11/29 Daily Summary

Ok, we're definitely in a wild market. Today we traded about 2 standard deviations, triggered my long PUT order at 2120 and traded almost all the way back up. I'm glad my adjustment was not an order to drop the long Call, as it would have whipsawed me quite a bit. On the up-side, I'm still flying the trade and managing the wild movements, on the down-side, these adjustments are costing me profits. I need a few days of no activity to build up profits. So far the position looks ok, and I feel I'm doing my best to keep the adjustments away from 1 st. deviation zone, yet with these sort of swings the best bet is to go easy on adjusting so the whipsaws don't hurt as much.

11/28 Game Plan

Here is my game plan for Tomorrow. My goal is to cut and roll and add another butterfly if we trade higher, if we go down what I'll do is simply cut some of the delta risk and get rid of the long call if we keep going lower.

Note: One thing I noticed is that at the current level there is not a whole lot of theta. We're trading in a very narrow range, so I'll wait for the market to show its hand, break the range and then I'll do what I need to get things rolling faster again.

11/26 Daily Summary

Not much to add Today, except the market didn't move. One thing to note is that it seems my position lost a couple % points of P/L. Not sure what happened, it might be the spreads being out of wack or something like that. I will evaluate more carefully once I get some quiet time. For now, enjoy your Holiday! Cheers! Gustavo

11/24 Daily Summary

Today I happened to be watching in the AM when the market was trading at my adjustment level. Instead of hedging with contingent order, I did a butterfly roll and moved 2 of my short calls to the up-side. The short deltas on the 2125 calls is at .65 and it is time to get rolling. I did not roll all contracts just yet as we have been in a wild zig-zag mode so I want to get reassured of the direction we're moving before rolling all contracts.

Note: This was not deviating from my plan, because my goal with the long call is simply to hedge because they're easier to fill by contingent orders, I then roll the short calls when I can (usually next morning), since I was watching I went straight to the rolling instead of hedging first.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

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.