Friday, October 2, 2009

10/02 Daily Summary

The market slowed down Today, my MNX position posted a great recovery and I ended up messing up my RUT position, all things considered I'm now flat for the month, should RUT recovers I will be ok.

I won't be around Monday, so I'll have to leave contingent orders and trust they work fine, I will only be able to check the markets Tuesday morning.

Position's Details:
10/02 RUT Iron Butterfly
10/02 MNX Iron Butterfly

10/02 RUT Iron Butterfly

I have to admit, I got really frustrated with myself Today with the way I behaved on the RUT position. When you focus on avoiding losses, you end up losing more! I had the contingent order to hedge the deltas at 680, and it got me a long NOV Put way over priced, as the market was trading below 680 by the time the order triggered..

Bottom line is that contingent orders must be away from price! Otherwise you end up with a situation like this one, where you hit a contingent order after a gap or an initial small move that doesn't really mean anything and ends up reverting.. This one error on the PUT cost me almost 2% of ROI on the trade.

That being said, there is still life in this trade, and if anything, this proves this is a very forgiven strategy, considered that's the second time I give up a couple percentage points due to mistakes.

10/02 MNX Iron Butterfly

The position recovered great after a quiet day Today. I rolled the last delta hog at the end of the day to cut deltas and to make sure it doesn't become a big problem if we keep going down next week.
All and all, I think I got a good handle on the MNX trade, will increase my size next month.