Am I doing this right?

My first step of my option trading journey!

You are marching to capture a kingdom’s castle.
Your army is small, but you possess a weapon unlike any the world has ever seen… a clone machine.
The journey is long. Along the way, soldiers are lost to sickness, exhaustion, skirmishes, and the occasional duel. Every mile costs you men.
At first, you worry the army will dwindle before it ever reaches the castle.
But then you notice something remarkable.
The closer you march toward the castle, the faster your clone machine creates new soldiers. At first it produces only a handful each day. Then dozens. Then hundreds. Every mile forward makes it work faster than before.
A realization strikes you: you cannot afford to linger.
If you camp for too long, attrition will slowly bleed your army dry. To win, you must keep advancing so the clone machine can outpace the losses.
Now the castle is only a few miles away. Two days remain before an ancient curse wipes out your entire army. Fortunately, your clone machine is now producing soldiers at an astonishing rate. With every step forward, your chances of capturing the castle grow.

If you know… you know 😅

How does experts predict this roller-coaster? Again lost 1k today even though I have strict stop loss.

I know I should not be crying in casino.

Bought 100 contracts on 7/21 at $0.31 avg

Yesterday (10:39 AM): stock at $7.64, option at $0.74. Total unrealized gain = +$4,300 (+138.7%)

I said “good enough” and peeled off 50 contracts , locked in ~$2,150 profit

Today (10:49 AM): stock rips to $8.33, option jumps to $1.36. The remaining 50 contracts were sitting on a +$5,250 gain (+338.7% just on that lot)

No hesitation , sold to close the rest

Final tally:

Yesterday’s realized: ~$2,150

Today’s realized: ~$5,250

Total profit: ~$7,400 on a $3,100 cost basis = +238.7%

Expiry is 7/24 , I’m not riding theta decay into the weekend

Could it moon more? Maybe. But profit is profit, and my account is green

Regards, a proud paper handed regard who knows when to take the tendies 🧻🚀

INTC 7/24 $110 calls 24 contracts $4.15 avg. Bullish on Thursday earnings but risk is capped. We'll see.

I went to zero on a random call someone posted on Reddit years ago and got scared but decided to try again. Money!!

when i'm green...

i'm picky.

i'll skip trades all day.

but once i'm down in the red...

somehow every chart starts looking like an A+ setup.

it's actually insane how fast your brain switches.

that's honestly why i started looking for ways to stop myself instead of relying on willpower/hope everyday.

can't be just me though...

what's the one thing that completely throws you off your game?

How to you track improvement overtime with your trading strategies? Curious to understand other peoples ideas & workflows to broaden my perspective.

ive been messing with options recently started with $5 my account is up 1000%+ this week. keeping it small with 1 contract and 7+dte. this is my 5th option trade all of them were successful. im thinking about calling it quits, but this strategy seems to be working well for me and id like some opinions from more experienced options traders.

For day trading, what tools do you use to determine (guess) the high and the low on an index (NDX, to be specific but would settle for SPX).

Im familiar (not an expert) with Gamma related levels (GEX) but what else can you use? I don't know TA or things like order flow and such so there may be something there. Anything else? Im specifically talking about intraday levels for 0dte trading.

Hey guys, quick question so I don't mess this up.
I bought a Micron (MU) $905/$910 call debit spread expiring today for $2.50. MU is trading way past $910 right now, so both legs are deep ITM.
I put in a limit order to sell it for $5.00 (max value), but it's just sitting there unfilled.
A couple quick questions:
1. Should I just lower my limit to like $4.90 or $4.95 to get filled right now? Guessing MMs won't pay the full $5.00.
2. If I just leave the order open and it never fills, RH/OCC will automatically exercise the $905 and assign the $910 at 4 PM to give me the full $500 payout, right? Is there any risk to just letting it expire?
First time holding a spread right at max profit on expiration day. Appreciate the help!

Been through enough earnings cycles to know this argument never gets old: stocks vs. Leveraged ETFs vs. Options when you have a directional view.

The mechanical difference matters more than people admit. Leveraged ETFs look clean on paper but that daily reset is brutal in choppy conditions. Volatility decay eats you alive if the move takes longer than expected. I've held 3x products through a sideways grind and watched the math just slowly destroy me even though I was eventually right on direction.

Options feel like the move until earnings IV crush hits. You can nail the direction and still lose, because the implied vol collapses the second the announcement drops. Had that happen to me on a GOOGL play a few quarters back, right call, wrong outcome.

Pulled the chart comparisons on moomoo and the vol crush visualization really makes it click, honestly more intuitive than reading about it.

Plain stocks are boring but you're not fighting decay or theta or any of it. The cost is just that you need more capital sitting there.

With $TSLA and $GOOGL both reporting this week, which tool are you running? I'm leaning options but sizing way down. Anyone here fully given up on leveraged ETFs for earnings plays?

Had a pretty expensive lesson this expiry.

I was holding a NIFTY call and at one point saw around +₹23k unrealized profit. It came down to +₹8k and I still didn't book it.

My thinking was basically:

"Structure still looks bullish. Buyers are defending dips. News isn't terrible. Maybe NIFTY breaks out next week and this becomes ₹40-50k."

Well...

+₹23k → +₹8k → -₹9k realized.

Looking back, I don't think entering the trade was my biggest mistake.

I became emotionally attached to my analysis.

Every time NIFTY bounced from support, I saw it as confirmation that I was right. When sellers appeared, I kept finding reasons why buyers could still win.

And technically, I wasn't completely wrong — buyers were defending levels.

But I confused:

with

Expiry made that mistake much worse. I was thinking only about direction while my OTM call needed direction + magnitude + timing. Being eventually right about NIFTY going up wouldn't matter if theta killed the option first.

Another thing I've noticed recently:

Sometimes everything looks bullish — news, global cues, sentiment — and NIFTY dumps.

Other times the news is horrible and NIFTY refuses to fall.

I'm starting to think the reaction to news matters more than whether the news itself sounds positive or negative.

My journal from this trade basically says:

No SL.
No trailing profit.
No fixed target.
Too much hope.

I'm taking a break from live trading for a while and just observing/journaling.

For experienced traders here:

How do you know when you're maintaining genuine conviction versus simply becoming emotionally attached to your thesis?

And when news, option positioning and price action disagree, which one do you trust most?

Feel free to tear apart my thinking. That's why I'm posting.