07/26 Daily Summary

Didn’t touch the trade Today, I’m very grateful for a full day of time decay after the weekend. We moved a bit higher and I have my eyes and contingent orders set in case we continue to push upwards.

07/23 Daily Summary

Phew! The weekend is finally here. Today I used a butterfly roll to move my 1825/1900 call spreads to 1900/1975. I did not want to add an additional iron butterfly because it was Friday, will see where we are on Monday and do so if needed. So far I’m down about 13% and looking for the weekend and a quiet Monday to take some of the heat off the position. Depending on where I am on Monday I’ll dive in with the extra butterfly and pump up my Theta.

07/22 Daily Summary

One thing I’m grateful for Today: I did not sell my long Sep 1900 Call Yesterday, it looked tempting to dump it provided we closed with such a bearish candle formation... I opened the computer around 7 AM expecting to be ready to dump my long calls and manage the down-side, what a surprise to see we were already at my up-side adjustment and the contingent order had done its job at 1960. I kept watching and noticed the Vols were not letting off and this was forcing me to be more long deltas than I originally wanted, so I replaced the 1925 call for the 1950 with a vertical spread. This locked in some profits out of the 1925 and moved the position’s delta a bit more in line with what I wanted. Now it is a matter of watching the market Tomorrow and doing a cut and roll on my short 1825 calls. This up-side swing wouldn’t be this hard if the vols were going down with it, but with 3 fast moving days in a roll, the market makers are not letting the vols out of the contracts any time soon.

07/21 Daily Summary

As 8 AM, I noticed that we didn’t have a lot of volume and the market was more towards bearish than bullish, I moved my up-side adjustment to 1860 and let it ride. No matter how much you study before making a move, there is always a situation that will prove you wrong, so I decided to leave the trade alone, it turned out ok. Would I rather not have that long SEP call? Absolutely, but then again, if we had moved higher Today it would be a different story, right? Best thing I can is to follow my plan and keep working the trade as the market moves around. So far so good, it posted a decent recovery, looking for a few quiet days to post additional recovery.

07/20 Daily Summary

Today we hit 1840, that by itself wouldn’t be a big deal, yet we were trading bellow 1790 when we started trading higher and higher. By the time we were hitting 1840, the NDX had moved over 50 points, and this sort of fast-paced action usually causes wider spreads and distorted P/L picture, I’ve also noticed the vols on my short Call and Puts dropped, but not at the same pace as all other strikes: The TOS imp.Volatility dropped about 9% for NDX, my short calls and puts dropped a bit over 2% in volatility, so I guess this contributes to my P/L to be distorted and worse than planned last night when I estimated the NDX at 1840. Not much I can do here, I got the long SEP call as previously planned and am now on stand-by waiting to see how the trade will look like Tomorrow. If the vols drop a bit and spreads go back to normal I will see a good P/L recovery.

07/19 Daily Summary

Today I got in my AUG trades, I filled the position early in the morning while volatility was actually higher than last Friday. Usually I’d have preferred filling the position one contract at a time squeezing for better prices as the market traded higher through the morning, however, I’m on vacation this week working with limited Internet access so went in with the full position in one shot. Let’s start the journey to AUG profits!

I’ve also added a few cash-secured puts on KO and WMT. After listening to several sessions in the Sheridan Mentoring site, and after back-testing for the past 3 years I’m convinced that this is a great way to keep the long-term portion of my portfolio working for me as well. I won’t be publishing day-to-day positions on the cash-secured puts/covered calls, but might add them at the end of each month just to track performance. I’ve sold the 47.5 Put on WMT and the 50 Put on KO both for about 1% ROI on the capital.

07/16 Daily Summary

Friday’s move was certainly a welcome pump in the volatility. I’m looking to start my NDX position next week, possibly Monday (as long as we don’t gap big in the opening). The storm is not over yet, as you can see were still having a few 2+ st. Deviation days. One thing worth doing is to go over past daily summary charts on the blog, if you go back a month, you’ll see we were having a lot more action.