moontower raw: things i did today and why
discussing live trades
Some tweets I sent regarding my activity today:
fwiw.. my bias isn't to DCA (i've only done about 1% DCA here). if they don't do something relatively soon you'll get much better buying opportunities. so the upside calls are like a stock replacement on the idea of "soon"
this is my prep list going into the day but it evolves depending on how surfaces move. i try to match my risk on/risk off trades simultaneously with a small bias on balance to sell vol on spikes and buy on spot rallies
my monkey brain thought: greeks aside, my position feels like it is paying theta in anticipation of a near term rip. the theta is a cost in lieu of buying the dip because the longer we hang out here the more bearish i get. so there's some weird concept stock theta in my head
if this is the bottom and i didn't buy the dip i lose to this approach. i miss pro trading at times like this. but they aren't that common so that's the cope i remind myself of
rationale for why i bot the may VIX future in response to a question in the discord:
my premise is the market has a weird theta component in it -- the longer we don't get a bullish development the more bearish the environment...my feeling is that theta is mirrored in the VIX backwardation. the longer we sit with good news, the more that future "drifts" up. don't get me wrong, we could justt stop moving right here, realized collapses, IV falls and the spot VIX comes down hard (although the future probably doesn't fall as fast...like any futures chain like oil the back months have less than 1 beta to the front month)
so in short the backwardation is reflection of the idea that the market expects some bullish news fairly soon so it's not imputing the high vol out to the rest of the term structure enough. i'm willing to buy some upside calls and match them to a long VIX futures position as a relative value trade.
(also, i have never traded the SPX complex so trading VIX futures is def a FAFO moment. Love finding new ways to get f'd)