I feel like a broken record.... August 27th

Still looking good.

As of close today, we are sitting on over $28 in unrealized gain (gross -- paper money).  Which is great!  But overall, really exciting to report.

Positions are all looking okay.  We had a bit of a pull back in GM and TWTR, but we had some decent gains for them to pull back against.  

Otherwise, we're just hanging out watching our positions with not much to do. 

Happy Wednesday y'all!

  

Sitting pretty nicely -- August 25th

Today looks good!

We are currently sitting on unrealized gains of $12 (gross), so that's not too bad for a Monday.  Of course the real impact will be in place when we close out the positions, so we'll just have to keep watching and see what happens.

All three US indices were up today.  And the S&P surpassed 2,000 before falling back below, which is apparently a big milestone.  One article I scanned though made a point of stating it's probably more of a mental thing at the moment.  If it hovers around that point for a while, we might have something to work with.

Tonight's goal is to recap positions and see if I need to make any changes at all.  

GM -- Put vertical (September expiration) -- looking good tonight.  Nothing to do.

MU -- Put vertical (October expiration) -- Just sold that to open today.  Nothing more to do tonight since the stops are automatically in place.

TWTR -- Put vertical (October expiration) -- Sold to open today.  Ditto above.  

YHOO -- Put vertical (October expiration) -- Sold to open today.  Started with a higher open, but then fell to close below opening, but still above Friday's open.  This is going to be one to watch, I think.

IWM -- Iron Condor (October expiration) -- Sold to open today.  Looks good for a condor open.  Nothing to do tonight.

YHOO -- Iron Condor (September expiration) -- Looking good.  Same notes as yesterday regarding not changing to a trail stop at this point.  Keeping our options open.

So that's it for tonight!  Nothing to exciting to report, and not too much to do.  We'll see if the rest of the week does this as well.

Happy Monday Night!

Sunday, August 24th -- big recap

Practically a week-long recap

Well, last week was a bit of a rough week for me, so our trading suffered from lack of attention.   (Long story, won't bore you tonight.)  Luckily, because we have stops put in place immediately now with the "1st trig OCO" order, it's something I can relax a bit on when needed.

However, that isn't good for our long term goals.

One of the things we try to do is look at each position we're in every night.  That way, at the very least, we know what's going on.  I also try to read the news associated with our positions and see what happens from there.  But neither of those happened this week, and it was a busy week!

So, here's a recap of where we were and what changed and where we are now.

As of Monday night we were in:

• IWM -- An Iron Condor with the September expiration at 117/118/108/107.  As I recall, I wasn't too keen on it at the moment, and things were iffy as to whether or not the position would turn the way we wanted it to.  We did have a trail stop on, so we shouldn't have hit max loss, and we didn't.  But we did get stopped out on Tuesday.  However, looking at the chart (from TD Ameritrade on the think or swim platform), if we hadn't have had the trail stop on, we would probably still be in the position.  Here's the chart as of today, with Friday's close being the candle farthest to the right:
  
  On Tuesday the underlying came closest to the 117 strike and triggered our trail stop.  However, it cam back down and closed lower.  Wednesday, it opened slightly down and had a small up trend for the last three days of the week, but didn't come any closer to Tuesday's high, which triggered the stop.

         So, If we didn't have the trail stop on, we would probably still be in this position and profitable.  Something more to think about there for us, I suppose.  I'll have to look at that again and see if we want to have trail stops on positions.  

         Unfortunately, because of the trail stop, we closed unfavorably and lost $10 on this position.  

• TWTR -- We had sold the September 40/41 put vertical, and it was looking very good.  This one worked out very well for us and we rode it out to our profit target and bought back the contract at $0.06 per share, resulting in a net gain of $23.  I like when this happens.  

         And the chart looks good for another potential put spread.  I might look at both the September and October expirations and see what happens.  Here's a snip of the chart:

• YHOO -- We got into Yahoo on Monday by selling an Iron Condor with the September expiration at 40/41/33/32.  We're still in this position, and it's looking good for us at the moment.  Current mark is $0.34.  At this point, I could put on a trail stop and reduce our max loss.  However, I'm wondering if this is going to do something similar to IWM where it will hit a high close enough to trigger the trail stop, but fall back within our range.  I think that I'll leave this at the "regular" hard stop and see what happens as we move through time.  Just for kicks, here's a current snip going back farther in time.  (You have to get back into March to see the price of the underlying where it's at right now.): 
  

• UNG -- So this was interesting.  It actually turned into a great example of how that "1st trig OCO" order can work in our favor and eliminate some risk.  Last Tuesday, we sold the call option with strikes of 21.50/22.  Well, the high on Tuesday of the underlying ETF was $21.49, and then it did hit $21.50 on Thursday.  Luckily, we had the stops on automatically, and so we didn't completely lose our shirts.  Though we did have a net loss on this one as well.  

• GM --   Oh dear.  GM might be going against us.  We sold a put vertical with a September expiration at 33.50/33.  Unfortunately, we went against the overall trend, and now it seems that trend is taking over again.  There was a short uptrend over the last 2 weeks.  But we got in way too late, and now we're probably going to lose.  We'll see what happens tomorrow.  Lesson 2 of the night -- TRADE WITH TREND!  (Again.)

