07/14 Daily Summary

Thought about posting, no changes left on the JUL paper trade. I’m glad I got my real cash out of the JUL contracts as soon as I did. By looking at this paper trade in hindsight, I figure the next time it happens I can add another butterfly after the second cut and roll, this will bring extra theta and revert the vega back to negative. I think that having a vega positive position in the end wasn’t the best choice, as you can see from the dashboard the volatility went up 30% then came back down to zero... In any event, glad it was a paper trade. :) Looking at the AUG position, I’m starting to expect a pull back from this recent up-side swing, quite honestly the candle patterns don’t look that bullish to me.

07/12 Daily Summary

Not much else going on for this trade, will let the remaining contracts expire as they are far both out of the 2 st. Deviation range for this week. All and all, the trade lost about 13% ROI. I’m starting to keep an eye out for the AUG contracts, will wait for a good entry time (big down-day or so) between now and the 30 days till expiration, which is my line in the sand to get in. Any Sheridan mentoring student out there? What are you guys thinking for AUG? Should we get back in the water sort of speak?

07/09 Daily Summary

As we traded higher Today my contingent order got triggered to sell my AUG put, I’m officially condorized and there is not much left to do on the trade but document the lessons learned: (1) First and foremost, whenever you get a gift of fast profits, take them, I sure did so on my live JUL position, and while on this paper trade I saw 6% ROI that I would again cash out if it was a live trade, since I wanted to keep my practice on I let the trade run. (2) Second big lesson is to adjust in 2 steps: hedge first, then cut and roll the next day (let the market show its hand a little bit). (3) Don’t let your self get caught up with positive vega, make sure you do whatever you can to balance out those long puts because once the vols drop back down you want to be in a position to really recover your P/L, on this paper trade month I let my puts in the trade for way too long, they ate away my profits. (4) Last but not least, I want to make sure I have time during the evenings and early mornings for a fresh and focused review of the position, this being a paper trade I was way too relaxed (paper money is quite different from real money).

07/08 Daily Summary

I was planning to sell the long PUT Today, but as I waited for end of day the market traded back up. I’m scaling out of the position if not entirely, almost so. At this point it doesn’t seem to be worth holding it through expiration, the market is still bouncing around quite a lot..

07/07 Daily Summary

I’m working my way out of this paper trade, rolled the last 2x 1725 puts to 1700 and Tomorrow I plan on closing out the long AUG 1675 Put as well as closing a few remaining spreads. Bottom line I was able to recover some profits from the max loss level but since I started playing defensive I did not recover my P/L the way I would like it to be. As I look at the daily summary chart I want to point out the fact the number of days over 1 st. deviation for the last 30 days has increased from 30 to 40% in the past 7 days.

07/06 Daily Summary

This morning I rolled one of the short puts further out, I have a feeling it wasn’t enough as we didn’t hold higher values Today. I plan on continuing to manage the down-side risk and likely to shut down the trade in the next few days.

07/02 Daily Summary

No major change Today except for the fact the vols dropped a lot in anticipation for the long weekend. I would not want to be selling any position at this point given we don’t really know what Tuesday will bring, but usually it is a larger than usual day... I am glad I’ve cut my vega exposure Yesterday this way I didn’t get too bad.. Ideal scenario would have gone all the way to negative vega, but I didn’t want to add capital to the position provided I was already at max loss and around the 2nd cut and roll level.