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Revealed: My Trading Results for 2021

Posted On December 31, 2021 2:16 pm
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It’s been quite the final week of the year, to close out a wild 2021. It’s given me some time to recharge on a personal and work front in preparation for whatever 2022 brings. 

Part of the preparation has been to look at my trading journals and dive down into some stats to see what I did right and wrong, and what drove Options360’s outperformance. 

Here’s how the Options360 did in 2021 by the numbers.

Total return: +76%

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Side Note: This is the last time I’ll be able to offer a special $9 monthly trial membership into the Options360 Concierge Service. Once 2021 ends, so does the offer. 

Winners (68) outpaced losers (32) by over two-to-one.  This adds up to 100 closed positions in 2021 (about two per week).  Throw in the adjustments and Options360 executed some 260 trades, meaning I sent an Alert almost daily.  I think members like the pace of about two new positions per week. Also, receiving daily communications,  even if it’s just a couple of sentences to update my thoughts on the market and our positions.  

Average Profits per trade of $176 per trade. This was double the average loser (just $72 per trade).

The average holding period for profitable and losing positions was 10.3 days.  This was somewhat surprising to me.  There were about a dozen outliers where I managed winners over 60+ days as positions were rolled on a weekly basis to generate income. On the other hand, some positions got hit badly right out of the gate and just sat on the books as losers until expiration.  

Breaking it down by direction and strategies indicates that Options360 really does employ an unconstrained approach.  Not surprisingly, bullish positions accounted for a clear majority at 67% of the positions.  Bearish positions were 16% and neutral, such as iron condors, represented 17% of the positions. 

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In terms of strategies, diagonal spreads (bull and bear) dominated 61% of positions, iron condors were 15%, credit spreads (bull and bear) were 16%, and a handful of vertical, butterfly, ratio spreads rounded out the final 8% of strategies employed.   

What’s not surprising is that Options360 put up similar numbers over the prior six years.  Some years resulted in slightly better and some worse total results but I’m glad to see I’ve kept my process pretty consistent. 

I won’t make any lofty predictions on how Options360 will perform in 2022. But, I’ll be doing more of the same ‘unconstrained’ approach that resulted in 2021’s 76% return. 

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About author

Steve Smith

Steve Smith have been involved in all facets of the investment industry in a variety of roles ranging from speculator, educator, manager and advisor. This has taken him from the trading floors of Chicago to hedge funds on Wall Street to the world online. From 1987 to 1996, he served as a market maker at the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (CBOE) and Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). From 1997 to 2007, he was a Senior Columnist and Managing Editor for TheStreet.com, handling their Option Alert and Short Report newsletters. The Option Alert was awarded the MIN “best business newsletter” in 2006. From 2009 to 2013, Smith was a Senior Columnist and Managing Editor for Minyanville’s OptionSmith newsletter, as well as a Risk Manager Consultant for New Vernon Capital LLC. Smith acted as an advisor to build models and option strategies to reduce portfolio exposure and enhance returns for the four main funds. Since 2015, he has worked for Adam Mesh Trading Group. There, he has managed Options360 and Earning 360, been co-leader of Option Academy, and contributed to The Option Specialist website.