01/26 Daily Summary

I want to thank my friend Gary for talking me into staying with the NDX position after we got some serious damage in the first few days of the trade. The position has recovered greatly after a couple days of market consolidation. I assume we're getting ready for the FED announcement Tomorrow, but I'm happy to see that I'm going in with a position in much better shape.

Today I did a cut and roll on my MNX put spreads, I realized that by keeping the trade hedged I let go of the opportunity to accumulate some profits as the NDX did. Live and learn, next time I plan on not leaving the position in a "waitting mode" for too long.

Position's details and price action chart
01/26 NDX Iron Butterfly
01/26 MNX Iron Butterfly
01/26 OEX Weekly Iron Condor

01/26 NDX Iron Butterfly

This trade posted an amazing recovery. The key in this recovery was the fast adjustment response I did earlier on. As we had the large drop I did the cut and roll and added the extra butterfly. Compared with the MNX iron butterfly where I did not increase theta as part of my adjustment, this worked much better.

Bottom line here is: if you have to keep your money on the market, make sure you have theta to get paid for the risk you're assuming. Leaving the trade hedged without theta for too long is a losing proposition in the long term.

01/26 MNX Iron Butterfly

The market has yet to show its hands, and I've kept the trade without theta for too long. Today I did a cut and roll on my PUT spreads, plan on adding more theta Tomorrow, specially if we keep going down.

01/26 OEX Weekly Iron Condor

Trade is in very good shape, nothing needs to be done.

01/25 Daily Summary

Today the market took a break. My Iron Butterflies enjoyed the day of recovery and rest :) I decided against touching the trades, as I want the market to give further indication of what it wants to do before I start acting on it.

Entered the weekly OEX Iron Condor, had a harder than usual time to get fills, hopefully it doesn't become an issue for this strategy.

Position's details and Price action:
01/25 MNX Iron Butterfly
01/25 NDX Iron Butterfly
01/25 OEX Weekly Iron Condor

01/25 MNX Iron Butterfly

Got a bit of P/L recovery, mostly due to volatility, since we're in a decision point in the market, I decided to roll one more day without adjusting the trade any further. I want the market to show its hands before I do anything drastic on the down-side. Looking at the charts, if we break Friday's low I'll spur into action.

01/25 NDX Iron Butterfly

Today the market took a breath and retraced a little bit from the past 2 days of sell off. This brought up great life to the NDX Iron Butterfly, it recored nicely. I decided not to touch the position, I've been adjusting pretty much every day since entry, so Today I gave it a break.