11/23 Daily Summary

I've started a self-assessment as part of my daily routine, the goal is to flag situations that bring me in a negative state and what can I do in order to improve both my feelings and overall well-being. Needless to say, I'm a bit unhappy with myself Today after the market rolled down just after I hedged the up-side risk. This is one of those things that one must master: the ability to be consistent with what you do, and the ability to manage the future and not dwell in the past, so this would affect me a lot more in the past, it bothers just a bit nowadays.

The position is in decent shape, don't get me wrong, it will make money. What bothers me the most is that I've set myself up with the evening game plan and use of contingent orders to help me navigate the day-by-day of trading. I've realized several months back that decision-making during the "lunch hour" for me was not the right approach. I've decided it was best to get hit on an overnight gap than trying to predict the next morning's action based on a 5 minute look at the market. Hence the contingent orders. Yesterday when I pushed the order manually I broke my own rule. Of course, the market took no reservations in pulling back.

11/22 Daily Summary

It seems we're back on the bullish mode, when we can't seem to stay down. I was happy during the morning, and then not so happy by end of day when I saw we recovered and got close to my adjustment point. I then executed the long call to hedge my deltas. I might have added a bit to much on the call side by trading the JAN 2000 call instead of the 2025 as I had on the original plan. Let's see what happens Tomorrow.

Today I'll start tracking my feeling and state of well being mode. I'll work on the tracking log for this and will start monitoring on a daily basis. I think the key will be helping me flag states of low well being so that I can figure out ways to adjust the TRADER just like I adjust the trade on a daily basis.

11/21 Game plan for Tomorrow.

Just to keep it on the record, here is my game plan for Tomorrow. Not much different than the one on Friday, except that I'm pushing the up-side adjustment by 5 points because of the extra weekend of time decay.

NOV10 NDX Iron Butterfly - Day-by-day Review

NOV10 was a wild month, the market started moving higher and higher, without any stop in the horizon. In addition to this, we had the FMOC meeting event, this kept vols up while the market traded higher and made the butterfly further difficult to manage.

I've adjusted, rolled the call side up, added the butterfly. In my mind I did everything I could to keep my money in the game and working for me. In the end closed with a loss of 6%, not bad given the market conditions. For the most part my management was good, I do have some lessons learned that I can share with you:

1) Trading is 100% in your mind, you need to do whatever it takes to stay sharp. Take time for yourself, workout, manage work-life balance.. The brain is the machine and if you're tired, you'll operate at less than optimum capacity. I was tired during most of the nights when I was doing my reviews. I had quite a busy month at work, pulling 13 hour days for weeks in a row. This reduced my ability to stay sharp in the evenings and sit with a good mind to review my positions and plan my adjustments. There was limited time during the day where I could pay attention to the market. Once again, the 13 hour work schedule forced me to start working at 7 am and roll through lunch.

3) Keep an eye on GAMMA at all times: There was one or 2 days where my gamma exposure was twice what I usually see. I didn't notice them until it was too late. Of course, the market did what it does when you're not paying attention: It moves quickly and far, takes away your money and leaves you frustrated.. Notice my postings between 11/10 and 11/11.. In two days I was thrown back in bad shape. I managed to keep my head cool, and got in with good adjustments, in the end I had another 2+ standard deviation movement, but because I was watching the GAMMA exposure, this move did not wipe me out, on the contrary, I actually recovered another 2% that day.

Ok, these are my two very important lessons learned. Need to incorporate them in my day-to-day management so they stay around.

10/20 Daily Summary

10/21 Daily Summary - High point of the trade, 4%

10/22 Daily Summary

10/25 Daily Summary

10/26 Daily Summary

10/27 Daily Summary - Kept going higher, Vols are high due to FMOC

10/28 Daily Summary

10/29 Daily Summary - Larger intra-day swings, vols up

11/1 Daily Summary

11/2 Daily Summary - Hit up-side adjustment just prior to FMOC day, flat VEGA

11/03 Daily Summary - Took advantage of high vols, cut and rolled a few contracts, negative VEGA again

11/04 Daily Summary - Large up-side movement

11/05 Daily Summary - Added butterfly in the morning, well positioned for Friday

11/08 Daily Summary - Rolled 1 call side, good recovery, back to -4%

11/09 Daily Summary - Kept condorizing, market moving to down-side

11/10 Daily Summary - Pumped back up, down 2%, did not notice 2+ Gamma exposure

11/11 Daily Summary - Down-side move, triggered adjustment, gamma around 1.89

11/12 Daily Summary - Took big hit (from -4 to -12%) with large price movement

11/15 Daily Summary - Good recovery, gamma now around 1.15

11/16 Daily Summary - Another large move, no major P/L slippage, closed the trade

Ok, Today I can't login to TOS for one reason or another, the market didn't move much and I could tell by end of day the position was recovering from Yesterday's move. Will re-post over the weekend or once I can get in TOS. Cheers!

11/18 Daily Summary

Today I finished loading my trade, the market is moving wildly, and it might be a storm brewing in the horizon (see my daily activity monitor), so heads up sailors! I loaded on the same original contracts, even though the call side seems to be close to a cut and roll situation, to me this simplifies my management, since I have 3 accounts that I trade, I didn't want to have to deal with 3 different positions. I'm already messed up in the P/L between the accounts, since some were filled Yesterday, others Today.. In any event, I'm using the account I always use to track and report my PL, even if P/L differs from my linked trades in the other accounts, the greeks are the same and my adjustments are the same too.

NOTE: For the first time in 1 year of trading I had my single contingent order fail to trigger!! The market may have moved past the contingent order too fast, or a glitch in TOS system, I'm not sure what was it, the fact is I got hurt more than I needed to because of that. To reduce this risk I've implemented now a OCO layered contingent orders, where they'll keep refreshing their price if the market keeps going up and the first order isn't triggered.

11/17 Daily Summary

I have not yet fully allocated my trade for DEC contracts. Market makers wouldn't fill my position this morning and I had to go to work, I left the order there but to no avail. I want to get it filled Tomorrow, so will have some time in the morning to work it. Otherwise will just have to trade smaller size this month.

I might start adding some price charts to my postings, these are the 4 hour charts on /NQ. I follow the 4-Hours on futures simply because I'm used to continued prices as my technical analysis background comes from Forex trading, so I'm not sure about what to do with all those gaps. :) In any event, notice we broke the short-term trend lines to the up-side, so I'll be interested to see how far we pull back. I've noted a few very near resistance points.