9-30 Update

I took vacation time from the market just prior to the government default debacle, slowly getting back in with a few long term positions (cash secured puts on PG and WMT), I'm now studying trading plan for 2012 and looking to include long term positions and non-directional calendars or condors with very little adjustments. For now I'm easing back in the market.

Posted is the updated deviation chart, quite a difference from early August, yet one must not ignore the fact these charts tend to adapt to the current market environment (with increased volatility and wider moves).

Cheers!

Gustavo

8/7 Weekly Summary

This is certainly not a pretty picture, notice how we had several days with over 2 standard deviation to the down-side, also have been a lot of intra-day volatility with the indexes trading a wide range up and down several times in a day.

Even though I have been trading longer term posisions, with a weekly overview and no adjustment other than stop loss. This time around I have personally taken all my positions to the sidelines on 7/26, about a week before the default deadline and congressional vote.. Many times we get hit by a storm that comes out of nowhere, we adjust, take the hit, etc.. This time around we had clear dates and the storm was brewing on everyone's radar, so I navigated my small little boat to the pier, tied it down and am waitting for the storm to pass.

Let's see what this new week brings us. Cheers!
Gustavo

7/25 Weekly Review

Looks like things improved a bit last week. There is still some volatility in the market though. I'd say until we clear this budget debacle we won't see this volatility go away. For now I'm closing any position that reaches 90% of the credit (Gold cash secured puts are almost there) and I have a few protective contingent orders if any of my underlying stocks (KO, PG, WMT and COH) go down by more than 8%.

Hopefully lawmakers won't be dumb enough to not reach an agreement to bump their own credit line and force a US default. That would be no good, no good at all.. :)

7-17 Weekly Summary

Looking at this past week one can see it was still very active compared to last week. In terms of the past 30 days it seems things got a bit calmer, yet we still had a couple of days with over 1 standard deviation last week. On an intra-day basis the % of days with over 1 st. deviation intra-day just edged higher to 60%, quite a big number and consistent with summer times, when we have more volatility and usually less volume in the market.



I've been thinking about going back go a few simple income strategies, using a small account and trade a few no-touch iron condors or calendars, but first will take a look at what other traders are doing in the Sheridan Mentoring site.

Cheers!
Gustavo

7-10 Daily Summary

One of the blog readers asked about the daily summary charts.. Here is an updated NDX chart. WOW.. This is a wild environment for sure, so make sure you are aware of storm conditions if you're trading iron butterflies or income trades for this matter.

What I have been up to?

Ok, it has been a long while since my last posting. I feel guilty for leaving the blog catching dust lately, but at the same time day-to-day workload has increased a lot and when I come home I barely have time to say hi and it starts the dinner, bath and bed routine with the kids.. :)

Needless to say, I had to adjust my trading routine to adapt to this new reality, so I have limited my trading to a few strategies on stocks instead of the NDX Iron butterfly, mostly these are no maintenance trade, except for watching the stocks to make sure they don't bite the dust..

I have what I consider long-term positions on GLD, KO, PG, WMT; GLD is mostly a hedge against inflation in my portfolio, we're looking to get back into real estate so I may move away from GLD and go into brick and mortar rental properties :)... KO, PG and WMT are what I consider stable plays and I'm using two strategies on them: Cash-secured Puts and synthetic covered calls.

I'm also reading the IBD newspaper on a daily basis and watching for breakouts among the IBD top 50 stocks. So far I have two break outs: COH and ORCL.

All and all, the portfolio is stable and seems to be a good fit to our busy life.. I refresh the positions once a month by rolling to the next expiration cycle. My stop loss is to close any open position if the underlying stock falls over 8%.. So far they're doing good and I'm keeping a "sane" balance to life and trading!

Cheers!
Gustavo

4/25 Daily Summary

Just a quick review of my portfolio, things are looking good and the market seems to be holding its ground and not going into a total sell off. I'm looking for fresh break outs in the IBD 50 list, may initiate a few new trades if the conditions are right. I'm glad SOHU went to new highs Today and so did Oracle, these are the two break out plays I have, I used synthetic covered calls on them and they're working nicely.

Cheers!