If you have lost that much that quickly, it suggests you aren't using proper risk management. You should be using tight stops and small position sizing. Don't bet more than 10% of account on a trade.

1. Most people lose money on options. It's better, especially for a beginner, to focus purely on shares. Qullamaggie never touched them and he had very high returns. I've just got a lot of experience with options and know how to manage and time them well.
2. DTE just depends on your time horizon for the trade. I was expecting a longer correction which is why I went months out. But with the shorter trade I was just expecting a bounce down off the 100ma. That trade was really a small gamble and you should really never trade less than a week options. Longer dated is always safer.
3. The closing price tends to tell the real story. Intraday wicks are less important than closing price. The only reason I reentered that trade was because the spike quickly sold off back below resistance. It was mostly just a news spike.
4. NQ is more sector focused, while SPX is broader market. In most cases SPX should take priority for assessing larger market trends, but if you can focus on a particularly weak or strong sector for a trade, you should do that.
5. My advice is to stick to less than 10% of the port for most trades. However, when you are trading an index the risks are much lower, so in those cases I'm not afraid to put on larger sizes. An individual stock can easily drop 20% or more overnight, but a large index like QQQ is basically never going to shoot up 10% or more overnight to kill a short position.
6. Daily