Day After Day Trading?

So, Apple opened up at about 188, I assumed this would get sold heavily upon open so I sold my single contract I had held as soon as I could. I sold the option at 19.60, remember the previous close price was about 12.3, the stock gapped 14 dollars which was all intrinsic value at this point, and I only gained 7 dollars on my option, just to further point out the IV decay(had there been no decay I should have gained all 14 dollars).

So I decided to day trade again, I assumed there would be a hard sell off, which happened, it dropped from 188 down to about 183 in short time as people locked in their gains, from previous experience this is usually then countered with a snap back to the hard sell off. So I waited until the down trend broke went long 25 Nov 190 calls, this promptly made me another 1,250. Again, I got out fast and left money on the table, but until I am more comfortable and have more experience I will go for a quick 3% gain any day.

I got back in later as the stock traded down again to 185, which I assumed would be support due to the psychological number and a few other things, obviously the chart confirmed this and I waited for it to start turning up, I assumed we would have a market rally after the sell off in the middle of the day, so I watched the Dow and Nasdaq also to try and get an indication of it helping the upward move. I bought back in and it sat right at my line of support, fluctuated from down 250 to up 250, after 10 mins of the rally not materializing like I thought I bailed out with only a $100 gain which is better than a loss. Had I been more patient I could have made another nice gain, I was just too impatient.

After the second Apple trade I figured I would go for some index ETF options, I chose the SPY's, which turned out to be less profitable than the QQQQ's would have been since everything tech related was up huge. I chose a point where at the time the S&P was about 1507, which it had bounced off 1500 the previous day. I got long 20 contracts of SPY Nov 152's, which at the end of the day were shaping up nicely with a 1,000 unrealized gain. I had considered selling out but figured with Amazon's earnings we could have a follow through day.

Unfortunately it's looking like at the open I'll be giving back half those gains, Amazon beat but apparently didn't validate the high PE with concerns over margins and the stock sold off and gave up the 10 dollar gain it had during the day. Which then caused many of the other large tech gainers to sell after hours, so that will likely weigh on the markets tomorrow and people will lock in the huge gains today in names like GOOG and BIDU, which may be an opportunity to make some money on some puts, I'll see what it seems like tomorrow.

So, overall today I managed 5% realized gains, which I am happy about.

I am thinking earnings may present a new opportunity, those that report earnings the day after trade usually much higher volume and ranges which could be exploited in day trading front month options. So far it has worked to my advanatage being 5/5(of course we know stating that will jinx me tomorrow :-))

I listened to Jeff Kohler's free advanced option's open house which was very interesting, it is getting me interested in spread trades, unfortunately I think it will require a margin account which I do not have and may not be able to get. I'll have to do some more research and see what I can do.

Let's see if I can make money on a down day too....