Overall recap of last week 8/18 - 8/22:

Four positions closed.  Three went against us.  One went favorably.  One that went against us went really badly against us.  Net loss for the week:  -$33.  Yuck.  

So this week really impacted both our net revenue and our winning percentage.  We're still net positive on trades over the course of all our trading, but we did have a big set back.  So we'll be working hard to build that back up. 

In terms of our success rate, we're still better than 50/50.  Slightly better, but we need to improve upon that as well before I start risking our actual funds in the market.  

Well, we've got our work cut out for us this week.  

Lessons learned last week:

1. Trade with trend.  Focus on bigger trends as well.  Don't just look at the last 2 weeks, remember that we might be getting in at the end of a small reversal.  
2. Use that "1st trig OCO" order to remove same-day risk.  I'm glad we did it for UNG, and I'll continue doing that for all positions going forward.
3. Evaluate trail stops on condors (maybe all positions...).  It might be worthwhile to hold on putting the trail on until after profitability is guaranteed, or some other variation.  See IWM example above.

New Potential Positions to start this week off right:

YHOO -- October Expiration 36/35 -- selling the put vertical.  This is getting back to our rules in that we're going with the trend.  Yahoo is on a good up trend recently, and we're hoping to capitalize on that.  It looks like the Yahoo and Live Nation partnership could be interesting.  I'm curious how that will work out, and how it will affect the stock.  Positively, I hope.

I'm torn about what to do next.  Nick found several options to consider, and I'm torn about which other two to put on tonight.  Several of these fit our delta and return rules.  Now I'm studying charts to see whether they fit trend rules.  Priority is being given based on highest potential dollar return.  So a position that has a potential winning return of $25 is being ranked higher than one that had a potential return of $15. 

MU -- Potential:  Sell the put vertical, October expiration, 32/31 strikes.  It looks like MU is on a strong up trend, though the 30 day simple moving average is showing more flat.  However, that is a delayed indicator, so I think I'll go with the uptrend.  It looks like 33.50 might be a resistance level right now, but 32.25 is a potential support. The high for the last year was $34.85 back in mid-July, so it's possible we'll get that high.  Verdict:  go with it and see what happens.

Nick also suggested Iron Condors on QQQ and IWM.  An Iron Condor is a neutral strategy, and I'm not seeing an neutral chart pattern in QQQs, yet.  We might, and it might show up soon, but until we start seeing evidence of that, despite the numbers, I think a Condor on this underlying is a bit too risky right now.  IWM, on the other hand, is showing definite sideways movement within the range that Nick identified.  So I'm going to go with the condor on IWM.

IWM -- Selling the October expiration Iron Condor with strikes at 120/121/108/107.  

Just for kicks, I put on a TWTR put vertical.  October expiration, 43/42 strikes sold.  

It's amusing to me that some days finding potential positions to analyze is incredibly difficult.  Tonight we had an abundance.  

Well, here's to a good week ahead!  

Happy Sunday all.

Monday, August 18th

Yuck.

Just gotta say it -- Yuck.  Today was a bad day.

SPY closed out on the yuck-side for us.  In other words, we lost money.  The part that I don't quite understand is that we lost more than our rules allow for.  I guess because there was a gap up between Friday close and today's open that the price of the option just skyrocketed through our stop rule.  Quite frankly, that sucks.

So Iron Condors were doing really well for us.  Now we're at 50/50.  hmmm...  

Looks like IWM is going to close out on the loss side for us as well.  We shall see. 

In the meantime, we're getting back to our rules and focusing on the trend to pick what we do. 

Tonight we have one call options that looks like it'll move the way we want it to -- UNG. 

We're also looking at a put vertical on GM.  Interesting, given the recall news and all that.  But it seems to have started to recover...  in theory.  As I usually say, we'll watch and see.

I'm hoping that the rest of the week is better for us than today was.  It can only get better, right?

Well, tonight is a short and sweet post -- I've got to move on to the next thing on my list.

Happy Monday! (Despite the yuck news of the day.)

Sunday night Recap Friday August 15 and what we're doing tonight.

Friday closings:

Friday was a good day for us!  We netted $17 in real papermoney with two trades closing.  Our Iron Condor on GLD closed at our profit target.  That was great!  Our Iron condor on QQQ closed at our loss-side stop.  Which wasn't so great.  But, the overall result is that we gained more than we lost, so we had a net positive week.

Overall, our success rate is still better than 60%.  We'd like to have it be better than 70%, so we're still working on that.  In the course of the last almost 4 weeks, we've made almost $100 net.  Now, that's definitely not enough to live on, but it's about $100 more than we had before (in papermoney).  Since we're running our paper money account based on the size of our real money account, it's good practice for us.  We've got a bit of along road ahead of us to turn this into an account where we could, theoretically, live off the proceeds.  But we're getting there.  It's like the tortoise and hare.  Slow and steady wins the race.

So far, these last almost 4 weeks have been a great way to reaffirm what we learned, and to test our some theories and ideas.  I think two of the most important things we've learned so far are:

1. How to put a conditional order on which helps reduce the number of "bad" trades initially -- you know, the ones that go against you right away.  This saves commissions as well as eliminates any losses
2. How to put a trigger order on so that when we enter a trade, our stops are put on right away.  This helps eliminate a great deal of risk we were taking on when entering the trade one night and putting the stops on the next night.  

I'm feeling pretty good overall.  Not a bad way to start the week.

