09/24 Daily Update

Gotta love those contingent orders! In the old days I'd be following the market and thinking (over-thinking) about all possible scenarios.. Today all I had to do was: Nothing... The contingent orders where in place, I had confidence in their execution, I had prepared by studying the positions the night before, so the execution was taken care by TOS and their software.

Now, this is a follow the market approach. If we sit here for the next few days, great! Otherwise, we'll start making adjustments to the down-side or up-side. One way or the other, the approach is the same: I don't have to pick the direction, of course, if we move too much I lose, otherwise I win.

Position's details:
09/24 RUT Iron Butterfly
09/24 MNX Iron Butterfly

09/24 RUT Iron Butterfly

RUT rolled down Today and the position adjusted itself thanks to all the contingent orders I had in place. The P&L dropped by a few percentage points, but it is still above water. I may have been a bit preemptive rolling those 610 calls up, but then again, not sure the picture would be much different right now (I would have purchased a long NOV CALL instead).

Notice the price action and VIPES chart in the bottom of this posting. You'll see that RUT has been more aggressive on its moves in comparisson with MNX. Today's pull back was stronger on the RUT.

09/24 MNX Iron Butterfly

MNX pull back was not as strong as the RUT, only my first contingent order got triggered, the position adjusted itself and is now looking good! I really liked the fact it kept most of its money from Yesterday even though we pulled down 1 st. deviation.

09/23 Daily Update

Both positions got a good break Today as the markets sold off in the final hour of trading. I was about to make up-side adjustments, but noticed the sentiment was changing.


I got a few interesting ideas from the California 1 trading group meeting Today, it seems a few of the folks are trading the weekly contracts on OEX and someone also thought about buying a calendar end of day Friday to sell it on Monday for profit to bank on Market Maker's habit of pushing vols lower on Friday and pumping it back up on Monday. I'll do some experimenting with them in the next few weeks.


Position's Details:
09/23 RUT Iron Butterfly
09/23 MNX Iron Butterfly

09/23 RUT Iron Butterfly

The position got a break and is finally in the black after Today's price action, my hope is that we go into some sort of consolidation on this price zone, maybe a bit further down.

09/23 MNX Iron Butterfly

The position got a break Today as the market sold off in the final hour of trading. I'm looking for a consolidation from here, will be specially good if we spend a few days a bit further down. Contingent orders in place, waitting on Tomorrow.

Sometimes, luck helps you out too. MNX got within .10 points from hitting my up-side adjustment and backed off, if we had hit that adjustment, I would have given up 1/2 of the profits the position made when it reverted direction to the down-side.

06/22 Daily Summary

I apologize for not posting Yesterday, I was traveling from Salvador/Brazil to Sunnyvale/California and after such a long journey I had no energy left to post on the blog. I was barely able to create contingent orders for Today. To be trully honest, I'm glad they were not needed Today, because I had little faith in my mental state Yesterday to make sure the contingent orders were good :)

By the end of day Today I felt that it was time to cut a few deltas from both my positions, I used different approaches on the RUT and MNX trades, you can see on the details:

Position's Details:
09/22 RUT Iron Butterfly
09/22 MNX Iron Butterfly