Monday, March 8, 2010

03/08 Daily Summary



Another week, another weekly cycle begins. I added my OEX position, added a new NDX butterfly and am still managing the NDX butterfly from last week. So far so good.

03/08 NDX Fast Butterfly (from 03/08)



Added a new bearish butterfly for this week. As it turns out I got a very favourable fill this time and the trade is in good shape right off the bat.

03/08 NDX Fast Butterfly (from 03/01)



Every once and a while you slip and make a mistake. This happened to me on this position: In hindsight, adding the call butterfly by end of day Friday violated one of my lessons learned.. Adding an income strategy right before the weekend is usually a losing proposition. I was so focused on the OEX position that didn’t stop to reflect on the NDX. It was hedged and the best approach would be to simply let it be and open the call butterfly on Monday.

Another lesson I learned is not to focus too much on the past, while trading, the present is all that matters. The best you can do is make a few near-future assumptions and learn from the past. So I take notice of the mistake and do not beat myself over it, keep on managing the trade is the best thing I can do at this point.

03/08 OEX Weekly Iron Condor



Started up a new OEX weekly position. I got in mid-morning, and although the call strike was around 13 delta I evaluated the day’s structure and assumed it would continue to be range-bound, so decided it was ok to open the position mid-day. I use the verticalsolutions.com forecast tool to help me determine the day’s structure during the intra-day price action, in addition to $TICK and the 30-min/1-hour candle patterns in the price charts.