Thursday, June 11, 2009

06/11 SPY Double Diagonal

Nothing exceptional happened Today, SPY hit 1 st. deviation up and then came back down like all other ETFs.

06/11 DIA Iron Butterfly

I'm very frustrated with myself by not managing this trade properly Today. I cut the delta too late, then over cut it. Then DIA came back down and now is risky to the down-side. The intra-day pricing anomaly continued, and P&L only settled at the end of day. Once again, it was like driving without the speedometer.

I'll re-evaluate what I did wrong on this trade, I over traded the position for sure. See separate posting on over adjusting.

06/11 MDY 30-Day Condor

I over adjusted on the up-side, cut the delta by too much, the price whipsawed and now the down-side might be at risk.

I won't watch the market during the day Tomorrow, so I have an entry order to cut the delta in 1/2 if MDY it gets at or bellow 106.5, then re-evaluate at the closing. See separate posting on over adjusting.

06/11 OVER ADJUSTING

It is official, I'm over adjusting my trades. I've over-adjusted the DIA and MDY positions Yesterday and Today. Needless to say, this frustrates the heck out of me. I need to go back to the drawing board and do what I've been avoiding: backtest the iron butterflies in order to have some structure for their adjustments.

Must watch Dan Harvey's videos again and do my own backtesting with end of day data from TOS. This is the only way for me to have some sort of structure in order to trade those iron butterflies, otherwise it will be another case of over-adjusting my way out of profits.

For now, my decision is simple: if they get ugly intra-day, have an entry order to cut delta in 1/2, then re-evaluate the position at closing. if they close at max loss, exit. It will either work or won't. I won't flatten the deltas again intra-day, if we hit a max loss point at closing, that's ok, this is my first try on these trades, and some times it beats you. I just won't beat myself again by over-adjusting all the time.

Gustavo

06/11 Pre-opening game

US Futures turned lower after core retail sales, and unemployment claims. We saw a spike up and then an immediate reversal pointing and breaking the overnight lows , new lows are being made on the 934 area, which is a price level we have seen over and over again this week.

Now, as far as my positions are concerned, boy am I glad I ended the day delta negative... Not saying I knew it, but my gut feeling was not to mess with it, taking a bit more risk than I liked.

MDY 30-Day Condor: Hedge the up-side if we're moving around 110 with strengh. As per the risk chart, if we go to 110 we'll be losing a bit on the P/L level, however, my money is on the dow-side Today.

DIA Iron Butterfly: DIA trading at 87.60 level, the down-side is fairly safe, but plan on hedging the position if we head back up, say above 88.5 the half-point between where it is and the 1 st. deviation up.

SPY Double Diagonal: Watching with alerts, so far no action required.

New position Today: RUT 30-Day Condor, yes, we're still 35 days away from the mark, but I'm deploying this puppy a bit at a time, starting Today and adding to it next week. I'm loading it with insurance as I'm starting to think Volatility is about to come back.

06/10 SPY Double Diagonal

Flying high, no concerns over turbulence.

06/10 DIA Iron Butterfly

Similarly to MDY, DIA went to my down-side adjustment, then bounced back. I'm leaning negative deltas, and may need to touch up the trade again if we hit the up-side. This is the ending game and my goal is to keep the profits in check.

I've been peeling off spreads to adjust the position, I figure that at this point in the game it is better to take things off the trade than to add to it. Also, I'm looking at my commission costs, if I keep addint spreads/contracts, it will keep on rising my costs, so far, 50% of this profit will be taken by commissions.

06/10 MDY 30-Day Condor

I hedged the position when it was going down, just to see it whipsaw at the end of the day. Now I'm leaning delta negative. However, I know just about where to do something. In the bigger picture, I'm still under the tent as Dan Sheridan likes to say, so I'm not too worried about the trade.