Tuesday, March 24, 2009

XLE Decision Making

I ran a decision tree on the current situation with the XLE trade. I evaluated 3 options:
1) Do nothing
2) Roll back vertical spreads
3) Add a 2 extra double diagonal on CALL and PUT sides

I'm attaching the risk profile for the 3 options, as well as the decision making tree. One thing I noticed is that option #3 starts to win over options 1 and 2 after 3 days of time-decay. It has more profit potential, however adds an extra $400 of trading capital, and therefore pushes my stop loss to $870.

I did consider shutting down the trade, but on any scenario it was always the worst, because it gives me 100% probability of losing $500, so I took it out of the decision tree.

If XLE stays around the same price level Tomorrow I'll enter option #3.

Risk Profile Option #1
Risk Profile Option #2

Risk Profile Option #3

03/24 GLD Calendar

Trading is starting to show profits, it is up 8% with great probabilities of staying between the strikes one more day Tomorrow.

I have orders to close if it gest beyond the B/E lines, also have orders to close each calendar with 15% profit.


03/24 OIH Condor

OIH moved back down Today, still hanging around 1 st. deviation, that's good for the trade.

FYI: I'm re-evaluating adjustments in general, and very likely to stop adjusting by cutting spreads, still backtesting, but as a business, cutting the spread simply yanks too much profit from the table.

Bellow is the dashboard and risk profile. As I explained Yesterday, I'm not cutting a call spread if we go up, so my only adjustment is to cut 1 Put spread out on the down-side.



24/3 XLE Double Diagonal

I must have been tired Yesterday. I'm wondering how come I didn't realize this, but like Dan would say, where is the beef?? I must have done something wrong with the XLE adjustment, will need to re-visit Mark's video on Double Diagonals, but the second adjustment left me with no profit at expiration.

Now I'll run a decision tree to objectivelly evaluate options about this trade. My options include closing, adding or reverting Yesterday's adjustment. For now, here is the profile and dashboard.

Contingent orders to close at the levels highlighted bellow: