I did an interview over at Optionetics a few weeks back and it looks like they’ve posted it in three parts. It looks like they “edited” one of my answers related to options. Here’s how it originally read. You can read how they changed it on the first part of the interview. BTW, I’ve got no problem with the edits - I just found it interesting.

Question from Optionetics: Do you ever use options and if so what are your favorite strategies?

My Answer: I don’t regularly trade options. Until relatively recently, I thought options were just a more complicated way for most people to lose money. I still think that to some extent - a lot of traders fall into the trap of thinking that trading strategies that work are complex when usually the opposite is true.

As an intraday trader trading equities, I’m always looking for volatility and when you go back and look at a daily chart of the Qs there’s a lot of sideways action with no direction either way. If I had to trade options, I’d probably trade a strategy that tries to capitalize on this non-movement.

Optionetics Interview part one, two, and three.

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I was Skyping with Trader Mike today (Happy Birthday again, Mike!) and he saw my Skype avatar and asked if I was trying to become Grizzly Adams with my facial hair.

I actually shave on a regular basis - it’s just that the regular basis I’m referring to is every month or so. The only reason I do that is that my wife puts a stop limit order on the length of my beard. If it were up to me, I’d probably wouldn’t put any stops on it or at least the time stop would be a couple months at least.

This is not because I’m “trying to hide my face” like my wife often accused me of or have some aversion to shaving. It’s just that I’m lazy. It also seems like every time I shave I make an order entry mistake and end up bleeding for days. Maybe I need to look for a different shaving platform that is easier to use.

What I’d really like is an automated shaving system (ASS) that would keep my beard trimmed without me actually doing anything. Perhaps I’m searching for the holy grail that doesn’t exist, but it sure would be nice to have such a shaving system. I’d venture to say that Ugly would be a beta tester of this system.

OK, if anyone can keep this analogy going, please do so in the comments.

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I made probably 3 mistakes in a single trade today. Ugh. Maybe this automated trading is making me lazy.

You know how it’s so hard to believe that we used to have to call a broker to make a trade? One day we’ll be saying the same thing about manual trading:

“That’s right, grandson - back at the turn of the century we didn’t have robots to trade for us - we actually had to point and click with a mouse and type numbers into a keyboard to make a trade - and we thought it was easy!”

Maybe Ugly already says this.

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I actually had a winning manual trade today! Nothing to write home about though.

The automation is still progressing nicely. I’m slowly promoting a couple of my better automated strategies out of “pilot mode” (i.e. trading small) and seeing how they’ll scale with more size. With the kind of commissions I’m paying now, I’m expecting to get a Christmas card from my broker this year.

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After my manual trading performed poorly today I’m considering going fully automated. It’s a terrible type of market for the manual style that I’m using. At the same time, I feel like my automated trading is slowly but steadily coming into its own.

In retrospect, this is really par for the course for my manual trading - it generally makes money each month but the variations are pretty great.

I guess I’m really coming to discover that I think that more consistent profits are possible with automated trading. I’m certainly not throwing in the manual trading towel just yet, but I’ll be putting an increasing share of my efforts into my automated trading.

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