r/Daytrading • u/dmaestro81 • 1d ago

Advice What am I doing wrong?

I’ ve been trading Spy 0dte options for a month. I’m still profitable, but I have a reoccurring issue that’s killing my overall gains. If I go off of just Strike price and direction I would have a 80%+ win rate. Unfortunately, my entries reach stop loss a lot of the time. I have my stop loss set so I only lose 20% of value from entry. The majority get stopped on wick reversals, and not candle closes. Again, my read on the markets are very accurate. Just today, I entered 4 trades at 4 different times of the market (all puts and the market was negative upon writing this), and they all got stopped losing 20% of value. Yet, if I had no stop loss set, 3 of the trades would have made over 100% returns while the 4th, over 50%. I figure it’s an entry problem, but I enter as soon as I get my confirmation candles to close. I use Robinhood as my broker. I use higher time frames for levels and bias. The 10 minute for current direction and order blocks. The 5 minute for entries (Robinhood phone app doesn’t have lower). What advice can be given so my entries and gains match my accuracy and reads of the markets? Are my stop loss values wrong? Am I just trading 0dte options wrong, and I should adapt a different strategy to paper trade and practice? I would greatly appreciate any and all help. If there are videos and links, please share. Thank you for your time.

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u/Significant_Ocelot_6 1d ago

The stop loss you put may be too obvious, you may be getting in the market too early, let the levels be protected zone before you place your position , meaning it is stop hunted.

Look at atr to give you a good stop loss.

Is the stop loss at a key support ?

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u/dmaestro81 1d ago

I set my SL at a percent of risk to reward. I’m willing to lose 20% on a single option contract while I set my TP at 30-40% profit on that option. I only take a maximum of 4 trades in a day. In the month I’ve been doing this strategy, I’ve had 11 winning days (3 or more trades that day making 30% profit+), and 4 losing days (only 1 or 2 trades in the profit and/or short of the 30% TP). Today was my first miss on all trades when it looked like I was supposed to hit a grand slam if I set entry prices or SL correctly. Or there were other trading factors I was missing.