04/06 Daily Summary

So here is my resolution for Q2 of my trading business: Less is more! I’ll trade only the NDX Iron butterfly, the monthly position. This will allow me to have a decent work-life balance, part of my plan for Q2 is to establish some goals that I can measure and fully control. These are not P/L based goals, since P/L is not under my control. Rather, they will be activity driven goals that I can control and measure against. More to come later on the week.
Since I’ll be focused, the blog will have more detailed information on the trade, as well as the game plan and adjustment strategies around it, so stay tuned, this might be a benefit for everyone involved :)

04/06 NDX Iron Butterfly

When we approach the end of this trade, the rule of thumb is simple: “You snooze, you lose”.. Notice how sharp the P/L drop was from Thursday to Monday and Today. In a nutshell, you don’t want to carry short contracts that are In The Money (ITM) when we’re approaching the final two weeks. I had my chance on Thursday but was too busy to focus on what I should be doing with this trade... Well, there is still a possibility for making profits and that’s what I’m focused on.

04/06 NDX Fast Iron Butterfly (from 04/05)

As we traded lower early this morning, I saw profits on the trade and took it! Got about 3% ROI in less than 24 hours, that is what I wanted to do all along with these FAST butterflies, so here I got my taste of a quick turn around. :)

04/06 NDX Fast Iron Butterfly (from 03/22)

This morning I closed the last remaining 1925 iron butterfly and am only carrying the additional iron butterfly I put in to recover the trade and one long 2025 call. This means the trade has been reduced and the risk taken off the table. Depending on where we are Tomorrow I’ll consider closing the position down entirely or condorizing it really good to capture a few extra days of theta.

04/06 NDX Fast Iron Butterfly (from 03/15)

I am exiting the position, basically I closed the short 1900 calls from the original butterfly and am in the process of closing out the entire position. Plan to take advantage of a pull back Tomorrow (if it happens) to take away the remainder of the position. At this point, my goal is to simplify the number of trades I’m dealing with.

04/05 Daily Summary

I am revisiting my trading strategies and work commitments, as it becomes obvious I am not sticking to solid rules and have limited time to trade. For instance, closing out more than one position in 1 hour is turning out to be unrealistic, which is not good, especially if I’m busy and don’t have a lot of time to review all my positions before the long weekend, exposing to unnecessary risk like Today.
I’m thinking that in my case, while trading and working full time, “Less is more”. On the positive note, being able to flag that before it further impairs my trading is key. I might start exiting all the fast iron butterflies this week, and clean up my portfolio focusing on one position moving forward.

04/05 NDX Iron Butterfly

As we touched the 1980 level Today I had an order to hedge the position, which it did, then I came in and replaced the hedge for a vertical roll. I decided against opening another iron butterfly to pay for the full roll. Depending on what Tomorrow brings I may need to roll the other short 1950 call, and in that case will re-think the process. Bottom line, with just two weeks to go adding another butterfly will increase my gamma risk and force me to stay through the expiration week, which I don’t really like doing.

04/05 NDX Fast Iron Butterfly (from 04/05)

Started a new trade for this week. This one will be traded strictly with my rules. In fact, I will post a flowchart and intend to follow it as I go along with the trade. To make sure I trade it just as I backtested it and therefore, capture the edge I found during the testing..

04/05 NDX Fast Iron Butterfly (from 03/22)

Same as my other Fast Iron Butterfly, the best time to exit was Thursday, I got greedy and the market pulled away the small profits from me. Once again, learning with these initial trades that I must follow my own rules better in order to make them work.

I am glad I locked some profits last Thursday, now am dealing with a negative trade because of my own fault. Bottom line, it was time to exit it on Thursday and I got greedy and decided to stretch over the long weekend. Live and learn. That’s the lesson for the Fast Iron Butterfly trade, I designed the rules to be in and out, and now am stretching these trades for longer than they should be.. The name says it all: FAST :)