Open - RTH, IBM Calendars, WMT Double Calendar

Written on August 26, 2008 by OptionsRopeaDope

Forgive me for skipping the template on these in this post. These round out my positions, and were all opened this past Friday. Here is a short explanation and rationale for each:

RTH Calendar (95 puts) - RTH has been very kind, and has stayed in a tight range for a few months. After banking a drop in IV last month, I decided on another calendar this month. The IV is in the 40 percentils, still very high, but there’s no denying the channeling power of RTH.

IBM Calendar (125) - a small position trying to take advantage of rock bottom IV (bottom 15% of the previous year’s range). It was a bonehead move though - I missed a skew of -4 points, and now I’m paying for it with a 8% loss and a premature adjustment (to 120). I should have had a V8 before this one. On the good side, it is my smallest exposure.

WMT Double Calendar (57.5, 60) - WMT couldnt channel any better, and IV is in the bottom 20%. Still at breakeven. (I could swear I see a triangle forming on the chart…)

I’ll have fancy charts for all of these when I provide trade updates.

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Posted in Real Trades, Calendars, RTH, IBM, WMT No Comments »

Open - RUT Iron Condor - 650/660, 810/820, and SPY Iron Condor - 113/115, 136/138

Written on August 26, 2008 by OptionsRopeaDope

I’ve been tardy on the blog, and in posting my trades so here they are all in the next few posts. I’m scaling back a little this month, trying to be smart after a couple of very meager months. 

I actually opened this trade on the 18th. It took me a little while to pull the trigger, as IV is down so low right now, yielding narrower channels. Nevertheless, they definitely are reliable.

I adjusted this today also (closed the call wing for .15, opened a new one at 780/790). Looking fine, strong support especially on the upside.

 Here is the SPY trade, still open.

This one was more of a hit - the shorts are down to deltas of 4 on the calls, and 6 on the puts. Halfway to the profit target. The trade was opened a week ago today, on the 19th.

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Posted in Real Trades, Iron Condors, RUT, SPY 1 Comment »

New Trade Graph Feature on ORAD

Written on August 20, 2008 by OptionsRopeaDope

One of the goals I have had for this blog is to become more “self aware” of my trading and the markets through transparency of my trading decisions. It has worked and my methods and understanding of major principles such as risk management and portfolio diversification have been pushed to another level. A picture is always worth a thousand words though, and I’ve lacked a way to get alot of the metrics that I track into visual, graph like form.

Any designer or report writer will tell you that displaying information graphically has a real purpose, namely allowing the reader to process a large amount of data very quickly. Done correctly, it also provides the proper context. So after monkeying around with Google Spreadsheets for a couple of weeks, I think I’ve come up with a way to track alot of my individual trade and risk metrics over time. As a preliminary example, here is a trade (a RUT Iron Condor) I opened on Monday:

 (It looks a bit sparse after a couple of days because of the lack of info… over the course of 2 or 3 weeks it will look much better). It may be a little confusing at first glance, just realize that price (of the underlying), implied volatility, and profit are all relative to a starting value. Why? Two reasons - to make sure everything can fit on the same scale, and to fit in line with the way I’m calculating the greeks, which is to have a method of tracking profit without regard to the absolute size of the position (ie, I want this to work no matter if I am trading with 1 contract, or 1000) Here is each element:

Profit: calculated as current profit (in $) divided by my max loss for the position

Price: Uses the close for each day, and the first day is set at 0. Changes afterwards are % changes of the underlying from that day.

IV: Treated the same way as price.

RRDelta: The RR Delta on that particular day. Since I calculate RR Delta as a %, this value is absolute. Don’t ever want this to get over .4 or .5 (or below -.4 or -.5).

RRVega: Treated just like RRDelta.

I think this will make my position updates a little more interesting if I keep these going. And it meets my goal of allowing me to scale up in position size, and use the same rules for trade management. And Google spreadsheets is great for tracking this, as it automagically fills in the date and colsing price every day since the start of the trade.

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Posted in Real Trades, Trading Rules, Misc No Comments »

August Results - 3%

Written on August 14, 2008 by OptionsRopeaDope

Over this week until this morning, I closed out the remainder of my trades.  The IBM double calendar is the only one closed for a profit - just over 10%.

I have to shake my head at the condors - the move last week (up 7%+ in 7 days) drove them into danger at the worst time - when it is too close to expiration to make an adjustment. Unfortunately, I took a 4% loss on both. EEM also took a bath, for a 5% loss, after being up 10%+ last week. EEM has been a bear of an ETF lately, moving straight down (down close to 20% in the last 2 months.)

I did stick to my rules for the most part - adjusting EEM when it still had a profit, for example. And a profit is a profit, I just hope this is chalked up to a poor month (some others, such as Insane Money (link on the right) did much worse) that some good management skills allowed to avoid a loss in.

I’ll be opening up a new batch of trades on Monday.

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Posted in Real Trades, Iron Condors, Calendars, EEM, IBM No Comments »

Dan Sheridan on Iron Condors (with link)

Written on August 12, 2008 by OptionsRopeaDope

I posted this a couple of weeks ago, but the video disappeared quickly. Looks like it is back now though. Go here, and choose “Dan Sheridan Archives.” It is listed with the date of 8/5/2008.

It is a very good webcast, and a mirror of a live seminar he taught earlier this year. Covers adjustments, and several sample trades in the worst of conditions. Worth the watch.

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Posted in Videos, Dan Sheridan, Iron Condors No Comments »

Adjust - EEM 130 to Double Calendar (130/40(!!))

Written on August 8, 2008 by OptionsRopeaDope

This is a strange one due to the EEM split a couple of weeks ago. As mentioned in an earlier post I closed half the original position (at 130). Yesterday, I opened another calendar when it reached break even. I had a choice between the 41 strike and the 40 strike, and chose the 40. Had to make sure I purchased 3 times as many of the 40 strike contracts as I owned of the 130’s to balance them out. With the further drop in EEM, I’m mildly down right now (4%), but it would be much, much worse without the adjustment. And my breakevens are fairly wide, about 39.50 to 43.75. I can tolerate another 3-4% drop in EEM now and still escape with a profit.

The right-most spike is at 43.33… freaky!

In other trade updates - I closed the put wing on my QQQQ condor for .01. Looking nice all around, this rally doesn’t hurt a bit.

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Posted in Real Trades, Calendars, EEM 1 Comment »

Close - RTH Condor

Written on August 6, 2008 by OptionsRopeaDope

In this for 14 days…. closed the RTH put condor for a credit of 4.3, after opening it for a debit of 3.8, for a 13% profit.

I actually closed it with an even number of contracts, leaving me with some extra puts at the 85 strike. They’ll probably expire worthless but if RTH should fall this week I may shave a nice additional profit from them, also.

There were also some lessons learned from this trade…

- open interest is important, even for popular underlyings. The trouble is with ITM options (my 100 put was very slim on open interest.)

- I opened this as a put condor (for a debit) just because I didn’t want to tie up the additional margin required by an iron condor this close in (i.e., for 1 contract, my committed capital was $380 for a put condor vs. $500 for an iron condor.) I didn’t plan on the ITM put bid-ask spreads to be as insanely wide as they were though. Mentally, Id have preferred an iron condor here.

I may repeat this trade next month if RTH stays in this range (it is threatening to break through to the upside today.)

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Posted in Real Trades, Iron Condors, RTH 1 Comment »