The picture above is a LOTTO PLAY I took this morning, end up buying 4250 ES CALL 6DTE for an avg of $11 at 8:07am (we were trading around 4054 level) , after the report in 2 minutes ES spiked to 4180 and my options price went to $30 Great I was up +160%, but with IV CRUSH + MKT HEADING LOWER 50 points before the bell, my OPTIONS that I got before 8:10am were losing money already.... but how If my entry was at 4054 and we were trading almost +100 points higher ?
- Because when you buy an option you have all the factors against you, the probability of success are too small, as you have TIME (Theta) against you + the IV (Implied Volatility) you have not only to be right, but rely on the trend to follow, every minute you are wrong you are losing... Even if the market is sideways and not moving, your options have expiration and every second count, so you better be a DIRECTIONAL HERO and NAIL the trade.
So today I was up 160% and end up losing this trade !! Part of the Game, as I call this a LOTTO PLAY ! It was BAD LUCK today, YES and NO, lack of liquidity was another factor (when you trade ES OPTIONS), at this chart you can see there was no orders getting filled at 30, mine didn't get filled, only a lucky trader got out at 25.25 !! After that it was a DUMP and NASTY day!
To answer the question, I would say it depends on how you TRADE, but Please don't get me wrong, I do day trade 99% of the time on the BUY SIDE (Buying CALL or SELLING PUT), but 99% of my long time frame trades are on the SELL SIDE of OPTIONS (Selling CALL or Selling PUT) to have probability in my favor.
I hope this can help you to understand why most of the times you end up losing money on the BUY SIDE of OPTIONS, the GREEKS are against you !
Options & Futures Trader