04/08 Daily Summary

This morning I decided against touching any trade up, I saw the selling pressure was drying up, to be quite honest I didn’t expect it to go as high as it went, but I guess it has become more the norm than the exception. Here is what I saw earlier in the morning:
http://gustavotrades.blogspot.com/2010/04/0407-morning-assessment-down-pressure.html
I made a mistake on my iron butterfly, I had a simulated trade on the TOS analyzer but forgot to remove it, so when I looked at the position by closing time, I thought it looked good and didn’t need any touch up, turns out the touch up was advisable. I reduced my positions, but still have to close them down and have a focused view, as the afternoons are busy for me with all the work-related stuff and the lunch time activities/distractions.

04/08 NDX Iron Butterfly

I didn’t do anything to the position Today. Now that I look it over, I realized I had a simulated trade to do a butterfly roll to move 1 of my 2000 short calls to 2025/2050, then at the end of the day I didn’t notice this simulation in there, and thought the profile looked good, so didn’t touch the trade. That butterfly was a good idea, even better if I had actually executed it.. That is the kind of stuff that happens when you got too many trades on the table. Strike two for me on this trade... :-/

04/08 NDX Fast Iron Butterfly (from 03/22)

Here is the inventory of what I have left on this position:

-1 APR 2025/2075 Call credit spread
-1 APR 1900/1825 Put Credit spread

Didn’t have to do anything on the trade Today, plan to evaluate Tomorrow and depending on where we are either close it or stretch through Monday.

04/08 NDX Fast Iron Butterfly (from 03/15)

Here is the inventory of what I have left on this position:
-2 APR 1900/1800 put credit spread
+1 MAY 2050 call
-1 APR 1950/1850 Put credit spread
-1 APR 1950/2050 Call credit spread
I didn’t touch the trade Today, noticed the market was weak at first in the morning, but then it came back up. Plan on condorizing it by Tomorrow to go through the weekend.

04/07 Morning Assessment: Down pressure – Not too strong

It is hard to debate against sellers given the weak opening and follow through selling in the morning. As I write this, we pulled back from the lows (~1960) and seem to be closing the opening gap, or at least attempting to so. I detect more bearish tone on the FinViz map, not quite that bearish on Verticalsolutions current conditions profile, so this leads me to believe there is a mid-day pull back in works.
I think we might see NDX closing at or around 1960, just a gut feeling. It is the 12 EMA on the daily chart, so it provides a good level of support.

04/07 Daily Summary

Today I started the morning exactly the way I want to do for Q2: Exercising! I hit the gymn around 6 am, then got myself a cup of coffee and spent from 7 to 8 doing a morning analysis of market conditions. I’ve noticed that my brain and analyzing skills work a lot better when I use them with a fresh frame of mind, after a quick workout, fresh cold shower and hot cup of coffee. This will become one of my performance goals for Q2.
So, back to trading.. I noticed we were trading side-ways with a bearish tone and decided to leave two of my positions alone. I did take some condorizing action in one of the butterflies, wanted to take advantage of an early-morning pull-back to do it, just in case the market changed during the day and became bullish out of a sudden (happened too many times this past month and a half, hasn’t it?). So I condorized one trade and left two alone. Plan to do the same review Tomorrow.
Take note: Another performance goal for Q2 may be this early morning evaluation of market conditions. This gives me some frame of mind going into the day, and actually helps when I see the market behaving against what I was thinking, case in point: Sometime during the day I did a quick peak on price, and noticed NDX trading higher, then re-evaluated my assumptions and realized it was likely to pull back, sure enough it did not hold prices at those higher levels and came back. Not saying this works every time, but it is worth checking and tracking to see how many times it does, right?

04/07 NDX Iron Butterfly

I didn’t do anything to the position Today, so far so good, looks like to be in the path to recovery. Patience and a pull-back are two factors I need for this trade at this point.