10/31 Daily Summary

Did not remove the cash-secured puts just yet, truth is I did not have time to work on it early this morning. I want to see it reach 90% of the max profit, it is not quite there yet, so will hold on for a few more days to let time decay do its job. NDX took a dive Today, as you can see, the past few days have been so active that Today's move is not even 1 standard deviation. In the old days a 40+ points (-1.72%) move was quite an event, not so much these days.

10/30 Weekly Summary

The market seemed to be in a wide range with an upward bias. It seems we had quite a few days with over 1 standard deviation moves last week and the intra-day movement has continued to increase. While the NDX did not move up or down by too much this week it sure did move around. I have a few cash-secured puts that are about to reach their max profit so I may take them out sooner than planned and wait a few days to get back in.

As I have mentioned, I started backtesting a version of the iron butterfly without a lot of adjustments, basically the only adjustment is a consideration at the beginning of the trade about loading all contracts at once or loading contracts in a scaling fashion (start with 1 lot and add others if the first lot gets into trouble). So far the results are looking interesting and I'll do a few more months of testing and am looking to get a small position in December contracts to get back in the iron butterflies.

Cheers,

Gustavo

10/24 Daily Summary

NDX moved higher Today, so did the 3 cash-secured puts I have in my portfolio. So far looking really good. I will be out of town for the rest of the week, may not have time to post updates and even if I do have time I will be away from my home computer so chances are I won't have my daily view.

10/20 Daily Summary

No major change Today on my positions. One thing to notice the % of days with 1 std. deviation intra-day is moving higher and higher.. This indicates market volatility regardless of smaller range when looked from a close to close perspective.

10/19 Daily Summary

NDX pushed lower Today for about 1 standard deviation, not as much down-side pressure on the stocks I have the cash-secured puts on, that's always a good thing. Actually, that's the reason I picked these stocks: They tend to suffer less when the market takes down-side pressure.

10/18 Daily Summary

Today's up-side move was beneficial for my 3 positions, not much to do on these, which is something I LOVE!

10/17 Daily Summary

Just a brief posting to update everyone on the current positions I have on, as you can see I have 3 cash-secured puts and they are working ok thus far. I'm also posting the daily summary view for volatility spikes on the NDX.

In preparation for 2012 I have been looking at possibly trading a straight-forward iron butterfly strategy with fewer (if any) adjustments. The key is to have a good feeling for how the market is behaving in the weeks prior to entering the trade. I will post a study report I'm working on once it is complete to give everyone a perspective on what I'm talking about.

Cheers,

Gustavo