About the Swing Trading Virtual Portfolio

The purpose of this virtual virtual portfolio is to show that anyone can make money 
consistently by following some very basic rules without trying to 
guess market direction. Our focus is on discipline and money 
management rather than entries. Our goal is to show that by keeping 
losses very small and letting run our winners it is easy to be 
profitable in the long-run.

– Most of the trades are directional, naked options, no spreads (or 
very rarely).
– This virtual virtual portfolio is targeted to trades that we usually hold between 
2-3 days and a couple of weeks.
– All trades are posted live in the virtual virtual portfolio as soon as they are 
entered and most of the time in comments as well.
– We use different strategies in this virtual virtual portfolio, one of them being the 
5MA strategy (explained in another post). But we do not trade this 
strategy only. Most of our trades are based on technicals, support/
resistance, patterns, etc. The constant is that we always define our 
stop when we enter the trade and we always respect risk management and 
position sizing.
– For most positions, unless indicated, we buy ATM or slightly ITM 
naked calls or puts. We usually buy one month out, and never hold 
current month options 2 weeks before expiration.
– R is how much we risk on each position. It is the difference between 
the entry price and the stop.
– R should not be more than 2% or 3% of your virtual portfolio.
– R is constant. It means that we should always lose the same amount 
when our stop is hit. If we risk 2% of your virtual portfolio on each trade 
and our virtual portfolio is $100K, then we should ALWAYS lose $2k when we get 
stopped-out. And it does not matter if the stock dropped 20% or 1% 
from our entry.
– By defining our stop and our risk BEFORE we enter each trade, we can 
then calculate the number of contracts we need to buy to keep our loss 
at 1R when we get stopped-out.

An example of how we calculate position size:

Let’s say we buy AAPL calls when AAPL is at $152.25.
$151 is our stop.
Delta of the May $155’s is 0.50
Our total account is $25,000
Our risk on this trade is 2% of $25,000 or $500
Our risk is $1.25 on the stock
Our risk or maximum loss per option is $0.625, which 0.5 (delta) X 
$1.25 (risk on stock).
The number of contracts we should buy is our total risk divided by the 
risk per option: $500/(0.625*100) = 8