04/07 EWZ Double Diagonal

EWZ having a hard time giving up this up-side bias. I`ve called a few brazilian friends told them to dump their holdings, need to call a few more people. :)

In the meantime, P&L enjoyed a nice recovery Today, we`re back to where we started after that big spike down.

Dashboard and Profile

04/07 MNX 45-Day Condor

MNX finally caught up with the rest of the world. Back down and inside the cone. It is nice to finally have you here MNX, enjoy the cone, please make yourself at home. :)

Dashboard and Profile:

04/07 OIH 36-Day Condor

OIH back at the 2% mark. At this juncture, the CALL side is almost at 80% profit, because of previous adjustments, we`re close to the max profit at this trade. Should OIH fall a bit further, the CALL spreads will come off and the trade be closed.

Dashboard and Profile:

04/07 XLE Double Diagonal

Great recovery! Took some time, but XLE is finally seing the light! It is great to see a trade recover after being deep down like that. Way to go XLE, let`s bring this one home!

Dashboard and Profile:

04/07 RUT 52-Day Condor

Great day all across the board. What else can I say? It was specially good to see RUT back in the "zone". Will appreciate if it stays there for the next 20 days or so :)

Note: While reviewing the risk profile, it seems that the short delta that means being down by 1.5x the cashflow oscilates between 28 and 29 for the PUT side, and 30 and 31 for the CALL side. I'm being a bit over-detailed on my trades, but I've moved the PUT stop to short delta at or bellow -29 and CALL stop to short delta at or above 31.

Dashboard and Profile:

04/07 GLD Calendar Recap

Ok, it is time to review this trade play by play, my effort here is to determine what went wrong, was it the plan? Was it me? Or was it simply market conditions? Let`s start from the beginning:

1) It all started back on 03/16, when I noticed GLD was behaving very well. Prior to entering the trades that week I performed a study on all my target ETFs and Indexes to determine the ones most likely to behave. I quote myself from that day: `GLD: Price action is decent, only 3 large days. Seems to be going back into a channel.`
Here is a picture of the VIPES study I was looking at:

2) So on the 17th I came in and launched the calendar. I quote myself again: `...As of now, my goal is to get in and get out, but if I need to adjust I`ll add to it and turn into a double-diagonal.`

2.1) From back then I can debate that while my plan had an adjustment strategy well set out, there wasn`t any time-limit component to the trade. What did I mean by get in and get out? Was it 2 weeks? 3 weeks? etc.

3) The very next day, GLD went crazy to the up-side, fired up and hit my adjustment point, launching the 94 Calendar.

4) The trade then languished for several days, staying in a small profit zone. On the 24th, it hit 8% ROI, half of my target. There was no provision on my plan to Tighten the noose.

5) As you can see from the chart bellow, there were several opportunities to get out of the trade. I didn`t, stayed in with all my contracts and ultimately took a loss Yesterday. GLD was behaving fairly well, however, it hit the all in a snap, so that is why TTN.

So the lessons learned:

1) Add TTN to trading plan

2) Define time-limit if that`s the case

What`s next

I`ll go over this trade with Dan Tomorrow and ask for his evaluation as well. Maybe he has additional information I`m missing here.