12/01 Daily Summary

Today I rolled the remaining 2125 calls and add an extra butterfly to the position. The 2125 call delta was around 65 and it is time I add theta to the position so it can recover. I was traveling to Europe overnight and had to make these adjustments prior to end of day, they would be cheapper if I was awake at the market closing time, but I couldn't do it. It would not have triggered otherwise, and this is the second time I by pass the contingent orders on my trade, I felt good about it when I did, as we were breaking out of the range on all other indexes, NDX traded down at the closing, but I still think the sentiment is more to the bullish side.

We have been bouncing hard in a range, let's see what Tomorrow brings, I'm doing my best to keep my adjustment points far away from the price to avoid this whipsaw and constant adjusting the position. I have a feeling we'll have a quiet day Tomorrow because we'll be waitting the NFP to come out on Friday. Let's see what happens.

11/30 Daily Summary

I'm on my way on a business trip once again, the position's P/L didn't change much from Yesterday, I will drop the long JAN call if we keep going lower, I need a day of quiet market movement so this trade can recover. We may find some support around these levels, perhaps bounce back up a bit from here, we'll see.

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.