Monday, July 25, 2011

7/25 Weekly Review

Looks like things improved a bit last week. There is still some volatility in the market though. I'd say until we clear this budget debacle we won't see this volatility go away. For now I'm closing any position that reaches 90% of the credit (Gold cash secured puts are almost there) and I have a few protective contingent orders if any of my underlying stocks (KO, PG, WMT and COH) go down by more than 8%.

Hopefully lawmakers won't be dumb enough to not reach an agreement to bump their own credit line and force a US default. That would be no good, no good at all.. :)

Sunday, July 17, 2011

7-17 Weekly Summary

Looking at this past week one can see it was still very active compared to last week. In terms of the past 30 days it seems things got a bit calmer, yet we still had a couple of days with over 1 standard deviation last week. On an intra-day basis the % of days with over 1 st. deviation intra-day just edged higher to 60%, quite a big number and consistent with summer times, when we have more volatility and usually less volume in the market.



I've been thinking about going back go a few simple income strategies, using a small account and trade a few no-touch iron condors or calendars, but first will take a look at what other traders are doing in the Sheridan Mentoring site.

Cheers!
Gustavo

Sunday, July 10, 2011

7-10 Daily Summary

One of the blog readers asked about the daily summary charts.. Here is an updated NDX chart. WOW.. This is a wild environment for sure, so make sure you are aware of storm conditions if you're trading iron butterflies or income trades for this matter.