.

Sorry, I meant I'm short the 1105 puts, not 1120. I'm also short the ES SEP 9 1220 Calls, and that's why I mistakenly typed 1120.

Personally, I closed some shorts today. I still have some short exposure though. The only long exposure I have is long GDX and short ES SEP 9 1120 Puts.

Yep, that signal turned out very nice with the gap down so far. I should give an example of high volatility working better for certain signals. I have a system that's been trading live for two years now. It's a very simple system that uses simple signals. It's up 200% non-compounded over those two years. But it had a 47% gain just on last month alone when volatility exploded.

I mentioned this quite a few times a while back, that we shouldn't expect 90% trades and a 30 profit factor when the system goes live. It's difficult to duplicate those same results. As for the system getting off to a rough start, it went live when the market was topping. Most of the trades were to the long side, and that's why we had some whipsaw trades and unfortunately, the big loser. I mentioned in a post or email that I'm guessing a 55%-70% winning %, and a lower profit factor, but still a very good one. I still believe that. I think looking at the big picture helps. Personally, I like to enter many of my discretionary trades using the same concept as the system. Buy weakness in uptrends, short bounces in downtrends. I've seen many consistent traders do the same thing, and it works. If you keep doing these type of trades over and over again, you'll do fine in the long run imo.

It also probably works better when the market is volatile and makes bigger moves like in the past month. Less volatile conditions, and probably much more whipsaws.