06/12 When watching the charts beats you up

I've relapsed into an old habit that I'm working to fix: day-trading these income positions. As I understand, these option strategies are not made to be day-traded, there are just too many variables that affect you when you get in and out of contracts.

If you're not trading intra-day, watching the charts will make you go crazy! It is like a surfer, watching the ocean.. He tells himself he is not going in the water, then he waits, waits, and eventually he'll dive in. Just when the conditions are not so good anymore.. Like that, if I'm watching the price action during the day, I'm getting all kinds of emotions running through my brain, and eventually I'll give in to the desire to "adjust" my position.

Or even worse, I've been watching the charts the entire week this week, and Yesterday I was simply too tired to know any better and over adjusted my trades, cutting the deltas by too much and without the best alternative. Long story short, I beat myself too much and made a decision without being on the top of my game.

So, from now on, I'll watch the market at the critical closing hour. And prepare contingent orders to cut deltas when they need to be cut. I'll use my extra time with activities such as backtesting and watching Dan Harvey's videos and sessions.

Just to be clear, I watch and trade intra-day. I starting trading currencies and later on learned about options. So, I'll be trading FOREX before the US opens. Being in Brazil, the time-zone is really awesome! It allows me to go to the wake up, exercise, have breakfast, trade FOREX, then study options. By the end of the day I get back in to look at my positions at closing and plan for adjustments on the next day.

06/12 SPY Double Diagonal

The main thing to notice is that the Volatility has dropped by 12% on this trade, I'm checking the middle of the graph at expiration to see if the P/L there has collapsed or not, so far it is very good, only dropped by about 2%, leaving with 15% ROI in the middle. Notice, if we see a large drop it is a sign to get out.

Other than that, time is going by, so I'm starting to look for the $ to show up.

06/12 DIA Iron Butterlfy

We're back on the green again, I'm amazed by how much abuse the iron butterfly can take, the abuse on this trade is mainly mistakes I've made, still, the position hangs in there. As I learn to be less impulsive in making changes/adjustments, this will be a great position to trade month in month out.

06/12 MDY 30-Day condor

Another day flat, that's nice going into the weekend. I've plotted the TOS chart based on Monday, to have an idea of where the deltas may be getting out of hands. Once again, I'm cutting it in 1/2 only, and with entry orders to keep the emotions out of the picture.

06/11 SPY Double Diagonal

Nothing exceptional happened Today, SPY hit 1 st. deviation up and then came back down like all other ETFs.

06/11 DIA Iron Butterfly

I'm very frustrated with myself by not managing this trade properly Today. I cut the delta too late, then over cut it. Then DIA came back down and now is risky to the down-side. The intra-day pricing anomaly continued, and P&L only settled at the end of day. Once again, it was like driving without the speedometer.

I'll re-evaluate what I did wrong on this trade, I over traded the position for sure. See separate posting on over adjusting.

06/11 MDY 30-Day Condor

I over adjusted on the up-side, cut the delta by too much, the price whipsawed and now the down-side might be at risk.

I won't watch the market during the day Tomorrow, so I have an entry order to cut the delta in 1/2 if MDY it gets at or bellow 106.5, then re-evaluate at the closing. See separate posting on over adjusting.