How do Options Daytraders Sleep?

This morning I spent a "day in the life" of an options daytrader. It was fairly obvious this morning (at least to me) that AAPL was not going to break back out like I thought yesterday afternoon.

I hate being wrong, so instead of selling near open to buy back lower, I decided to collar my AAPL long position with Feb puts. In this case, it was Feb125 puts due to expire tomorrow (effectively at 4 pm tonight). On top of that, the Feb puts were OTM.

I initially bought these puts this morning for $0.65 and watched the market and AAPL turn around for a moment and I quickly covered at $0.50. Not a good start.

I then noticed the absolute lack of buying in AAPL this morning so I started a position again at $0.53 about 30 minutes after I had previously covered. I ended up riding a downward slide of the stock below $125.00 when I covered in chunks between $0.90 and $1.35.

Overall, it was a great performance that will more than make up for any losses that I currently have today. The problem was that I was very, very lucky. It became apparent that I didn't have a comfort zone at all with this trade. I had no tool that would show greeks intraday. The puts were trading at about a $1.00 premium at open and slide to about $0.70 later in the morning before increased volatility after the stock broke $125 gave it a bump again. I kept thinking that the premium was going down to close to zero by the close.

In order for this trade to work (which was supposed to be a collar), the stock needed to go down and go down fast. It was like playing high stakes poker. At one point, I had 400 contracts in play and had to run to the bathroom and hurry so that I didn't miss any price action changes.

This was not investing and this is a reminder to myself that I need to avoid this stupidity in the future.

By the way, I bought more AAPL March long calls when the stock started to rebound at $124+. I have a little more time on that one and I think my downside is limited.

Better than poker. How do they sleep?