Well, what about the Jan call?

You may have been following this and thought, ok, you are doing spreads..what about that January call from a few days ago? Thats still hanging out there and it looks like the QQQ has moved on.
You got a point, the call is still hanging there, and it is worth about 70% less than what we purchased it for. 
This is why I utilize double downs. You have seen that I will say "Double Down or DD" meaning bet double what you usually do for this play, or I will say, buy a second order of the same order from a day or two ago effectivly making it a double down.
So lets say I purchase a spread. I buy both a put and a call of the QQQ. Now right off the bat I may feel that the charts say that there is a likely possibility of the market falling over the next few days because the RSI and Candlesticks and MACD are signaling an imminent drop. This is when I might do a single QQQ call but a Double Down (DD) put making my call to put ratio 2:1. This covers the upcoming drop nicely but also takes care of the noise: The sudden rises. The sudden good news. The sudden momentum play to the upside. The seemingly go against the grain days that you guys know too well that are in the markets yourselfs. These days happen. That is when I exit my call leaning into a good upday and keep on hangin onto my Doubledown, providing of course that I am looking to see that we dont have a 'runaway train' developing. A runaway train is something I came up with that describes the market making a long term direction change leaving behind a trading range that will effectivley leave your certain stock price put or call langishing.then expiring in the middle of nowhere with the actual stock price now operating somewhere else. When that situation happens, you want to exit your position and recoup any money you have left before it goes and expires worthless. However, back to my example with my 2:1 spread. What will likely happen seeing my charting skills are pretty good, is that the imminent drop I saw coming will happen, the Double Down end of things will make money at a 2x amount, making twice the money, thus covering the call's losses and still making a profit. I then just exit the call and take any money that might be leftover.

Now what I will usually do is this: Simply purchase a call and a put and wait to see what shakes out the next day. If a big upday or a big downday happens the next day, Ill take the money and sell either the call or the put, leaving the other half of the spread alone. Then hopefully the market will turn and go the other way the next few days making money on my other end of the spread that I had left over.
That above senario is best case and doesnt happen too often, so I have to utilze the DD. Lets say the market is due to drop. I can see it in the charts, things dont look good. I buy a 1:1 spread, one put and one call on the QQQ.  The next day the market is up. I exit the call and make some money. Now the puts are flattened and are really cheap plus I am still holding the put from the previous day. Seeing that my charting says the market is about to drop it would be a good idea to Double Down (DD) and get more puts at a cheaper price. Then over the next 2 days, boom. We exit our DD puts.

The double down allows you to have some fault tolerance and allows you to iron out seemingly random noise in market movements.

I usually dont go for a triple down. If you go there chances are you are wrong as you were wrong yet again with the DD and now you are just gambling and maybe you dont know what you are doing. I try to pick up and sell any thing laungishing out there. Such as my 115 Jan 15 calls I got hanging out there. I will have to mop that up on Monday. I already covered them with my DD a few days ago, now Im just going to exit them and take whatever money is left. Maybe if the market fades the gap positively Monday morning, I will exit them if the price goes up a bit making the loss better to ingest.

So the double down is like moving around cards. You do a spread. Market moves one way, you see through the techs you are still good, you double down on one end. Market then moves good, exit the DD and then exit the call. And so forth.
Its a way to fix a sudden suprise move and aborb losses and increase gains. But you have to know what you are doing. You will learn from me as I will describe my moves and what I am thinking from this point onward as if you were looking over my shoulder when I am on the computer.
Hopefully this will enable you to learn how to trade and then make a living buying options on the QQQ and SPY.
Lets do it!

Tradinginsider