The short week for Thanksgiving holidays was harsh on my positions, we had a lot of down-side pressure and most of the trades took a hit on P/L. I added another Iron Butterfly to the NDX trade, this is the adjustment I have decided to do in order to keep this trade as close to no-touch as possible. On the bright side, the volume was very light and due to this being a Holiday week a lot of the heavy traders were not in this action, so let's see what next week bring.
3 comments:
Hi Gustavo,
What is your trading strategy for the NDX IB - just add another IB if the underlying exits the breakevens?
Cheers
DZ
Hi Gustavo
It's good to see that you have had more time to spend on practicing and trading. It seems like today's run up in price should have improved your butterfly position too. I hope so.
As for my trading, I am definitely looking to establish a more hands off strategy. There were times last year it was very hard to try to work full time and worry about trade adjustments at the same time. I also reviewed my trade data from last year and realized every time I made an adjustment (including closing my position), it cost me approximately 1-2% of my margin in bid/ask slippage and commissions.
So for this year I'm planning to sell my vertical spreads much wider out of the money, take less credit, but hopefully have fewer adjustments.
I hope you and the family have a good holiday.
Dave
Hi There Dave and DZ,
As for the trading strategy, my plan for this month's cycle was to enter the position in small installments, I started with 1 contract (out of 4 max) and would keep adding a butterfly if the NDX moved outside of my expiration break-even. It happened to do that during the short week I added the butterfly to adjust.
Dave, this is working well for me thus far, I completely understand and relate about how hard it is to focus on full-time work at the same time you have several positions "cooking" in the market.. I have reduced to just cash-secured puts and am now doing the NDX iron butterfly without any adjustments other than adding butterflies if it moves outside of the range.
A third option I'm looking at is the IBM triple calendar, I will start it live this JAN cycle. My goal is to select a few positions and do them consistently every single month of 2012.
I will set aside a portfolio and go for it month after month, as I think that keeping it consistent and with simple strategies and trades is the only way I will be able to handle trading and work.
In the meantime, it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas.. (We got our tree Today) :)
Cheers!
Gustavo
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