Friday, June 5, 2009

06/05 SPY Double Diagonal

The position is going through its first weekend, SPY stayed just around the same price level since I started the trade, so it is in good shape to catch some Theta.

I find that my best positions are those that survive the first weekend without any major loss or adjustment.

06/05 DIA Iron Butterfly

We're now back at the B/E zone. Just like I posted for the DIA trade, having a pre-opening game plan allowed me to stay in the game and avoid any unecessary adjustment.

06/05 MDY 30-Day Condor

Having a pre-opening game plan proved invaluable Today! I was able to anticipate the gap up and evaluate if it was worth over-paying for any hedge or adjustment at the heat of the opening. Because I had great records (thanks to the blog), I was able to see that at the opening level I would be down an acceptable ammount of money and could work the trade from there.

This completely eliminated any anxiety that could have pushed me over the edge and caused me to over adjust the trade. Bottom line, it was a great feeling of being in control.

06/05 RUT 30-Day condor

With the trade being down 15%, and going through the weekend at the 430 level, due to negative Theta I would be at max loss on Monday. I wanted to do something other than taking the loss, so I came up with a recovery plan and went for it! No guts no glory.

See the recovery plan blog I posted earlier Today. If anything, next time I'll give serious thoughts about releasing this recovery plan earlier, I let the trade SIT in negative theta state and lost ground due to neg. theta and a further drop in volatility.

06/05 RUT 50-Day Condor - CLOSED

I've tried to hedge in order to have a more orderly exit, the trade bit the dust Today and there was nothing else I could do for it.

In addition to the gap up, when I hedged I overpaid (figured it would happen) for the long call and ended up losing over the max loss.

06/05 RUT 30-DAY Condor (Recovery Plan)

As we approach closing on this Friday, my RUT 30-Day condor is not in conditions to go over the weekend, it is Theta negative and with large possibility of opening up Monday on Max Loss. I decided to do something about in lieu of letting it die on me.

The picture bellow is my answer: I added 1 Iron Butterfly to neutralize the position and bring as much theta as possible. The scenario as I see is positive even if we gap 1 st. deviation at the opening on Monday. My plan is to navigate this trade untill Friday of next week, and I expect to make money on it.

JUN/09 SPY Calendar (Day-by-Day review)

Start: 05/19/09
Finish: 06/03/09
Duration: 2 and 1/2 weeks
ROI: 11.5%
Comments: This was a very easy trade, nothing happened for the duration, it got slightly negative, but profitable very quickly.


Started on 05/19/09

05/20/09

05/21/09

05/23/09

05/26/09

05/27/09

05/29/09

06/01/09

06/02/09

Finish: 06/03/09

06/05 Pre-opening plan

06:15 AM PST: /ES easing off a bit, by looking at my positions, I'm giving priority to the RUT 50D Condor, then the MDY 30D Condor and lastly DIA Iron Butterfly. My plan is to wait at least for the first few minutes of live trading action, I may not be able to hold off on RUT, but for the other positions I'll wait 30 min before taking action as the market may try to fill the opening gap.

UPDATE: I posted this right after the NFP, which came in better than expected. Now /ES is firing up, so is /TF. I'll review the positions and see what sort of damage control needs to be done at this point.

I'm waitting for the opening bell, before that we have Non-Farm Payrolls comming up, that could move the markets. Bellow is my game plan for each strategy, it may change as the day progresses, it all depends on price action once the bell rings.

Double Diagonal: Not much to do here, I have an alert in case we move over 1 st. deviation to the up-side


DIA Iron Butterfly: If we go to 88.7 my deltas will be out of wack once again, I plan on cutting them. If we approach closing time around that level, I may open another small iron butterfly to go through the weekend with some sort of Theta.

MDY 30D Condor: Looking more and more like an Iron butterfly :) Once again, I plan on cutting delta if we get above 110.5. I'm likely to use a vertical spread to do so, as it increases my theta.
RUT 30D Condor: I'll be watching the trade over, the Vega risk is my only concern at this point, if we get too many negative thetas as we approach closing, I might just take it off or do something else about it.

RUT 50D Condor: This touched my stop loss Yesterday and I didn't fix it. Now I have to act without any hesitation, either hedge it completely or take it off the table. I'll only hedge if it still has some sort of probability of success.