10/29 RUT Iron Butterfly

I decided to keep on working on the trade. After all, there is still a lot of time for recovery. So I gave it an adrenaline shot and am looking forward to a few quiet days, or even slightly bullish, so that volatility collapse back to normal. We'll see.

10/29 MNX Iron Butterfly

MNX posted a great recovery Yesterday. I saw the trade leaning negative deltas but decided against adjusting. My thinking behind is that if we do move higher Friday, the volatility will further collapse and that will balance things out. If we don't or if we even drop a bit, by not adjusting I save some more over-adjusting.

10/28 Daily Summary

Do I have to say anything? Market dropped like a rock and volatility rose like a rocket! There, simple as that.

FinViz wasn't painting a full RED picture until later in the day. Vertical Solutions forecast showed that conditions were worsening by the hour, and I used that indicator to take action prior to end of day. It didn't save me on the RUT, but made a good difference on MNX..

Position's Details
10/28 RUT Iron Butterfly
10/28 MNX Iron Butterfly

Price Action & Forecasts:

10/28 RUT Iron Butterfly

The price action coupled with the volatility pop was harsh on the trade. I could not contain the damage. Frustration is the best way to describe my feelings about this. I had to sleep over it before writing about it, it was a shalow night to say the least...

I have hedged and I'll give it a day or so before yanking the rest of it out. I have to re-think how I'm trading the RUT, and I might do things very differently next month. For starters, I'll paper trade a larger NDX position, not sure about what to do with the RUT, I might just focus on the MNX iron butterfly as it seems to be the only trade working well for me lately.

10/28 MNX Iron Butterfly

The trade is still under the tent. I have hedged it against the down-side and paid attention not to fully cut the theta. Should we move back up Tomorrow the position will recover, otherwise I have contingent orders to further hedge the down-side and will open another butterfly.

As the market was rolling down, I was also rolling my short PUT strikes, both the 177.5 and 175 became delta hogs in the same day, so I rolled them all.