How I Trade for Only 15 Minutes Per Week (with a full time job)

So why do we strive to trade for only 15 Minutes Per Week? For starters, I have a full time job with a wife and kids so I don’t have a lot of spare time to dedicate to options trading. I do all of my trading on my phone during the week (Monday – Thursday) and the majority of my trading on the Fidelity desktop on Fridays when I am on my laptop at home. Fortunately, I can work in all of my trading during my lunch break at work (Monday-Thursday). It takes me 30 to 45 seconds to execute a Put Credit Spread in TastyTrade or Robinhood. If you are a beginner it may take you more time than that at first, but after a few weeks or months of trading, you should be able to cut down on that time drastically. The interfaces on TastyTrade and Robinhood are very intuitive and are set up to trade quickly and reliably.

After you truly understand the Put Path system, the mechanics of each trade become very repetitive and simple. Throughout the day Monday through Thursday when the stock market is open, I monitor all of the underlyings. This can be done on my watch through the Stocks App or with a quick glance at Robinhood. I monitor all of the underlyings under Holdings in Robinhood because I purchased each for $1. So, I simply open Robinhood and scan the list to see if any underlyings are down 1% or more from my Stocks & ETFs Holdings. If they are, that tells me two things: I need to execute a new Put Credit Spread for that underlying (if I haven’t already done that during the week) and I need to verify current positions to see if any of them are in trouble (are close to the 200% max loss and I need to monitor for closure). I also monitor Fidelity to see if any positions have exceeded their 200% max loss. In TastyTrade, I have Stop-Loss Bracket Trades entered so these really don’t need to be monitored much (if at all). The 2X losses typically come in waves. So if we have a wave, meaning a sharp market downturn, then we sometimes will need to close out 5 to 10 positions within a day. Also, we are opening potentially 3 to 6 new positions that day so it can get busy. On these days I would need to do some mass trading during my lunch break. I typically do this around 11:00am, which is good because that is usually when the market has stabilized pricing somewhat after the market open frenzy. Usually, by 11:00am you can see which direction the market and the individual underlyings are going for the day and if any opportunities are out there. Now you do have to check into the market 2 or 3 times a day to make sure none of your positions have exceeded 200% loss. I also have Notifications set up in Robinhood on my phone that will alert me if any underlyings move by 5% or if any options position has lost 75% or if any options move In The Money. Typically, you will have a couple options that are in the danger zone (over 100% loss) so it becomes easy to memorize and monitor this handful of positions. You can check your positions at night too in order to confirm that none of them are close to the 2X loss range. The vast majority of the time Monday – Thursday, I am trading zero or one trade per day so this is low stress and easy to work into the day.

In this system, the tag line is that you can execute it in only 15 minutes or less per week. That is absolutely true, but there are some caveats. That is only my active trading time. I can execute a Put Credit Spread in around 30-45 seconds easily. Also, I put in the Closing Orders for $.02 immediately after my Opening Order goes through, which adds another 15 seconds or so. Now, that time can extend under certain circumstances, like if I have to do any price discovery. For example, I enter my first order at Mid Price, but if that order is not accepted, then I’ll have to enter multiple orders until my offer is accepted. Typically, on Monday – Thursday, when volatility is up and the market is going down, the vast majority of my orders are executed on the first or second offer. So basically, I’m spending around 60 seconds on average for each underlying entering the Opening and Closing Trades when I’m using Robinhood. TastyTrade takes slightly longer since I’m entering my multi-order Bracket order including the Stop-Loss. On Fridays, Fidelity does take a little longer due to their clunky interface and lack of useful information on the trading screen. Since it is a Friday, I’m not under as much pressure to execute quickly since I’m either working from home, working only part of the day, or have the day off. Due to this additional time, on Fridays I use my Fidelity Account, either Desktop or Mobile App. Now on Fridays, it is harder to execute trades. The reason is that it is harder to ascertain the true Mid Price in Fidelity versus Robinhood or TastyTrade, and volatility may be lower on Fridays. Also, we don’t get as favorable of pricing so it’s hard to get agreement from our buyer and therefore execute an order. We open trades in underlyings on Monday – Thursday only if we have a favorable set up, meaning that there is a 1% drop in the underlying. For the balance of the underlyings, if they weren’t traded Monday-Thursday, then I’ll execute the trades on Friday.

Here are some other activities that may add to your 15 minutes a week of trading (which I recommend but aren’t required); these include logging your trades, keeping a spreadsheet tracking your profit, and continuing your education in options trading (books, videos, blogs, courses). Some other activities that other traders do (which I don’t recommend are): watching CNBC, following trade discords or trade signals, getting trade ideas from Reddit (Wall Street Bets), performing quantitative analysis (market and stocks).

