06/30 Daily Summary

Around 7:20 AM I’ve decided to roll the short put spreads down, locking some of the overnight profits and allowing me to sell one of my AUG puts, this brought some theta back into the trade and reduced my down-side risk at the same time. This was actually a good move as it saved a few bucks once the market continued going down. Right now, the position is at the max loss level and my game plan is to go into risk management, meaning I’ll start peeling off spreads to minimize my exposure and shut down the trade at a lower loss. We have moved almost 200 points in about 8 days, I’ve adjusted the trade 6 times and every time we kept pushing lower without a break to recover the P/L, once again I’m glad this is a paper position and that my money for this month is safe and sound at the bank..

06/29 Daily Summary

Sure am glad the position is a paper trade. I’m getting a taste of managing some action! Today I did the cut and roll by end of day, while this seems to be ok for now, I wonder if it would be better if I did it Tomorrow in the morning. If it wasn’t for the contingent orders the trade would have hit the skids by now.. My plan is to hang in there and see what happens Tomorrow with the trade, if we make a new low I have orders to hedge and if we sky rocket back up I have orders to drop the long AUG put I’ve bought on the way down. I have a feeling Today’s drop was over-done, we’ll see..

06/28 Daily Summary

This morning I’ve continued to cut and roll the remaining short 1875 Puts, the trade is a bit better than Friday and if we stick around this level for a few days it will start to show profits. All and all, it is still running to make the 10% prior to expiration week, which is my goal.
Better news as Brazil 3 x 0 Chile.. One step closer in the World Cup!

Updated Daily Summary Chart

First and foremost, I’d like to thank the fellows from Dan Sheridan’s Florida Trading Group for their weekly meetings. I can’t attend the meetings but have made a point to download the audio and listen to their discussions every week. A few weeks back they presented what I thought was a great idea: A monitoring spreadsheet to monitor daily movement in relationship to volatility, sounds familiar? :)

Well, the difference is that they were tracking the underlying movement from High to Low, instead of just from close to close. I also liked the fact they were capturing historical data to get a sense for trending. The questions their study answers: how often have we moved over 1 standard deviation (from high to low) during the past 30 days? Is this trending up or down?

With that, I’ve made a bit of adjustments on my own daily tracking spreadsheet. While I do not track the implied volatility as the FTG folks do (I track a 20-day historical volatility), the data I have allows me to take the same sort of measuring and plot this in a trend chart. So there we have it, the updated Daily Summary sheet now will tell us how many times (in percent) has the underlying moved over 1 standard deviation for the past 30 days. For trending, all I had to do is to capture this value for every day and display the results for the past 120 days and displays it in a line chart.

This can potentially serve as a great way to measure when the storms are coming.

06/25 Daily Summary

Second down-side adjustment got hit Today, I sure am glad I got out of my live trade and got into this one to practice my trading management skills. So here is the deal: Since Today was a Friday I didn’t want to go full board rolling my puts since they’re usually at lower prices on Fridays.. I plan on moving the remaining spreads next Monday.

06/26 Performance from trade strategies I've used in the past

I've decided to clean up my blog a bit, and noticed I have performance postings that are quite outdated on my main menu navigation. Since a few months ago I've decided to focus all my attention and limited time on one trading strategy instead of trying to manage multiple positions through the cycle.

The selected strategy is the NDX Iron Butterfly, so I created this blog entry to simply gather the other strategies I've used before for future reference if I ever decide to brush them up and trade them again. Here are links to all other strategies I've traded one way or another in the past:


NDX Fast Iron Butterfly

OEX Weekly Condor

RUT Iron Condor

DEC 09 Trades

NOV 09 Trades

OCT 09 Trades

SEP 09 Trades

AUG 09 Trades

JUL 09 Trades

JUN 09 Trades

MAY 09 Trades

06/24 Daily Summary

Today my down-side adjustment got triggered, as it turns out the volatility didn’t go up by as much as I had expected, this made the down-move better than expected. I’ve adjusted my plan to reflect the next possible steps from here.

06/23 Daily Summary

I’ve entered a paper trade Yesterday, didn’t have much time to blog, here is where I am with the paper position and what is my game plan for adjusting and managing it going forward.

Fantastic day! As I watched the market early AM, I’ve decided against “touching up” any of my contingent orders. I avoided making the “spur of the moment” decision based on limited time and information, and this was KEY for my JUL trade. As it turns out, we backed out from Today’s highs, and ended up going into the sweet zone of my position. I’ve exited the trade with my target profit after being in the market for exactly 2 days! Ok, I did make a math rounding mistake and ended up taking 9.52% instead of the round 10%, but in 2 days?!?! Who cares about the extra .48%?? I’ll leave it on the table as an extra tip, thank you very much! :)
Since trading is a performance activity, I won’t be kicking back and relaxing, just waiting for the next cycle. This time I’ll enter another JUL position in papertrader and keep on monitoring as if real money. Just want to keep working on the craft...

