Purely equities based strategy

Is it possible to trade deep in the money near term options instead of equities for a purely equities based strategy?

Just maybe to go back a step, what I see in my equity trading is that best results come from being only long when the indexes are bullish or only short when they’re bearish. I know the options brokers and the spread-betting providers all say you can go long on these and short on these, all at the same time, so even if the index isn’t strongly trending, as a lot of the time, there will still be some shares going up and down and you can make money from both. But I just find in practice the market doesn’t pay out like that.

Best results come form being long in shares when indexes are uptrending and short when they’re downtrending and otherwise keep your equity trading account in cash.