It's dangerous to hold anything through earnings, unless it's taken w/ appropriate risk that you would feel comfortable with. Your option will likely finish in the money, so it would be assigned to you at 48.45. It's trading at 44 right now, so you would be down over 9%. Not the end of the world, unless you took out a big position.

One option is you can just let the puts get assigned to you, and then put in a stop loss on the stock. Or you can write OTM Calls on these while holding the stock, but this requires experience to be done properly. This is something I would do if I was in your position. But you can lose even more money if you don't manage the positions correctly. I would suggest to read up on different option strategies. There's been lots of traders who's been in the same position as you before.

As long as the central bankers rule the world, we will likely get a collapse of the system. I just hope it's longer than 5 years out like he thinks. I just worry about my parents who are reaching retirement age.

Yes, once we enacted the Federal Reserve Act, we were basically screwed. The entire world is playing the same charade thanks to the central bankers.

Daytrade heaven right now on these moves.

I think most knew the central bankers were juicing up the markets. The real question was how ugly it would get when those invisible hands are no longer bidding up the market? I think we got our answer the last two weeks.

Bear flag broke down.

Could be Bearish Flag on the ES. Previous broken support holding as resistance for now.

Matt, I'm a little surprised you didn't post this chart on your weekend newsletter. You posted it several years ago. Do you still use it? It looks to be crossing down now, but will need to wait for confirmation at the end of the week. Also needs a close below that 0 area. Just another strike against the cyclical bull market ending last week.

Yeah, that descending triangle sure played out. It may be a little late in the day for those divergences to play out, but we'll see what happens the rest of the day.

Descending triangle on the 5 min SPX

These impulse moves down are wiping out any chance for divergences. On Friday, I was favoring a continuation of a consolidation pattern on Monday, then new lows on the 15 min chart could possibly form a divergent low. Instead, we gapped down huge, and that big move down took away any chance of divergence.

We could just be setting up for a triangle pattern. Since the trend is down, the odds are that it breaks to the downside. New lows could form a possible divergent low. Then maybe the market could bounce for longer than half a day.

Yep, running out of time. That right shoulder is looking a little heavy now. In down markets, often times these bullish intraday patterns fail.

Yes, that's what I generally like to do. But if I wrote some puts that I'm underwater on, or getting close to being in-the-money, I may go ahead and write some out-of-the-money calls as a little bit of a hedge. Or I may just take the loss. Or if I like the strike price, I'll just hold it and let it get assigned to me like what you're doing. As with everything, timing and choosing the right strike price and expiration for the hedge is important.

bkout3,

When TBT broke that support level last week, you could have written some Aug calls to absorb some of the losses on the TBT puts you wrote. Helps your account, but also helps you mentally too.

Maybe. But it may need a new low later to set up positive divergences on the 15 min charts for a better bounce. So far, it may just be a short covering bounce, and short term traders buying support. Need new buyers to push the market higher.

I mostly use the VIX as a guide for playing options. When the VIX spikes up like in the last two days, it creates a lot of opportunities. For example, I was able to short the ES AUG 19 1130 Puts in the 20's. On the gapup this morning, I wrote some ES AUG 19 1200 Calls in the 30's. Best case scenario, both of them expire worthless, and I collect 60 points. But I'm just trying to take advantage of the spike in premiums, extracting them, and playing them by ear.

I wouldn't worry too much about the system. The trend changed from an up market to down, and it was on the wrong side of a new trend change. If we are entering a new cyclical bear market again, then future system trades will make out nicely be shorting the bounces.

He drops a big ol' turd on the economy. Now he drops a big turd in the toilet.

If one normally puts $10,000 in SPY, then he/she can put $5,000 in SSO to get about the same amount of leverage. If he decides to put $10,000 in SSO instead, that would be about equivalent to a $20,000 position in SPY.