06/18 Daily Summary

Fantastic day! I am very grateful I got in Yesterday as volatility was higher (early in the morning), as the market started trading back up I kept filling my contracts at slightly better prices. Today vols dropped by a quite bit and I’ve decided not to add to my position, it is almost at the target anyway! So, all going well I’ll be in and out once again :)

06/17 Daily Summary

Back in the market! Today I got most of my NDX position on, there is only one contract remaining, and I’m deciding if I load it as a regular trade or if a broken-wing butterfly. Last month using the broken-wing approach helped me much when the market moved up and the vols dropped. This month I’m not quite sure, so will let the market decide for me, if we move higher then I’ll use the regular position + long call, if we move lower then I’ll use the broken-wing.

06/16 Daily Summary

Tomorrow is my deadline to get in, will likely to join the JUL ride during the early morning, unless I see anything suspicious. I’m glad I didn’t enter a few days ago, so far I have been following my gut, now is time to get back in the market. Sometimes you just have to take the plunge and manage whatever comes your way..

06/15 Daily Summary

Just a brief note Today, sorry, I'm away from my computer and can't create the daily price action chart.. Will publish if I have some time Tonight..

I'm glad I didn't jump in the market this morning, as it turns out NDX made quite a run. I'll be looking at a possible position Tonight and will consider jumping in Tomorrow if I feel confortable with where we are in the price action.

For now, relaxing and enjoying Brazil's first victory in the World Cup!! :)

06/14 Daily Summary

Ok, I want to place a position this week. Right now I might need to wait for a few days as I won't be able to dive in right away Tomorrow AM. I've studied a possible trade scenario though, so if the opportunity develops (i.e. time and quiet market) I might get started Tomorrow. Otherwise, it would be nice to enter in a strong down-day to take advantage of a volatility pop, this is a nice to have but not required... Required at this point is placing the position and managing it in order to bring profits in JUL :)

06/11 Daily Summary

We had another 1+ st. deviation day Yesterday, the market is not quite yet ready to calm down. Next week is time to get back in the game, this time is the JUL contracts. Let's get ready to roll..

06/09 Daily Summary

Very brief update Today, sorry but got a real busy day at work.. Nothing much to say, no positions yet, noticed the 5-day volatility chart pulling a yellow bar to the down-side.. NDX didn't quite take over Yesterday's low, yet this is still a bearish situation to keep an eye out for.

06/08 Daily Summary

No position on the table, I’m simply watching the market action for the next few days. Plan on entering my NDX iron butterfly around the 30 days till expiration mark. As we closed with a hammer candle pattern on the daily chart, it will be very interesting to see what tomorrow brings. Should we break this hammer then all bets are off. Also, notice how volatility came back quite a bit Today, almost a 8% drop on the VIX, if one had entered a position Yesterday, it would be in great shape Today just with the vols crunch.

06/07 Daily Summary

It seems we started the day without clear direction and the path of least resistance was down after all. The 5-day volatility chart points to a possible down-cycle to be starting up. Will continue to watch as we approach the time-frame to enter the July positions.

Performance Review MNX/NDX Iron Butterfly

Live trading Results:
FEB/11 NDX Iron Butterfly Day-by-day Review

DEC/10 NDX Iron Butterfly Day-by-day Review
NOV10 NDX Iron Butterfly - Day-by-day Review
OCT 10 NDX Iron Butterfly - Day-by-day Review
SEP NDX Iron Butterfly - Day-by-day Review
AUG NDX Iron Butterfly Day-by-day review
JUN NDX Iron Butterfly Day-by-day review
MAY NDX Iron Butterfly Day-by-day review
APR NDX Iron Butterfly Day-by-day review
MAR NDX Iron Butterfly Day-by-day review
MAR MNX Iron Butterfly Day-by-day review
FEB MNX Iron Butterfly Day-by-day review
JAN MNX Iron Butterfly Day-by-day review
10/20 OCT MNX Iron Butterfly (day-by-day review)
09/14 SEP MNX Iron Butterfly (day-by-day review)
JUL MNX Iron Butterfly (day-by-day review)

06/04 Weekly Summary

Still seems like the storm is not over yet.. We're watching a few 1.5+ st pop out here and there. By looking at the weekly chart I'd have to say I'm not very bullish, the market can always go where it wants to go, but it seems that it is still seeking that SMA 50 on the weekly. I'll be watching the daily action next week, in preparation for entering my JUL trades I want to be watching the "waters" sort of speak..