Out, with a 4.4K profit, 23.8% profit on trading capital used...1.7k or so was margin.

So perhaps things will recover but I just cannot wait. XIV was going nowhere even when VIX was falling to lows. It kindof seemed like large market players were piling on in the opposite direction. I suppose I should have gotten out at strength.

So essentially the trade could have been 20.21 * 900 shares to 29.81 which would be 8.64K. I got out at 4.45K instead of the 5.2K I had seen the day before. And a bit more than half of the maximum I could have seen had I been essentially a perfect trader. After all is said and done, average buying prices was 23.36 and percentage of profit on capital committed to trade was 23.8% over a total period of 18 days. Really good from a 1000ft view but when you consider I could have made nearly 50%...well...we have some room for improvement :). Stay safe though!

I applaud myself for taking the first large volatility trade (going all in) and coming out with a sizable profit, but I know I could have done better, especially since I ended up selling during a mini crash. I seem to have a good sense of mins and maxes and I will strive to trust myself a little more in the future.

Now it's time to withdraw 1.8K from my trading account to cover expenses. Although with that additional .7K I would have had a better payday :/

Then give it a few days and put a ratio spread on VIX betting it will go up. I do think I have been over-watching this trade a bit during the last few days and I'm fairly tired of this. I need to take a bit of a break from constantly watching the markets. I also need to somehow realize that I needn't be so hard on myself and that it's quite difficult to get things spot on, if not impossible.

I must celebrate the fact that a year or two ago I was a money-losing machine, and now I'm a money-making machine. Unfortunately my hopes were higher for this trade than the result...maybe that just shows the importance of hedging or something. For instance if I had put on that vix ratio trade I would have been a bit more comfortable waiting to see if spx turned around. I also could have put on a tighter trailing stop which would have prevented most of this gain-turned-smaller situation.

Another thing is next time I should also short uvxy or vxx if I cannot short the former as well as go long xiv. A uvxy short would have provided the best returns in this scenario of ~50%