CHRISTMAS PROMOTION
LTOptions at a 33% discount during the Year End Holidays.
Tell me More

BookingAlpha Option Trading Advisory

Thursday, February 19, 2015

April 2015 SPX Unbalanced Iron Condor

Today I started to ride the first position of the April 2015 monthly options expiration cycle. This was my tweet live during the morning session.

Details of the trade:

Buy 4 SPX April 1855 Put @8.30
Sell 4 SPX April 1860 Put @8.60
Sell 2 SPX April 2200 Call @4.25
Buy 2 SPX April 2205 Call @3.75

Credit: $220
Max Risk: $1780 on the Put side, $780 on the Call side
Days to expiration: 57

A chart after market close for future reference:
(Click on image to enlarge)

Current positions in the portfolio:
February SPX 1875/1880/2190/2195 Iron Condor
Will expire in the next few hours. Max profit.

March SPX 1845/1850/2170/2175 unbalanced Iron Condor
28 days to expiration and 78% probability of success. No concerns so far.

April SPX 1855/1860/2200/2205 unbalanced Iron Condor
The trade discussed on this article. 57 days to expiration, 76% probability of success.


I feel comfortable with the current positions. The February one will go away on Saturday morning. The new one in April, I like it a lot because I don't feel exposed on the Call side. If there is a need to defend that Call side in the future, I will be able to go up to 2225 or higher with normal position size and totally mitigate the adjustment loss and even pull out a winner overall. The Put spread side at 1860 feels pretty safe to me.

Check out 2015 Track record

Related Articles:
Weekend Portfolio Analysis (February 28, 2015)
Weekend Portfolio Analysis (March 7, 2015)
Weekend Portfolio Analysis (March 14, 2015)
Weekend Portfolio Analysis (March 20, 2015)
Weekend Portfolio Analysis (April 4, 2015) 
Weekend Portfolio Analysis (April 11, 2015)


Go to the bottom of this page in order to see the Legal Stuff

3 comments:

  1. Great Blog, I just found it this week and been reading the whole thing

    I assume you are trading with TD if you are Canadian to use the ToS swim platform? If so how did you get $1 fees on Options trading? When I look at their Options fees it is $35+$3.50/contract which is ridiculous. Am I reading it wrong or do you trade with another broker?

    http://www.tdwaterhouse.ca/document/PDF/forms/521778.pdf

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi. Thanks for dropping by.
      I trade with ThinkOrSwim Canada. If you open an account and tell them that TastyTrade sent you, you get the special promotion of $1.25 per contract and not order ticket charge.

      For this website though, I use a flat $1 per contract for the model portfolio as it is a realistically achievable commission schema for everybody in the world. Interactive Brokers has presence in many countries and charges .70 - .75 per contract.

      Cheers,
      LT

      Delete
  2. Just curious. Are you trading Options from within your TFSA or RRSP? If so how do you handle US taxes? I thought they withheld a certain %

    I tried to sign up but there is a line on registration page that is confusing
    "Exclusive commission rates apply only to trades placed on accounts through U.S. Trading Platforms (thinkorswim)."
    https://www.tastytrade.com/tt/get-trading?locale=en-CA

    So do you trade on the US or Canadian platform. I downloaded both. I did notice the Canadian one had higher margin requirements when paper trading

    ReplyDelete