• Watching CNBC is fine to broaden your market knowledge and understand more about the stock market but it is largely a waste of time. One analyst will tell you three reasons to buy a stock and the next will tell you four reasons to sell the same stock. These talking heads on TV have no idea which way the market or individual stocks are going to move (no one does). Most of the CNBC segments are stocks or bonds related and you gain very little options related knowledge.
• Additionally, you don’t need to follow the latest stock tip from Discord or Reddit. These retail traders are trying to figure out the market just like you and they really have no idea whether a stock is going to go up, down, sideways or in circles. The majority of the content on these websites is garbage and can actually be counterproductive to someone who is trying to stick with a systematic approach. It can fill your mind with get rich quick ideas, long call moonshots, YOLO trades and other gambling bets. As you know, we don’t trade individual stocks due to their unpredictability and we prefer to stick to the Put Path which provides diversification, consistency, and better predictability. We avoid single stock risk. Also, we trade six stock (ETF) based underlyings and six alternative assets in order to balance out our risk including Gold, Bitcoin, Oil, Real Estate, Bonds and Volatility. It’s true that 5 of these 6 are single asset risk, but they do provide diversification and uncorrelation from the 6 stock based ETFs.
• Now for the big one, quantitative analysis. Many people that are options traders engage in quantitative analysis of the market and of individual stocks. While it is good to know support and resistance levels of stocks and ETFs, it is not required to set up trades using the Put Path. We are trading -0.15 Delta strike prices, which are typically farther out than your support levels. Additionally, overanalyzing a stock can make you overconfident in what you think can or should happen based on the past or based on your analysis. Just when you think a stock cannot go down any further, it does. When you think it can’t go up any more, it blows off the top some more. The key thing to remember about the stock market is “nobody knows anything”. Anyone who tries to tell you they can predict what a stock is going to do tomorrow or next week or next month is trying to sell you something. Sure, there are lots of great websites, tools and software out there that can assist you in stock analysis, but they are not needed. You can spend hours and hours and hours doing this, but it will not help your trading. I have a statistics background, and I love to analyze stocks, but it doesn’t help you with options, and I feel it’s actually counterproductive somewhat. Some fundamentals analysis may help you find undervalued stocks or good buying opportunities for your stock portfolio, but it won’t help you trade options. The way we trade options within the next 28 to 32 days is too short of a time period to be successful with any prediction tools.

Day traders and guys who are out there scalping will eventually lose, and may lose their whole account. Just look at Reddit and you’ll see tons of people bragging about their winners and flogging themselves for massive losers. It’s very hard to trade this way long term and have a positive P&L. Perhaps the greatest thing about the Put Path is that you don’t have to do extensive analysis. What you have to realize is that everything that you know, that you would use in your analysis, is already baked into the options pricing and deltas! Known information supports the efficient market. I believe in the Efficient Market Theory, which is built on the fact that all known market forces are factored into the market prices. Yes, options use Black Scholes, but volatility is the unknown variable. Market forces and individual underlying forces impact the volatility, which translates into prices. Therefore all market variables (Earnings, Lawsuits, Product Pipeline, EPS, Revenue Growth, Cash Flow, Profit Margins, P/E ratios, GDP, Moving Averages, Trade Volumes, Support and Resistance Levels, RSI, MACD, Bollinger Bands, VIX, Put / Call Ratio, etc.) are already factored into the options prices! The little guys like us (retail traders) are not going to be able to beat the Wall Street machine in the options market by Day Trading long term. Wall Street has massive amounts of resources (people, systems, tools, software) dedicated to market analysis and stock prediction. They have orders of magnitude advantage in the amount of analysis over the average retail trader. You aren’t going to be able to beat them at their own game. So my philosophy is to not get caught up in the short term wins. I developed the Put Path Options Trading System to work in all market environments. We should be getting an 85% win percentage (+/- 5% percent) in good years and bad, bull markets and bear, irrational exuberance and sharp downturns. The one wild card we have against us is the dreaded Black Swan Event, which we may not be able to trade out of and may lead to above than expected losses. I have traded through two of these back in 2020 and it was not as profitable. I did make money on my Put Credit Spreads by and large, but I didn’t have the Put Path system in place then so I’m not sure exactly what will happen during the next Black Swan Event. On average we have one of these every 21 years: it is a risk that we need to face head on and judge if the juice is worth the potential squeeze.

So that sums up the 15 minutes a week trading guidelines. The bare minimum you’ll need to trade using the Put Path methodology is around 15 minutes per week. For some folks, that may be your total time spent trading. For others, you may want to take on some additional activities. It’s totally up to you. I am just hoping that you’ll use your extra time for reading, education, hobbies, vacations, side projects, spending time with kids, or do whatever else you want to do with your time. Another thing I’ve noticed over the years is that following this system leads to peace. I used to be constantly worried about my positions, making adjustments, concerned about margin calls or assignments. This way of trading is low drama and some may say boring. But boring is good, as long as it’s profitable. I find the less time I spend locked into trading, the more mental space I have to relax (or work on this site) and the less worries I have about my positions. Sure, if I didn’t have a job, I could spend 3 or 4 hours hours a day on trading, but that sounds like more stress, more worries, more time lost, and I honestly believe it would be less profitable. Achieving >50% returns over the last four years has been fantastic; having whittled my trading down to 1 system takes a lot of the mental energy out of the multiple strategies, research and variability in P&L. Hopefully this helps! If you are interested in a trading system that is systematic, consistent, low stress and highly profitable, then stick with the Put Path!