10/08 When to Adjust?

I think one improvement that can be made on my approach to trading the Iron Butterfly strategy is being able to identify when it makes sense to adjust intra-day vs. when it makes sense to wait to adjust at end-of-day.

Today is a perfect example: The market moved about 1 standard deviation higher intra-day, but then faded and closed just around Yesterday's closing. It hit my adjustment contingent orders for both RUT and MNX, and therefore I paid to protect myself from an up-side move that never happened.

So, the question is, how do you look at the market and make this decision AND at the same time do not take a "directional bias"? I think the answer is in evaluating the market "internals", sort of having an X-ray of how is the overall sentiment. I have started following a couple of web sites that I think give me an objective view on this sentiment:

1) Vertical Solutions: I like his trend odds forecast as well as the current conditions chart. They could be a great way to frame the market environment and help with that adjustment determination.

2) FinViz: I really like their front-page, it will clearly display ALL green or red for the SPX, and this can help you determine if we're facing a 1+ standard deviation day, vs facing a move that might not be that bad..

I got permission from both sites to post their screens on the blog, and will start doing so as a way for me to gauge and compare Vertical Solutions' forecast tools and FinViz X-ray with the end-of-day market results. With time I think this will give us an extra edge in terms of decision making.