04/30 RUT 50-Day Condor

I entered a new condor Today, am running out of time this evening, so I'll post the plan and studies Tomorrow.

Cheers!
Gustavo

04/30 EWZ Double Diagonal

No major change Today, except that EWZ moved higher with everything else in the morning and then faded at the end of the day. We have hit the adjustment level, so now I'll see how the trade will behave from now on.

04/30 OIH 30-Day Condor

OIH moved up early in the day and I got out of the PUT spread, locked in 85% of profits, at the end of the day it moved back down and earned extra profits on the CALL side. Approaching 10% zone, let's go OIH!! Let's bring this one home.

04/30 RUT and MNX Condors

Both trades hit my stop Today. Not much to say about it, except that I hate to see it happen, but it does, all I can do is learn. If anything, the question I ask myself is: are these "no-touch" good strategies to fit my personality? Let me do some thinking on it.

Bellow are the last dashboards:

04/30 Price Studies

I'm considering entering a 50-Day Condor Today, therefore here are the Price Studies for all indexes and ETFs I track. Notice pretty much most of them have been behaving better (not many 2 st. deviation days), yet they have also been trending up.

DBA

DIA

EEM

EWZ

GLD

IWM

MDY

MNX

NDX

OEX

OIH

RTH

RUT

SLV

SMH

SPY

TLT

UNG

USO

XLE

XLF

4/29 EWZ Double Diagonal

EWZ Hit my first adjustment level Today. At 45.30 I moved 2 contracts from 44 to 47, cutting the Delta in half and giving now more space for the trade to work. Next adjustment will be to move the remaining contract if we hit 47.

I was confused Yesterday regarding Tighten the Noose, I then evaluated my strategies and decided to do so if I hit 70% of my profits. To make the decision process easier I added the levels to my P&L chart on the dashboard.

4/29 OIH 30-Day Condor

Today OIH contracts got changed due to a dividends distribution. I'm not sure how this affect my position in terms of liquidity on the new contracts. I'll stick with the normal plan and see where it takes me.

I also added the TTN levels to my P&L chart in the dashboard, this eliminates the doubt and facilitates my decision making in terms of when it is time to Tighten the Noose on the trade to lock in profits.

4/29 MNX 45-Day Condor

This position is taking just about the same ammount of up-side pressure as the RUT condor, yet the P&L seems to be in much better shape. Today I was able to close the Short PUT contracts for 5c. I have a running order on the Long PUT contracts, who knows, if the market sells off I might be able to get a hit on it.

There is a good chance (over 70%) it will be fine Tomorrow.

04/29 RUT 52-Day Condor

The position is still on the board, yet it has been rough around the edges. Hard to take such a constant up-side pressure, however I made a plan and am sticking to it. There is still some chance (40%) we'll be fine Tomorrow. I usually see a reversal from the direction the day after FED announcement's, let's see if it happens Tomorrow.

04/28 OIH 30-Day Condor

OIH reached 50% of target profit Today, I've placed an order to protect profits and close the Call spread if current profit drops in half. There is over 50% chance it will be fine Tomorrow.

04/28 MNX 45-Day Condor

MNX went back down a bit Today, P&L picked back up with signs of recovery. Time decay is starting to kick in. Very good probabilities of staying on the trade Tomorrow.

04/28 RUT 52-Day Condor

RUT moved back up a little bit Today, still placing pressure on the up-side. Time decay is starting to help and push the stop further away from current price.

4/28 Contingent orders maintenance

This morning I decided to perform a quick review of my contingent orders. I wanted to review the estimated P&L on Think or Swim price risk chart and compare with the delta on my short contracts.

Since all my contingent orders for my condors are defined by the delta of the short strikes I wanted to make sure the values I have are in line with the P&L levels for adjusting/closing the positions.

So, I've adjusted the contingent orders to the following positions:
RUT 52-day condor: Had order to shut down with short delta at or above 31, now it is at or above 30.

MNX 45-day condor: Had order to shut down if CALL side hit short delta of at or above 32, TOS was showing it to be too soon (P&L not yet -1.5x the cashflow), so I adjusted to at or above 35.

OIH 30-day condor: For the CALL side, the contingent to hedge remains with short delta at or above 35.

04/27 - Take Profit Order

Today I learned an extra lesson: set up the "take profit" contingent orders on every trade as part of the OCO order to make adjustments. This will automatically take the risk off the table and lock-in profits when the market provides them.

I had this in place for the EWZ double-diagonal and RUT condor, it worked perfectly. Not quite working on the MNX condor, the order is there but there are no takers.. I forgot to place the order for OIH. Well, I was on vacation in a resort in Brazil.. I consider a success just the fact I was tracking the end-of-day market and with contingent orders in place..

One way or another, good to document it here on my blog.

04/27 EWZ Double Diagonal

Phew! EWZ back down under 43. Now it is time to continue down, please? If EWZ does indeed back down, we'll be taking our profits on this position.

4/27 OIH 30-Day Condor

OIH retraced a bunch Today. I kind of expected it after last Friday's wild jump. Usually when prices jump on "hopium", they come back down with the big hangover.. Let's see what else comes up.

NOTE: I did not have my take profit orders in place for the PUT spreads, that's a lesson learned for future trades.

04/27 - MNX 45-Day Condor

MNX did not pull back as much as other indexes Today. The fact it ended flat and volatility went up didn't help the position's P&L. Probabilities of being fine Tomorrow are in the 70% range.

4/27 RUT 52-Day Condor

The position recovered ground Today. This retracement is very welcome indeed. Bellow are dashboard and profile.

04/24 OIH 30-Day Condor

OIH pushed high Today, the position still in a decent shape considering we're hugging the up-side zone since the beginning. Now it is time to close th PUT spread and take our profits in a pull back.

I've added the profile for how the trade will look like closing the PUT spread and IF need to hedge just in the case OIH continues UP.