Our approach is to pick a underlying which has an attractive premium for our risk tolerance. To do so we normally look for something whose price is > $50, has high liquidity and has a implied volatility which is attractive to us. We also consider the historical volatility trend for 20 10 5 days and compare it to the 30d implied vol to get a feel for it's cheapness. THEN we look at the 45 day option and SELL premium against that. We tend to look for a probability of profit of 70 -80% and that defines the premium.
In short it's NOT day trading, it's NOT a magic formula and it's NOT a scam. Should anyone wish to listen to ACTUAL serious traders working everyday to help retail investors then look at tastylive.com. Again, I am NOT being paid for this. I just am answering the OP's question regarding what we did post 5 startups to keep us busy. Our approach allows us to risk 25 % of our capital ( just in case it goes wrong we don't lose everything) we get about 10 - 30% return on 100% of our capex. we use the kelly criterion to define our thinking regarding when to get out when we get it wrong. We mostly use naked puts but in the current environment we consider back ratios or spreads. Does ANY of this sound like day trading or some magic formula. I don't really care about your opinion but I wanted to ensure that anyone reading this thread could have something to reality check against other than your "comments"
Are you using OptionNet Explorer or OptionVue, or just your own software using the math you learned from your CBOE friend?
Interesting to hear about trying to use the Kelly criterion. I've always thought of it for bet sizing, which is tough since you never know your true odds (unlike counting cards, for instance).
For my own trading, I am having moderate success with selling premium on index options. I find it tough to make a meaningful amount of money while keeping blow-up risk low.
