Wednesday, September 2, 2009

09/02 IBM Calendar

The IBM trade is still underwater, not much to do here except keeping an eye on the position, next adjustment point is if we hit 115, that will cause me to consider scaling out of the 120s.
Previous Posting:
09/01 IBM Calendar

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Gustavo,

Why do you add on the risk profiles a simulated trade e.g. IBM Calendar vertical 115 PUT? what effect does this have? Do you plan on buying this to add to your position?

Gustavo's Trades said...

Hi there,

I always have a simulated trade to account for trading costs such as commissions, previous closed positions, etc.

In this example, you'll see that the spread is buying and selling the exact same contract (SEP 115 P), and I keep adjusting the debit or credit cost of that simulated trade to reflect commission costs or the P&L of any previous trade I did as adjustment.

Because I'm doing a simulation buying and selling the same contract and strike, it won't affect my greeks, it simply adjusts my P&L to be as accurate as possible.

TOS doesn't include commissions nor previous transactions in the current risk profile, so I do this to make the lines as accurate as possible. Without doing this, you get a risk profile that can be VERY unrealistic (i.e. showing $1000 profits when you are actually down $150 bucks.)

Gustavo

Gustavo's Trades said...

That's a great question By the way! I had the blog for months now and you're the first one to ask about it :)

Anonymous said...

Hi Gustavo,

You say that TOS doesn't account for commissions in the risk profile - if you look at the top of the sheet next to plot lines they recently added the function so you can change the P&L to include or exclude commissions.
Hope that helps (good to give something back!) - or have I not fully understood your explanation?

Gustavo's Trades said...

Yes, you're correct, they added that function, however, TOS profile does not consider previous adjustments or trades you have closed. So, here is an example:

Say you buy OCT 490 P, as an adjustment, then you sell it back because you don't need it anymore. Sell OCT 490 P, the TOS software will simply remove it from the profile, and will not include any P/L you had on this trade in your current P/L, that can lead to distortions in the profile itself.

Hope that helps! Thanks!
Gustavo

Anonymous said...

Hi Gustavo!

That's very clever and will help me out lots!!

Many Thanks for all your insights and advice - its very appreciated!