Weekend Portfolio Analysis (July 30, 2016)

For two weeks now, we have been trading inside a very narrow 20 point range. The S&P barely moved this week after opening on Monday at 2173.71 and closing yesterday at 2173.60. Year to Date the index is up 6.34%.

September SPX Credit Put spread to complete Iron Condor

Today, with the market in No man's land territory, it was time to enter a September Iron Condor position. Because I already have 3 Credit Call spreads on, one of them with September options, I decided to just enter a Credit Put spread this time around, in order to not add more upside risk to the portfolio.

Sold September $SPX 1980/1970 Credit Put spread for 0.60 credit, creating Iron Condor with existing 2260/2270 Call side

— The Lazy Trader (@lazytrading) July 27, 2016

The Iron Elephant options strategy explained

The Iron Elephant, also known as the Lazy Elephant, just because it has a nice ring to it, is similar to an Iron Condor position. The difference is that the Long Call portion of the Credit Call spread is played with a greater number of contracts than the Short Calls leg.

Weekend Portfolio Analysis (July 23, 2016)

You will see me lose money on a Credit Call spread.
You will see me lose on an Iron Condor.
From time to time my bias will be totally erratic,
but you will never, ever, ever ever,
see me install Pokémon Go in my device.

Growth

In light of recent events, not that Pokémon fad, but actual market price action of recent months, I feel like I've been taken to an obscure hole... filled with frustration. It is clear that no single trading strategy can perform well under any market condition, but lately, especially lately, it has looked like selling Call options has been deemed the ultimate sin by the Options Gods.

Weekend Portfolio Analysis (July 16, 2016)

Frustrating. That's the only description possible. A frustrating week on a frustrating year. Not that I have suffered a huge draw-down or anything like that, but man, has it been hard to make progress in 2016, easily the toughest year ever for my trading style. I'm even going to stop sending emails for these articles for a while, until I feel they are worth it. I don't want to keep begging: "hey please, come to my website! It sucks, but please come". Na, na, na, na, na. No emails and self-promotion for a while. I'll keep posting my trades on Twitter, just for consistency and a commitment to transparency. The email campaigns however, will stop for a while, as I don't want to be bothering with irrelevancy.

Options Trading Monthly Digest (June 2016)

Well, the time has come once again to go over the Options Trading performance for the most recent month: June 2016.

The goal of these articles is to recap and determine what went wrong, what went well, mistakes that were made, things that could have been done better.

Although the main focus is the long term viability of our strategies and not the month to month seesaws, hopefully these monthly updates will provide confidence and serve as an authentic guide of what can be achieved with a realistic and sustainable approach to the business of Selling Options.

August SPX Credit Call Spread

Today I sold an August Credit Call spread in the SPX index:

Sold AUG $SPX 2210/2215 Credit Call spread for 0.50 credit.

— The Lazy Trader (@lazytrading) July 11, 2016

Weekend Portfolio Analysis (July 8, 2016)

Up until yesterday, a good jobs report would bring the market to its knees. Supposedly due to "fears of an Interest Rate hike". So, the better the economy (more jobs), the weaker the markets. Poor souls that are starting to learn about this joke of an industry. Friday, of course, was an exception, and good news went back to being good news; to prove, once again, that trying to apply any type of logic to a chaotic environment is a futile exercise where, in almost all cases, the same argument can be used to justify both an up move and its exact opposite. 

The S&P 500 Index is now up +4.21%, which is pretty decent considering all that's been thrown at it this year and that we are barely past the mid-point mark.

The Chosen One: Trading competition update (Q2)

In December of 2015, a bunch of strangers (now good Internet friends) and I, decided to use 2016 as a friendly trading contest. No prize. Just for the fun of it. I wrote the first article on December 29, while many of you were eating caviar, or killing zebras as part of the Year End celebrations with the family. The original article can be read here.

Weekend Portfolio Analysis (July 2, 2016)

Good morning Infidels.

This is a weekly chart of the S&P500, Brexit included:

A dot in the Ocean. A picture worth a thousand words. Nothing else to say. Case closed.