Hafnium Regular  Posts: 74 Joined: 1/1/2004 Location: Fairfax, VA  User Profile | Hi jpb I can only answer your questions as it pertains to auto Trading Options. Discretionary /manual trading is very different - perhaps Mel can help here. This requires the proper setting of the Trade Calculator..... If you are AutoTrading Options - there are 2 settings controlling the trade size. A. AutoTrade Setting of "Method". Then the ATM method controls the position sizing (the allocation tab). B. AutoTrade Setting of "Trade Size". Then the AutoTrade Setting controls the position size. There are only 2 choices. Fixed $ and % of Equity. (you are autotrading without ATM). C. I assume that you want to Auto Trade Options with the AutoTrader. If you want to AutoTrade with "Omnipilot", then, if memory serves me correctly, the allocation size was actually chosen in the Trade Calculator... so, yes it can be confusing. D. In the autotrade settings - choose "Round to 100 shares/contracts". 100 shares is equivalent to 1 option contract. Be careful however. if you choose "Round to 100 shares/contracts" in the AutoTrade Settings - make sure you deselect that setting in Portfolio Simulator (if you have it selected) . Having them both set to Round to 100 shares sometimes causes some weird issues with the trade size. Best to just only select it in 1 place. As for the Roll selection. - Yes, you are correct in that the setting is there to roll the contract from the expiring contract to the next one. However, in all of my Option Testing - I have only seen it work twice in my simulations (and about 10 times it did not work). When it did work, it actually exited the trade on day 0, then re-entered the trade the next day with the updated contract. So, my lesson learned was to not actually use the roll feature. That feature only works if the Expiration and the Roll settings will allow the roll to happen prior to expiration. For example, With an expiration set to say C+2, and a Roll period of say 5 days. You will rarely see the Roll happen if Expiration is set to "C". I still do not fully understand how it works - but Ed did explain it to a group of us and it did seem to be useful if you used it correctly. One of your earlier questions was how to set the length of the option that you wanted to buy. The easiest way to do this is simply to set Expiration to "C". and Roll to X, where X is the amount days you want the Option to have. So, if I wanted an option to have 21 days min of life, then set the Roll to 21 with the Expiration set to C. Also, you may or may not want to choose "weekly options". Once again, I leave the Trade Calculator questions to someone else more knowledgeable of manual trading settings. [Edited by Hafnium on 2/19/2020 8:59 PM] | |
