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BookingAlpha Option Trading Advisory

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Weekend Portfolio Analysis (April 25, 2015)

This week the SPX index went from 2084.11 to 2117.69 for a 1.61% gain. The market is now up 2.86% year to date. I entered the first position of the June expiration cycle ending a drought of 35 days without entering new trades. It has been a quiet year so far and hopefully it will continue to be so.

Market conditions
(Click on image to enlarge)
Stochastics: 89 (overbought)
McClellan: +39 (neutral)
Stocks above their 20 Day Moving Average: 60% (neutral)

No man's land territory and the long term uptrend channel is still in play. I will not sell Credit spreads until the market reaches an extreme. Obviously the overbought extreme is closer, we'll see if it happens. I want to see SPX around 2150 for me to sell Credit Call spreads on that index.

I currently hold no positions on the SPX, so today it makes sense to show you a chart of RUT and the support/resistance areas I am looking at.

(Click on image to enlarge)

May positions
RUT 1100/1110/1330/1340 unbalanced Iron Condor
3weeks to expiration, 90% probability of success. I'm not concerned with this position. It won't need adjustments this week.

June positions
RUT 1130/1140/1340/1350 unbalanced Iron Condor
This is the new position in the portfolio discussed two days ago, so nothing new to say here. Lots of baby-sitting ahead.


Action plan for the week
My two RUT positions are healthy and they won't need my attention for now.

As for new trades, I want to sell May SPX Credit Call spreads above 2205. For that I need about a 40 point rally on SPX from current levels. If this doesn't happen, then I will move my focus to June where I would like to sell Credit Call spreads above 2230. This can be achieved with a more realistic 30 point rally this week. So, SPX around 2150 will get me interested.

If the market stays sideways or goes down, I won't add new positions.


Economic Calendar
Tuesday: US Consumer confidence
Wednesday: US GDP and Pending Home Sales
Thursday: European CPI, Germany Unemployment, China's Manufacturing PMI
Friday: ISM Manufacturing PMI, Michigan Consumer Sentiment

Good luck this week folks!

Check out 2015 Track record



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6 comments:

  1. Last week:
    Monday morning - RUT @1258 and RVX @17. RUT in the middle of Bollinger Bands. 60 days to June expiration. I sold four iron condor spreads RUT June 1100/1120/1340/1360 for 2.70 (1.23 for 1100/1120 put credit spread + 1.47 for 1340/1360 call credit spread). Total credit received $1080 with margin $6920.
    Thursday afternoon - SPX @2118 and VIX @12.5. 57 days to June expiration. Despite SPX being at the top of Bollinger Bands, I still prefered selling a balanced iron condor (rather then selling more credit spreads than put spreads), because the price did not seem stretched enough to the upside. Therefore, I sold four balanced iron condors SPX June 1910/1930/2210/2230 for 2.50. Credit recevied $1000 with margin $7000.


    Open positions:
    4x IC SPX June 1910/1930/2210/2230
    4x IC RUT June 1100/1120/1340/1360


    Next week:
    I will monitor open position. Rough adjustment points are (2030;2150) for the SPX iron condor and (1190;1290) for the RUT iron condor spreads. Given the low volatility, these iron condors are pretty small (the current price of SPX is only 9% from the short put options and 4% from the short call options). It almost feels like trading split strike butterflies with the profit potential of iron condors.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Iron condor sellers are making nice profits over the last few months. Thanks for sharing your trades.

      Delete
    2. Hi Martin,
      Thanks for sharing your insight.
      Do you happen to write on a blog or do you have a site? It would be interesting to follow you.
      Thanks
      LT

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    3. Hello LT,
      When I do a trade, I enter a few notes about the trade into the software that I use for tracking and analyzing my open positions. Apart from that I have an offline wordpress page where I keep my other notes that I find interesting. As I am not a native English speaker and I am naturally lazy, all my notes and comments are in my mother language that not many would understand. This is another reason why I don't have a regular trading blog.
      Martin

      Delete
  2. Another nice week for us conservative credit spread traders. I did not make any new trades last week. All current positions are safe and profitable except for the August 31 SPX 2275/2300 ccs that is showing a small loss. Here are the current positions:

    RUT June 30th 1000/990 & 1380/1390 iron condor - I hope to close this iron condor in early May
    SPX June 30th 1750/1725 cps - I hope to close this position in early May
    SPX August 31st 1750/1725 & 2275/2300 iron condor

    ReplyDelete