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!