Trading Competition: Looking for The Chosen One

The Chosen One

Weekend Portfolio Analysis (December 26, 2015)

Just a few days ago, market pundits were theorizing about the end of the human species.

IT IS ALWAYS THE SAME THING.

Fear is exaggerated and the "there is more to come" BS from our beloved Gurus was, is and will always be endless. Little by little they start changing their stance as the market rebounds, hoping no one remembers how bearish they were just a few days ago.

The markets do have a certain relationship with the real economy. But, day to day fluctuations are noisy and anyone's guess. It is so hard to not be influenced by other people's bias and fears. That's why unplugging is the best thing you can do if you still lack confidence in your trading mechanics and psychology as a trader.

We have now rallied 2.5% in the last 4 sessions. Only 20 more sessions like that and the SPX will be above 2,300. Woohhoooooo. How cool would that be?

Apr29 SPX unbalanced Iron Condor

A new position was entered using Apr29 options:

Sold Apr29 $SPX 1700/1725/2250/2275 unbalanced Iron Condor (3/4 as many Calls as Puts) 2.20 credit on Call side. 1.80 credit on Put side

— The Lazy Trader (@lazytrading) December 24, 2015

Options Trading Monthly Digest (December 2015)

Well, the time has come once again to go over the Options Trading performance for the cycle that just concluded: the December 2015 monthly options expiration cycle.

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. These articles are intended to make us better traders with constant feedback from our own recent actions and the community of like-minded readers that contribute to this site.

Weekend Portfolio Analysis (December 19, 2015)

The SPX index opened the week at 2,013.37 and closed at 2,005.55. That's a minuscule 0.39% loss and yet sentiment has turned extremely negative in the last couple of days. We are finally past the first Fed Interest Rate hike. No more drama. Thank Allah.

Yesterday was December expiration and both the RUT 1010/1015 Credit Put spread and the SPX 1880/1885/2190/2195 Iron Condor expired for max profit. The performance for the December expiration cycle was +1.74% before commissions, +1.29% after. For the year, the account is up +11.80% vs -2.59% for the S&P 500. I'll talk more about these numbers and the trading activity in the Options Trading - Monthly Digest article on Tuesday.

Happy Birthday Sniper!

Happy Birthday Sniper! 

My little kid is one year old today. 

Weekend Portfolio Analysis (December 12, 2015)

Well, at least we can't complain about boredom nowadays.  The S&P 500 went down to 2012 this week and it entered extreme pessimistic territory. We have the Fed meeting on Wednesday as the "event of the year". Therefore, we will have to be a little vigilant that day just in case our positions need to be taken care of.

IWM Synthetic Stock Hedged 112/112/120

In the middle of today's chess game, I entered the following position:

Synthetic long $IWM stock (long 112 Call + short 112 Put), Hedged with long 120 Put. All March options. Bullish speculative bet.

— The Lazy Trader (@lazytrading) December 11, 2015

Hedging downside risk

A few plays this morning:

January RUT Credit Put Spread

Today I entered the second position for the January 2016 expiration cycle:

Sold January $RUT 1025/1015 Credit Put Spread for 0.60 credit.

— The Lazy Trader (@lazytrading) December 9, 2015

Core Income Butterfly - a Review

While I have shared and discussed a bunch of free useful tools and websites in the past, I rarely ever write about  premium products out there. In fact, in more than 540 articles that have been published on this site over more than 5 years, only 3 of them, or 0.5% of the total, have recommended premium services/products from third parties.

Weekend Portfolio Analysis (December 5, 2015)

Writing today from the Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida, after a super quiet week where the market went up only 0.035%. I mean, the SPX index barely moved. Did it?

Perspectives

This is not a technical article about trading. Rather it is a story to reflect about our finances and goals. It is about perspectives in life. The story is by an anonymous author and it is out there in several places on the Internet, but it contains such a powerful message that I just wanted to have it here on the site for those who have never stumbled upon it.