I can make bad calls.
And I want you to ridicule me when I make mistakes.
When I make a bad call, you can rip me apart.
But when I make a fantastic call, I of course want the opposite and for you to sing my praises.
Such was the case with QQQ over the past two days.
All last week, I was screaming and yelling that the market was never going down until it does.
And specifically, last Friday, I told you exactly when you should short the markets.
$334.01 was our price on QQQ to start shorting.
Why this price? Because it was a major pivot point from last Thursday.
It was a double bottom of resistance. And this shows that if the QQQ broke that resistance, chances were that it would continue going down.
That price level was broken yesterday at 2:20 pm ET and lo and behold, look what happened...
QQQ broke $334.01 and if you had been paying attention, you could have gotten in the trade.
There is still a word of caution here though.
I was confident that QQQ would continue its downward trend specifically because it kept trying to make it back over $334 but couldn't do so...
But I wasn't exposing myself to stock itself.
I bought puts on the QQQ for overnight risk because it limited my exposure to blowing up my account.
I bought 1 contract on QQQ at $1.35, and risked $135.00 maximum.
I knew that price was on my side, and momentum would help carry the stock down if everything went well.
But what if it didn't?
What if this morning Russia announced it was pulling out of Ukraine, inflation suddenly was solved and cancer was cured?
Everyone would be jubilant, except for me. If I shorted QQQ instead of buying puts and the markets ripped 10 points higher this morning, that would have been $1000 gone from my account in a poof.
It's still extremely dangerous to hold stock overnight especially if you trade the way we do.
When I buy 1000 shares of QQQ, I'm not risking $300,000.
My risk is defined while I'm paying attention to the movement of the stock.
In options, yes you have a chance for a 100% loss. But a 100% loss on 1 contract was only a $135 loss, not $1000.
You need to think about your losses as a percentage of your account and not a percentage of each trade.
If you have no idea how much to risk, consider using the 2% rule.
It's a good place to start and will help you understand exactly how much you can risk on every trade you do.
So let's take the trade on QQQ that we did. And let's assume we can risk $150 per trade.
$135 was my maximum risk for the options trade.
If it didn't work out this morning, you would have sold out of that position or let it expire.
Given our rule, I would only buy 1 contract as 2 contracts would expose me to $270 of risk which is over my limit.
If you were shorting QQQ with just stock you could have shorted 100 shares of QQQ at $334.01.
As an exercise, I want you to do the math and determine what your out would be if you were risking 100 shares of QQQ at $334.01 and your maximum risk was $150.
Here's the math: You would take your maximum risk and divide it by the number of shares you were risking.
So in this case you had $150 of risk and 100 shares shorted, so your maximum stop-out would be a $1.50 move on the stock.
If you were asleep and QQQ ripped higher more than two points, you would already be out of your risk and in danger of blowing up your account.
Let me know if this all makes sense by sending me an email to [email protected].
Risk is a huge part of what we do. And I don't want anyone to be confused here.
As always feel free to shoot me any questions about this or anything else to that email at [email protected].
And I'll see you all tomorrow morning!
The post If you are going to hold positions overnight, this is what you need to do appeared first on This Is VWAP.
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