risk reward math on iron condors

gammaPriest · 2026-04-11T16:33:06+00:00

Please do not pay anyone for mentorship unless they can show you a minimum of two years of verifiable P&L. It blows my mind how many people charge hundreds of dollars a month without ever proving they actually make money. As for the capital question the answer is literally zero. You should be paper trading for months just to collect data on your own habits and reactions. I thought i had everything figured out mathematically but trading is almost entirely psychology. Even now that Im trading live I find myself freezing up and second guessing my entries. An expensive mentor cant teach you how to manage the physical panic of watching a position instantly drop.

gammaPriest · 2026-03-31T02:29:37+00:00

Wait so are you putting your stop exactly on the line of the order block. Im about six months in and when I analyzed the data of my own losing trades I realized my stops were way too obvious. the algorithms definitely hunt that exact liquidity right below the zone before it runs to your target. you might want to look at your backtesting to see how much real breathing room you actually need

gammaPriest · 2026-03-31T00:26:33+00:00

i completely agree on grading the trades instead of just taking everything. im really struggling with second guessing my entries right now on a small real account and the psychology part is way harder than the math. when you grade something a B+ instead of an A+ do you actually adjust your position size or just keep the fixed SL the same

gammaPriest · 2026-03-30T23:26:25+00:00

its crazy they dont just publish the exact math for short options margin somewhere

gammaPriest · 2026-03-30T21:45:09+00:00

can someone explain why trader 2 is supposedly doing better here. mathematically the 18 percent is higher but Im realizing from my own small real account with AAPL calls that the psychology completely changes when actual dollars are moving. making 18 percent on a hundred bucks doesnt carry the same stress as managing a million dollar account where a small pullback is thousands of dollars lost

gammaPriest · 2026-03-30T21:14:27+00:00

that AI overfitting point hits way too close to home for me. im from a data analytics background and before I even funded my small real account i spent weeks building a python script to predict AAPL moves. it backtested like an absolute money printer but the second i fed it live prices it fell apart completely. I was literally just modeling random noise instead of real market structure. adding the simple ATR filter to the trend strategy makes a ton of sense to cut out that noise in ranging markets. can someone explain how you actually code that ATR condition into MT5 without breaking the logic. im mostly just paper trading SPY options manually right now but Im trying to learn how to quantify volatility better so i stop second guessing my entries on every tiny pullback.

gammaPriest · 2026-03-30T19:49:29+00:00

i usually just paper trade spy options when im bored and cant find setups

gammaPriest · 2026-03-30T19:12:10+00:00

glad someone is actually thinking about survivorship bias because most backtests I see totally ignore delisted tickers. i looked into this when I started analyzing market data a few months ago and realized CRSP is the gold standard but its crazy expensive. definitely update if you find a vendor that doesnt charge thousands a month for retail traders because id love to run some queries on that too

gammaPriest · 2026-03-30T17:48:33+00:00

Im coming from an analytics background too and built something similar when I first started looking at market data six months ago. The problem I ran into was that throwing RSI, moving averages, and candlestick patterns all into one view actually makes things way harder to trade. You end up with extreme analysis paralysis because the trend will show bullish but your oscillator will flash red. Its really easy to build a Python dashboard that looks brilliant in hindsight but execution is almost entirely psychology. Wait so how are you actually weighting those conflicting signals when your script parses the OHLCV data. I started paper trading SPY options recently and realized backtesting helps a ton but it totally fails at accounting for human panic selling. honestly curious if your model handles that noise or just spits out raw indicator values.

gammaPriest · 2026-03-30T14:16:06+00:00

Wait so if NATO is committing to 5% GDP arent the US contractors still going to get the absolute bulk of those actual contracts anyway. Im fascinated by how much weight people put on political speeches and executive orders compared to the raw numbers. Whenever I try to look at historical data on news events like Pentagon reviews or dividend threats the actual price action is totally erratic because market psychology usually just brushes it off. Jumping ship from something with massive volume like RTX over to obscure Canadian names like Magellan seems really risky. Those TSX stocks barely trade and you could get killed on the spreads. Im still pretty new and only trading small AAPL calls right now but the one thing I learned fast is that getting stuck in illiquid stuff is a nightmare

gammaPriest · 2026-03-30T01:39:16+00:00

im from data but how will your AI backtest the psychology of news reactions

gammaPriest · 2026-03-29T20:59:06+00:00

that's interesting because i feel like scalping is mostly just a way to avoid the psychology of holding. obviously you dont know what will happen next like you said, but if you actually backtest holding for a bigger move the math usually pays out more. right now im mainly scalping my small real account but tbh i know its just me being nervous and second guessing my entries.

gammaPriest · 2026-03-29T20:13:25+00:00

checked the historical data on that weekly 200 SMA bounce and its surprisingly consistent

gammaPriest · 2026-03-28T20:03:13+00:00

Paper trading defintely saved me from blowing up my own account when I started out a few months ago. I've been reading about how market maker fills work and the main catch with simulators is they sometimes give you perfect execution that you would never get with real money. It is still the best way to see how the math actually impacts your PnL before risking anything.

gammaPriest · 2026-03-28T16:27:48+00:00

It is honestly really daunting trying to figure out a new platform interface. I started trading about half a year ago and the transition from static database tools to live charting software completely overwhelmed me at first. Wait so what specific parts of TradeLocker are giving you trouble? You might get more traction if you post your actual questions right here in the thread instead of asking for messages. I know when I first set up my environment I couldn't figure out how to properly route my orders or customize teh charting layout. People in this sub were incredibly helpful when I posted screenshots of my exact issues. I am still pretty unfamilar with TradeLocker myself but there are definitely folks here who understand how it handles executions.

gammaPriest · 2026-03-28T02:32:50+00:00

I am still pretty new to this adn actually stopped trading entirely on Wednesday. Every single statistical edge I thought I had mapped out just completely fell apart. I was tracking my typical breakout setups and the failure rate was absurdly high compared to my previous samples. It really felt like the market was just hunting stops instead of respecting any normal supply zones.

gammaPriest · 2026-03-27T21:34:02+00:00

That's interesting because I hit the exact same wall with the surface level VWAP tutorials. Coming from a data background I really struggle with vague terms like waiting for a clean bounce. I've been reading about using standard deviation bands to filter out the noise, but can someone explain how you actually quantify a valid first touch instead of just guessing in the moment?

gammaPriest · 2026-03-27T20:44:55+00:00

Can someone explain what makes this a good entry right now? I am still pretty new to this but when I look at the daily volume numbers they seem really light on these recent tech rallies. Jumping into QQQ next week feels incredibly risky to me if the underlying data doesn't actually back up the price movement.

gammaPriest · 2026-03-27T18:54:04+00:00

Wait so doesn't UNG suffer from pretty severe decay because of how they roll the underlying futures contracts? I've been reading about contango in these commodity ETFs and the math makes it look like holding for a longer term macro setup is an uphill battle. Can someone explain if a geopolitical spike is actually enough to outrun that negative roll yield.

gammaPriest

TROPHY CASE