So -- what happened with QQQ -- in other words, why did we hit our loss:

Here's a snip of the TD Ameritrade/TOS chart for QQQ going back about 2 weeks:

If you ignore this past week, and look at the previous 5 days, there was a good sideways trend.  That's what we were looking at when we sold the condor.  However, then last week happened, which was obviously an uptrend.  That uptrend messed up our condor.  Even though the price of the underlying is still within our strike ranges, it got too close to the top and triggered the stop.  I'm interested to see if this is going to continue to go up, or if it will turn around again.  

So then the outstanding question remains:  Should we have cancelled out the condor when we recognized the uptrend (which we did, see my comments from last week), and saved some of the loss?  

Or, were we "correct" to let it go to our max loss rule on the possibility that it would still turn around at a level of resistance at the high point?

There's definitely a case to be made both ways.  We did talk about this in retrospect, and Nick and I are confident in our rules and the fact that we followed them, even though this position went against us.  

On to next week!  What are we going to do?

At the moment we have three contracts carrying over from last week:

TWTR -- doing well.  We'll watch and see.  We've got a trail stop in place now, and we're already guaranteed a favorable close.  So that's good.

SPY -- We sold the condor, and I'm honestly surprised we didn't get stopped out of this as we did with QQQs last week.  However, Friday was a down day, which we needed to happen for it to stay in our range.  We're riding this one out and seeing what happens.  

IWM -- I can actually change this to a trail stop now.  And this is another one we watch and see what happens.

New positions to kick off the week:

Again, not easy to find tonight.  Nick found several Iron Condor options that fit our rules, but the returns are lower than we usually get.  Still within our rules, but lower.  I found one vertical on EEM that works, so we'll do that.  Then get started on the Condors. 

First thing, though, we're putting these on a "1st trig OCO," so we will have our stops on immediately.  Have I mentioned that I like this concept recently?

Okay -- so EEM -- a snip of the last several days (again, from TD Ameritrade/TOS):

The last two days look to me to be a bearish engulfing candle pattern.  And Nick says he trusts my readings of candles since I've taken the more advanced technical analysis course so far.  (Though I readily admit, I have a LOT to learn.)  Having said that, we are looking at the September 45.50/46 call vertical, which fits our rules and banks of the price of the underlying continuing to fall.  Overall, however, the long-term trend in EEM is up.  So, using a call option banking on the price of the underlying to fall is betting against long-term trend, in favor of a short-term pull back.  Given the bearish engulfing pattern along with the fact that the high for the last 12 months was only 2-1/2 weeks ago and hasn't gotten that high again, I think the short-term pull back is reasonable.  

To hedge our bets a bit, however, I'm putting on a condition that the underlying has to hit the $0.20 below the low of the previous day, just to confirm that pull-back happens.  

It was interesting to note, however, that the condition on the 1st order carried through to the OCO closing orders when I did the "1st trig OCO" entry.  I'll have to remember to modify that if needed.

And for our second trade of the night:  An Iron Condor on YHOO.  This is definitely a sideways moving stock.  

Specifically, we're selling the 40/41/32/33 September expiration iron condor.  No conditions on this one, though we did put it on using the "1st trig OCO" so we've got stops in place.  

And that's the game for tonight, folks.  Hope you enjoyed!  Looking forward to how this week will go.

Happy Sunday night!

Thursday, August 14th

Light day for us today!

We're pretty much set tonight.  All 5 positions are still working, and 3 of them are going strong. 

I must say -- I'm really liking Twitter tonight.  We're past the point of break-even.  I like it when that happens!  Even if we get stopped out tomorrow, we still make money!  And if things keep moving in the direction I want them to (up), we'll close out at our profit target in the next few days.  Happy girl!

GLD and IWM are both moving in the right direction for us.  We're not yet to break-even on the stop side, but we're doing okay.  As long as they stay in their appropriate ranges, we'll be great.

SPY and QQQ, however, are my negative ones at the moment.  Their underlying prices have just kept going up.  This means these are both pushing at my stops.  Both of them, however are at or approaching levels of resistance.  If they do bounce down, we should be able to stay in the position and bank on time.  We'll see what happens.

No changes made tonight.  

I looked through everything, checked the charts, noted what I need to specifically watch for tomorrow, and that's about it.  

Happy Thursday night!

Wednesday, August 13th

Exciting news worked out!

So the test last night of use a different order type to place the order actually worked!

1st trig OCO

Yeah to Nick for figuring that out.  

We now have a way to enter trades so that our stops are in place immediately once the ordered is filled.  That saves us some risk between when the trade goes on in the morning and when we can put the stops on later that night for entry the following morning. 

I like this!  I'm sort of as geekily (yes, that's a legitimate term.)  excited of this as I was for the trail stops.  And I really like those.  That's a great way to further minimize loss and protect profits.  

Going forward, we'll be putting our orders on using that type and getting our stops on right away.

On to Trades:

We closed out profitably thanks to a trail stop today on our YHOO Condor.  It looks like Yahoo is still in the range of the condor, but the gap up today triggered our trail stop.  Luckily, we were still profitable.  So that's a +1 to the favorable close.  We're still hitting those more than losses, so something we're doing is working well.  

Overall, our positions are doing well.   We have 4 Iron condors and 1 vertical, a put spread.  True to our strategies, we sold all these positions, and things are looking mixed at the moment. 

GLD -- we have a condor on GLD that we sold.  September expiration 130/131/122/121.  The underlying is staying firmly in our range, though we're not yet to a break-even trail stop.

IWM -- Sold the September Iron condor 117/118/108/107.  The stock has been going up for the last 9 days or so, so maybe a put vertical would have been a better choice.  As long as we stay in our range, we'll be okay.  Though it looks like there might be a level of resistance at just over $114.  This will be fun to watch over the next few days.

QQQ -- this is one where we might lose the condor because the stock is going higher.  I'm thinking we're going to get stopped out of this one soon, and I'm not exactly pleased with that.  Another up day will do it for us.   I can see on the chart why we thought a condor was a good choice, however, this week has been up, up and more up.  Hmmmm.....  not entirely sure what to do about this.  I realize you win some and you lose some when trading options, but it doesn't mean I have to like it.  I guess there is the possibility that this will go back down tomorrow, and we can stay in the position, but I'm not very hopefully.

SPY -- We sold the September expiration 198/199/186/185 Iron Condor today.  I put the stops on tonight (last time!), and we're going to be sitting and watching this one for a while.  If we have more days like today with the small gap up, we're going to be out of it pretty quickly.  It's actually quite similar to the above situation with QQQs right now. 

TWTR -- Twitter moved up today, which is what I want it to do.  I'm a happy girl at the moment on this one.  We get to keep watching it and see what happens.  It's already got the trail stop in place, so we're good to sit back and enjoy.

And that's all folks!  (for tonight at any rate.)  Happy Wednesday one and all, and I'll check back in tomorrow.

Question -- do you like seeing charts and additional information?  Let me know in a comment.  I appreciate the feedback!

Tuesday, August 12th

Quick Recap:

Today was a down day on the markets overall, at least here in the U.S.  The positions Nick and I are in, however, have done pretty good overall.  We've got unrealized gains of $3.50.  Whoo hoo!  (I keep thinking that eventually it will get bigger.  Once we have a larger account to work with, we'll be able to take on more positions for more potential reward.  

All our existing positions now have trailing stops in place.  So at this point we will never hit our max loss.  We're not quite to complete breakeven on them yet.  If we were to get stopped out tomorrow, we'll have some losses, but I like that there's an automatic catch in place.  

We didn't get into the MSFT position yesterday.  The stock didn't hit my condition, though it does look good for the start of an uptrend.  However, the deltas are now outside our rule range, so we're not getting into this trade. 

We did get into YHOO, and so those stops are on.

New Trades:

We put Iron Condors on SPY and IWM.  These both look to be going sideways, so the neutral strategy should work for us.  I'll go more into the details tomorrow.

Exciting News of the day!

Nick figured out how to put on an order to open a position, and enter the closing parts right away.  The trick is that instead of entering a "single order," you use "1st trig OCO" order.  Then, the 1st order you enter is the position opening order.  In our case, we sell the position.  Then, you create an opposite order, duplicate that, adjust the order as needed to pull in stops, and viola!  There's a market order to enter the position with an OCO with closes showing a "Wait Trigger" status.  

I'm so excited!  We put it on a test to see if it works properly.  If it works, we've got our stops on right away, and it eliminates some of the same-day risk we were taking on.  I'll know more tomorrow.

I know this is a really short post tonight, but that's the quick update.  Happy Tuesday everyone.  I'm off to sleep and dream with options and position dancing through my head.  (Maybe not... we'll see.)

Monday, August 11

Today's recap:

Seems like an interesting day -- all three major US indexes closed higher, although not significantly higher.

I got into 2 of the 3 trades from yesterday, and Nick picked out a few more to try for tonight.

We got closed out of 2 positions today, and we're 50/50 for the day.  Overall, though, we still trend positive, and we're definitely net positive in our paper money account.  

Without further ado here's what's happened today.

Closed Trades:

IWM -- looks like the stock price jumped too high toward the call side strikes today, and we got stopped out.  Bummer.  Unfavorable result.  I'll have to check into some news sources later and see if I can figure out why the gap up.  I'm wishing I put a put vertical on instead of the condor as this seems want to continue up.  We'll see though.  It is approaching the moving average line, and that might act as resistance again.

MU -- Minor gap up today, which triggered the trail stop to pull us out.  Profitably, which is always good.  This is one to watch again.  It's sort of int he middle of a pattern.  It might go up and break back down, or it might keep trending up.  I'll give it another couple of days before deciding if we get back into it.

Current Positions:

GLD -- Price is doing what it's supposed to for the Iron Condor to work for us.  Just need to let it have time.  The mark price is now $0.13 below our max loss stop, so I switched the loss side stop out to a trail stop.  We're still at a loss if we were to get pulled out, but it's not our max loss.

New Positions entered today:

QQQ -- Sold the September 97.63/98.63/90.63/89.63 Iron Condor -- Stock price gapped up slightly today, but still well within our range.  Added our stops tonight per the rules.

TWTR -- Sold the September 41/40 Put Vertical -- Despite the underlying closing slightly lower than it opened, we're still higher than yesterday, which is a good dollar higher than our strike price.  We've also got a higher high and higher low, so should this pattern continue, we'll be well on our way towards capitalizing on the time decay part of the option pricing.  Added stops tonight per our rules.

Potentials for tomorrow:

MSFT -- Looking at selling the September 42/41 Put vertical -- The numbers look good, and we had that doji show up last Wednesday followed by a strong up day Thursday.  Friday and today both had higher highs, but lower closes than opens.  Weirdly enough, the closes of the last 2 trading days have been identical, both of which are slightly lower than the previous close.  Today opened slightly lower than Friday's open, and the price is hovering around the 30 day simple moving average, which could be a support line.  It seems to be poised to hit an uptrend again, but it might not do that just yet.  I'll put a condition on when entering the trade so that if the stock price hits $0.20 higher than today's high, we'll attempt to get in.  We'll see what happens tomorrow!

To quote Nick, "There's a whole lot of nothing tonight."  Guess picking these was harder than we'd like it to be!

YHOO -- Take 2:  Selling the September 40/41/33/32 Iron Condor -- We attempted this last week and didn't get filled.  It still looks good today, so let's see what happens.

And those are our additional 2 trades for tomorrow.  I've got 2 more on the watch list, so more to come tomorrow night!

Happy Monday night all!

Sunday August 10th

Happy Sunday!

We're back from a mini-vacation, and playing catch up on everything.  

So Friday seems to have been an okay day for us.  We got into two more positions and out of one.  Though that one was Twitter, and it was an odd duck for us, which I might be looking into getting back into.  More on that in a second.  In the meantime, I'll be looking for two more positions to enter, to bring our total to 5 active positions, which is just our rule of thumb.

Current position:

MU -- Micron -- we sold the September 14 33/34 call vertical.  It's good for 40 days still, which is great, and we've got a trail stop in place.  At this point, even if we get stopped out, we'll be profitable, which is always good!

Friday's added positions:

GLD -- We sold the September expiration 122/121/130/131 iron condor.  I'm putting the stops on tonight and going from there.  We'll see what happens.

IWM -- We sold the September expiration 105/104/116/117 iron condor.  I'm putting stops on tonight as well.  So far the underlying price has stayed within our range, so here's hoping it continues that way.

On to Twitter:

Last week I had some issues on Twitter.  We got into a position on Thursday, and as I was looking at it Thursday night to review, I thought that we had already gone outside our rules.  Based on the current price at the time, we were already losing more than what is allowable for us.  So I put on an immediate close order at the current market rate.  Then I realized I had made an error in my tracking spreadsheet, and we were fine.  So I put on the closing order, per the rules.  However, I forgot to cancel the one I put on first.  Ugh!  As a result, we closed out of our position pretty much immediately on Friday.  And the other OCO orders I put on per our rules just canceled out because the one filled.  

So -- basic take-aways from this one:

1. Double check your numbers when entering them into whatever tracking method you use.
2. Remember to double check all working orders before closing out for the night.  
3. Time to go check if Twitter is still in our ranges.

Everything looks good per our rules, so here's our take 2 for tonight on this one:

Selling TWTR September expiration 41/40 put vertical spread.  We did use the condition that the price of the stock must hit $43.56 or higher ($0.20 higher than Friday's high).  Fingers crossed that it performs as well as the numbers indicate it can.

New position attempt:

QQQ -- This looks to me like it's going to be flat for a bit, so we're looking at our neutral strategy -- the iron condor.  September expiration, 90.63/89.63/97.63/98.63.  Let's see how this plays out this week.

Overall Tracking:

We're still net positive and our success ratio is better than 50/50.  I still say I'm pretty pleased with this at the moment.  I have noted that we do much better when Nick and I both are involved in picking out and maintaining the trades, so that's going to continue as much as possible.

Here's to a good week ahead!

Thursday, August 7th

Quick recap:

Well, looks like down was the way to go today.  Everything closed at least a little bit lower...  Instead of Russia, today's concern is Iraq and the airstrikes.  Good grief -- Russia, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Venezuela, and that's just naming a few -- there's a lot of big-picture violence in our world this year.  And that's not even including the crime in major cities, and so on.  Yikes.  Aren't we supposed to be becoming more civilized and tolerant?  Shouldn't we be open to exploring and celebrating differences while learning about others?  Shouldn't we be past the point of fighting over land and resources?  (Not sure that will ever happen...)  

But, this blog is not meant to be a social commentary.  I mentioned the above tonight in recognition that situations around the world do impact markets.  I'm not sure I have learned enough to gauge the impact of the different newsworthy events on markets, but one article on Yahoo said that people are searching for "safe-haven assets" right now.  

Despite this, we're going to continue working our strategies and rules.

Closed positions:

Our Iron Condor on the QQQs closed out today at our profit target.  Hurray!  That was a good thing.  We made $29 net revenue on that trade (papermoney).  

Overall to-date, we are net positive, and about 2/3 of our trades are closing favorable.  I'm liking the fact that we are making money on these positions.  Makes me feel like we've got a bit of a handle on things!  Now to see if that holds true.

Current Positions:

MU -- and we are now to the point where no matter what happens we will finish this trade net positive!  Our trail stop is at better than breakeven.  Hurray!  Now it's time to hope we can ride it out until we reach our target.  

Attempted positions from yesterday:

TWTR -- Well, Twitter met the condition for the order to get filled -- the price of the underlying stock went up $0.20 above yesterday's high.  However, it hit that point and tumbled down.  So, I'm honestly not sure I want to be in this trade, but I'm already in it.  Best thing to do at this point -- put on the stops and see what happens!  Worst case, we get stopped out tomorrow if the stock goes down.  Best case, we ride out the time if the stock turns around like I had originally thought it might.  In any case, life will be interesting for a bit.

C -- Citigroup did NOT hit the condition for the order to get placed, so we didn't get in.  I'm wondering if it's worth trying again with the same condition...  Even though today closed lower than it opened, both open and close are higher than yesterday's open and close, and the stock is sort of hovering at a support level.  So it seems to indicate that it could be going up.  On the other hand, the 30-day simple moving average could also be working as a resistance level right now.  Hmmmm....  What to do?  I'll go check the math and see if it works.  Well, it works, and I'm going to go with my first instinct that we're at a support level right now since it did break through the 30-day simple moving average, even though it came back down.  I guess we'll see what happens if we get into this.  So here's what we're going to do:

Sell the September expiration 47/46 Put vertical with the condition that the stock must hit $48.83 or better.

Looking at yesterday's list of ones to check tonight:

MSFT -- remember that doji from yesterday?  Well, it turns out that it does look like it's indicating a change.  Today was a positive day, with a higher high and higher low than yesterday.  So, I'm attempting a conditional order on this one too:

Sell the September expiration 42/41 Put vertical with the condition that the stock must hit $43.65 or higher.  

We'll see what happens tomorrow!

New trades for tonight:

Nick found some positions thinking Iron Condors will work best.  Time to go check those out.  They are all September expirations Iron Condors:

IWM -- 116/117/105/104

YHOO -- 40/41/32/31

GLD -- 130/131/122/121

From a rules perspective, these all work well, per Nick.  Yahoo looks perfect for a condor since it's been flat for several days.  That's the easy one to see, once you know what you're looking for.   (Nick's much better at identifying condor picks than I am.)

IWM seems like it will work.  This is an EFT on emerging markets, so as long as the international news doesn't get too crazy, we should be in good shape.

The one that I'm torn about is GLD.  If the news article I linked above is correct, this could gap up again.  At the moment, this fits our rules, and Nick's gut reaction was to go with it.  I think I'll put it on, and we can figure the rest out later.

And that's all for tonight folks!  Have a great Thursday!

Wednesday August 6

What Happened today:

Looks like a flat market overall today.  But that didn't stop some excitement happening in our account today.  We had 2 positions close today -- one favorable (read profitable), and one unfavorable (read losing side).  

It looks like the situation in Russia/Ukraine is impacting markets overall.  According to one article, the "failed merger" of Sprint and T-mobile is also a downer today.  On the flip side, there were some winners too.

Closed trades:

GLD -- Well, this one gapped up a lot today to open, and then closed slightly lower.  It didn't reach our strike prices, but it did change enough to trigger our stop on the option.  So we wound up losing on this one.  

My mom told me that one of her instructors or mentors told her at one point that the GLD index is one that you NEED to have a stop on regardless because it can gap quickly and without warning.  Seems like that's what happened here.  Overall, GLD has been a position that works well for us.  This time it just didn't.

IWM -- the weird one from earlier this week strikes again!  I'm honestly not entirely sure what's happened with this one this week.  Two things I know for sure -- we're finally out of this position, and it closed profitably for us (again) today.  Oddly enough, this is the position that closed out twice yesterday, but we were still in it.  It's closed out now for sure.  We made money on it!  Though I don't think this week's endeavors in IWM options are applicable to real world money.  But, that's okay.  I can handle a bit of weirdness here.  

Other ongoing trades:

MU -- Sold the September 33/34 Call vertical -- We have the trail stop in place, and I'm pleased to note that we are not at gross breakeven.  Meaning that if we stopped out tomorrow at the current stop price, we'd only lose the amount of the commissions.  It looks like this might be in the middle of a bear flag pattern, so we should be good to ride it out.

QQQ -- Sold an Iron Condor with a September Expiration 99.63/100.63/92.63/91.63 -- Looking good.  It's staying in our range, despite some ups and downs, which is what we want an iron condor to do.  We already have a trail stop on, so we won't lose our max, but we're still not to breakeven yet.

Attempted new trades:

EEM -- attempted to sell the September 45/45.50 call vertical -- But I had a condition on.  Even though the price hit the condition by one penny, we didn't get filled.  I looked at this again for tomorrow, but this particular position is outside our delta rules.  The next one down 44.50/45 has too wide a bid/ask spread, so this one is off the table for tonight.

Now to find 3 new positions for tomorrow.

Plans for tomorrow:

AAPL -- the difference in strike prices is too high at the moment and puts us outside our acceptable risk range.  We need to stick with strikes that are at most $1 apart, so AAPL is off the table for a bit.

BAC -- no positions in our delta rules.

BX -- Looked at a potential put spread at 31/30, but the bid/ask spread is too wide for our rules, and the return is too low.

C -- Citigroup -- News on Citigroup is interesting.  After the close, things are going down, and there was a settlement to the tune of $285M with the SEC...  Yet, it looks to me like the stock price is sitting at a support level with a potential to go up.  So, I think I'll put on an order with a condition that the stock has to go up.  Here's what I'm thinking:

Sell the September expiration 47/46 Put vertical with the condition that the stock must hit $48.73 or better.

GM -- outside our return rules.  

INTC -- the delta that fits our rules is too close to being in the money, so we're skipping this one.

MSFT -- oohh -- a pretty color on the chart!  (I have mine set up to be a deep blue to jump out with the reds and greens of the other candles on the chart.)  A doji, I believe that's called, and it can indicate a potential turning point.  Bottom line, it doesn't know what it's going to do, so we're going to watch it and see what happens tomorrow.

ORCL -- deltas outside our rules.

PFE -- no deltas in our rules either.

(This is hard work tonight!)

PLUG -- no interest.  Trading an option with only 1 in the open interest category probably isn't the best idea.  

SPY -- I'm not sure what is happening on this chart yet to even begin to figure out what to trade.  It looks like it might be trying to turn around again, but we'll see.   We missed the beginning of the short-term downtrend, and I'm not sure if it's hit the bottom and is turning around, or if it's going to fall further.  So, tonight, I'm not trading based on this chart.

TWTR -- I looked at this last night, and I think it is at the support of the latest down trend.  It looks like it's leveling off around $43 and change.  I think it's going to go back up.  But I'm going to confirm that with a conditional order that the stock has to hit $0.20 higher than today's high before I get in.  Here's what I'm thinking:

Sell the September expiration 41/40 Put vertical with the condition that the stock must hit $44.24 or higher to enter.  

(2 out of 3 -- need one more.)  

VZ -- What the heck has happened here over the last several days?  What a drop!  Wish I could have gotten in on this when it hit the high last week.  though it looks like it might be trying to turn around with a hammer pattern today, almost.  I'll watch it again and see if there's a higher close before deciding what to do.

TWX -- Wow...  doesn't look like people liked what they heard in the earnings announcement today.  that's a pretty significant gap down!  Looks like Fox and Time Warner have officially broken up.  So sad.  Yet, interestingly enough, the earnings report itself isn't bad, at least not according to this article.  

However, it's useless for me to attempt to trade options tonight because it doesn't fit my rules at all.

FOXA -- is another one to watch tomorrow, if there's positions that fit my rules.  Right now the bid/ask spreads are all HUGE!

CAT -- Looks interesting, but no deltas fit my rules right now.  

NFLX -- Looks like it would be great for an Iron Condor, but the positions don't fit my rules.  Bid/ask spreads are too wide.

INSM -- no volume in the positions I would want to do, and the bid/ask spread is way too big again.

SLW -- no deltas on the put side, which is what I'd want to do.

AMZN -- I should know better than to look for a while.  At least until our account grows larger and we can tolerate a higher risk profile.

FB -- See above.  same applies.

DIS -- bummer!  It looks good for a potential condor, but the risk is too high for our rules.

IWM -- Do I dare even consider this one after the craziness of the last 2 days?  Well, I did the math, and it just doesn't work at the moment.  Return is too low.  

And I've exhausted my watch lists for tonight.  Hmmm....  Guess it's time to quit then.  I'll have to come up with more stocks to add to our watch lists. 

Question for the night:

We've been talking to a friend of ours about all this today (Thanks Joe!), and in addition to testing my level of understanding, he brought up some really good points. 

So, the question for the night:

Is there a way in the TOS platform to put a closing order on a position at the same time as an open?  Perhaps as a condition so that it only comes into play once the initial order is filled?  

It would be great if we can do that because right now we've got a whole day where we could potentially lose our shirts on a position if something wonky happens between when it goes on and when we put the stops on after market close.  

I tried to do this tonight, but had no luck figuring it out.  If anyone can give suggestions, that would be greatly appreciated!  Assuming, of course, that it is even possible.

Tuesday, August 5th

What the heck happened today?

Wow!  Weird day today.  Down day across the board .  I'm not entirely sure how it all happened, but we got closed out of 2 of our positions from yesterday -- at better than our profit target.  So that's good.  We made money, but I don't know that we really should have.  I'm wondering if there was a papermoney quirk going on....  Unfortunately, I don't have a good way to verify that at all.  

Nick and I looked at everything, and we don't know what happened.  

For some reason, our IWM call vertical closed out twice, but we're still in it.  That's odd.  I'm chalking that up to a papermoney glitch, and we're ignoring the closes that happened today and just going to treat it as normal going forward.  I put our stops back on, per the rules, and that's what were going to do.

I wanted to put the YHOO condor back on, but it's out of our delta range, so that one is being left as closed favorably.

Other current positions:

MU --  I adjusted this to a trail stop since we're past the $0.10 difference between mark and our loss-side stop.  We're not yet to guaranteed profitability, but we're also not going to hit our max loss anymore.

All our other positions are in decent shape.  No action needed, and we'll see what happens tomorrow.

Finding a new position:

I now need to replace the YHOO that closed, so we can keep to our general practice of having 5 positions open at a time.  I told Nick he's been spoiling me.  I haven't had to look for a while.  :)  but I have to look now, so here we go.  I'm just going to go through my watch list and see if there's anything striking that pops out.

An hour later...

I went through my usual watch list and came up with one suspect. EEM.  It looks like it could possibly pop back down, so I put a conditional order on saying that the stock must hit $43.45 or go lower in order for me to get into this call vertical.  

So we'll see what happens tomorrow!

Happy Tuesday, in spite of trading oddities.

Monday 8/4

What happened today?

Seems like a mixed market today.  Overall there was up and down, and several of our positions indicate that.  So what are we doing tonight?

1.  Evaluating current positions and making any changes.

2.  Adding stops to the new positions we entered today.

Current Position:

QQQ -- Iron Condor, September Expiration, 99.63/100.63/92.63/91.63 -- This is working well for us.  Slow and steady towards profitability.  The mark price of the option is now more than $0.10 lower than our loss-side stop, so we've adjusted that to a trail stop to help reduce our max loss.  Ideally, we want this to continue to work for us, so we'll see how the trail stop works for us.

New Positions:

We got into 4 of the 5 possible positions we researched last night.  The QQQs call vertical didn't get put on because we had the condition in place that the price of the underlying had to reach $0.20 below Friday's low, indicating the continuation of the down trend.  That didn't happen, and the stock actually opened higher and closed higher still.  So the conditional order allowed us to avoid getting into a situation where the underlying is doing the opposite of what we wanted it to do.  

Now on to the new positions:

YHOO -- Iron Condor, September Expiration, 40/41/32/31 -- Price stayed right in the range, so that's good.  I'm putting on our stops tonight.  One for the max loss we'll accept, and one for the projected profit we'd like to get, per our rules.  Then it's a monitoring game going forward.

GLD -- Sold the Call Vertical, September Expiration, 127/128 -- this position is $3 positive today for us.  That's because the downtrend is continuing.  I'm adding stops tonight, per our rules, then, as above, continuing with watching and evaluating each night.

This is actually already at $0.10 better than our max loss side-stop, so I just put on the trail stop, and we'll see how it goes.

IWM -- Sold the Call Vertical, September Expiration, 114/115 -- hmmmm...  it's still trending downwards overall, but it looks like we got in at the base of the upside flag of a bear flag pattern.  This is not exactly ideal, but we'll ride it out and see what happens.  I'm putting on our stops tonight per the rules.

MU -- Sold the Call Vertical, September Expiration, 33/34 -- And the stock when up today.  So we have some unrealized losses at the moment.  I guess we'll put our stops on and wait and see.  It might hit some resistance level and fall again.  32 was a previous support which might become resistance.  We'll see!

And that's all for tonight folks.  A bit of an easy night overall for us.  More to come as the week goes on though!

Happy Monday evening!

Sunday, August 3

What did we do on Friday?

Short answer -- nothing.  We decided not to change anything, just to see what would happen in the market.  On the stocks we're watching, there was some mixed results, but overall seemed like a down day.

Our position in GLD (call vertical) closed out, and we bought it back at our trail stop.  So, market went down; GLD went up and hit our trail.  We still closed out profitable though, because of that trail stop.  It seems that, for us, managing our trades by watching our stop rules and adjusting as appropriate is good.

What are we doing for tomorrow?

We're still looking at each potential stock and taking it one at a time.  Nick did the initial research, and I'm reviewing and we're sharing thoughts and ideas. 

YHOO -- potential Iron Condor (Selling the September expiration) with 40/41 on call sides.  Initially, Nick looked at the 33/32 Put side, and it does fit in our rules.  However, it looks like 33 is a solid support line that is regularly approached, for example on 7/18/14; 6/26/14; and 5/16/14 just going back 3 months.  I suggested we look at the 32/31 put side, and that does fit our rules.  Less risky, so less return, but seems like it will fit with the intermediate term trend.  It's a wide spread on the condors, so we're banking on time for this one.  Position entered as a sale to open, and we'll see what happens.

QQQ -- Looking at the call option with the 96.63/97.63 vertical.  Selling to open, so we're bearish on this position.  We do have the iron condor working also, so this will show up as a split position again.  

Nick suggested putting a condition on the order, so that the stock price itself would have to hit 93.84 per share before our option order goes into effect.  We're debating whether that is needed.  The condition will help us in that the stock will have continued to decline.  However, since the price already broke through the 30-day simple moving average (which can be a support), do we really need the condition?  

Looking at the actual candle for Friday's trading itself, it looks like there might be enough bullish investors to keep this underlying from going too much lower, barring anything crazy going on which impacts the market.  (That might not be such a hard bar...something's bound to happen.)  But anyway, that might mean that 94 will actually become another support level.  Perhaps that condition IS necessary.  At the very least, it will help eliminate a potential losing trade if this underlying does turn positive and more bullish again.  

Verdict -- entering position with condition that stock hit 93.84 or lower before being placed in the vertical trade.

GLD --  hmmm....  Potential call vertical on this trade.  We're considering the 127/128 position.  Nick sees a bear flag pattern happening over the last few days.  I can see it as well, once he showed it to me.  Fits our rules, though the part I'm not sure of is the relationship with to overall market.  In theory, this should be an inverse relationship with the market overall.  Assuming this downward trend of the last 2 days continues, the price of the underlying GLD should increase, therefore making this position fall more toward the loss side.  However, the definite short term trend here is down.  So I do believe we will go with Nick's original recommendation and see what happens.  

IWM -- seems to be continuing the downward trend.  We're looking at selling the 114/115 call vertical, banking on the continuation of that down trend.  All our rules fit, so that's what we're entering.

MU -- Going with Nick's recommendation on this one as well.  Selling the call vertical at 33/34.  Looks like this might be starting to do a bear flag decline.  Fingers crossed.

So we've got 4 potential trades to go through tomorrow.  Let's see what happens!

Have a wonderful rest of your Sunday nights all!