11/09 Daily Summary

What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.

Difficult months like these are a great brain stimulant, I've been trading in relative quiet waters for a few months, and then we hit this type of storm, both my positions bite the dust and this triggers me a strong stimulus for doing more study and research. One of the positive outcomes is that I've started to pay a lot more attention to the 5-Day volatility chart that I developed about 10 months ago and never paid much attention to...

Another positive outcome, is the VerticalSolutions Forecasts charts, I've become a fan of this profile, as it helps me to spot if we're moving with momentum or not during the intra-day price action.

Position's Details:
11/09 MNX Iron Butterfly
11/09 NDX Iron Butterfly

Price Action & Vertical Solutions chart: Notice the 5-day price spike showing strong reversal to the up-side, I got an alert warning on MNX last Friday... Studying ways to use these warning signs to my advantage

11/09 MNX Iron Butterfly

I hit my max loss on the trade, decided to hedge and give it one more day to see if the dust settles before I exit. It is easy to see we went from one extreme point of the chart to the opposite side, and because it happened in such a quick fashion, the position didn't have any time to recover.

11/09 NDX Iron Butterfly

We blasted through the break-even on the trade, the position is hedged and I'll give it Today for a back off, otherwise time to start exiting.

11/06 Daily Summary

Didn't do much during the day, I noticed the early-morning up-side pressure slowed down and realized we weren't going to push much further, that was easy to see on the VerticalSolution charts.

By end of day I rolled my short calls on both NDX and MNX iron butterflies. I noticed the 5-Day volatility chart shows a reversal from the down-side to the upside, that could mean trouble in the last week of the trade. Hopefully it won't be an aggressive move to the upside.

Position's Details:
11/06 MNX Iron Butterfly
11/06 NDX Iron Butterfly - Paper

Price Action & Forecasts:

11/06 MNX Iron Butterfly

The trade recovered a little bit, still underwater. I rolled the short 167.5 Calls to 172.5, that cut my deltas and increased the much needed theta. Still in the game, looking for a few quiet days next week.

11/06 NDX Iron Butterfly - Paper

I did a vertical roll on my NDX Iron Butterfly, didn't quite move all 5 spreads, only 4. Then I sold the long DEC CALLS I had. One thing happened when I was selling those calls: One of the sell orders wouldn't get accepted, it said I didn't have enough marging to sell the contract. I'll have to double-check with TOS to find out why, since it was a contract I already own, I should be able to sell it without changing my margin requirements. Live and learn here...

11/05 Daily Summary

We posted a strong up-side move! Take a look to the price action chart, no wonder this is a difficult month, we're posting several 1.5+ st. deviation days, that is not fun from a non-directional income trader's perspective. That being said, I'm still inside the tent, and working to stay that way on both the MNX and NDX iron butterflies..

I want to thank Vertical Solutions for their nice "current condition profile", this has been a very helpful tool for me to monitor market conditions without having to wonder too much into the price charts intra-day. Not to mention it really helped me on my MNX Iron Butterfly trade (see details on the posting).

Position's Details:
11/05 MNX Iron Butterfly
11/05 NDX Iron Butterfly Paper

Price Action and Forecasts: