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!