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ROLLING SPX JULY 22ND 1920/1930 SPV TO 1965/1975Rolling toward current price on this iron condor, as well as on the RUT and NDX ones, too. Basically, I'm rolling to as close to the 85% probability out-of-the-money strike for the expiry ... . I don't want to get in crazy close if this is short-term, short squeeze price action. Know Your Scratch Point: The original setup was put on for a $280 credit; I rolled the call side down a bit on the down move for an $80 credit; and rolling this side up I brought in an additional $55 credit, for a total of $415 in credits so far (that's my scratch point, exclusive of fees and commissions. I'm still shooting for a profit of 50% of the original setup ($140/contract), so my take profit will be at $415 minus $140 or a $275 debit. A Side Note: There's a little lesson here ... . Post-Brexit, I put on SPX, RUT, and NDX iron condors in fairly quick succession (days after one another, although in slightly different expiries; this one's July 22nd, the RUT is July 29th, and the NDX is August 5th). Unfortunately, by doing this "all at once" and not spacing them out in time, they're all basically in the same shape, with price on the verge of testing the call side in all three. I'm fine with that, but it would have probably been better given market circumstances post-Brexit to put one on, wait a week, consider putting a second one on, wait another week as opposed to impatiently piling into them in quick succession ... .
TVC:SPX
by NaughtyPines
ROLLING SPX JULY 22ND 2140/2150 SCV TO 2110/2120Rolling the call side of my July 22nd SPX iron condor down a few strikes to delta balance here ... . (I basically rolled it to the 75% probability out-of-the-money short call strike). Filled for an $80/contract credit. Scratch Point: The original setup was put on for a $280/contract credit, and I brought in an additional $80/contract for this roll, so my current scratch/break even point for the trade is $360 per contract (exclusive of fees/commissions). Because I'm still shooting for 50% max of the original setup (or $140 per contract), I'll look to take this off for the scratch point ($360) minus the original profit goal ($140) or for about a $220 debit ... .
TVC:SPX
by NaughtyPines
ROLLING SPX JUNE 24TH 2105/2120 SHORT CALL VERT TO JULY 8THNot every trade works out ... . The original notion of this iron condor was that, pre-Brexit, we'd pin at 2085 or so as traders basically sidelined themselves waiting for the outcome. No such luck with late polling showing a Remain lead. At market open, I closed out the short put side and then rolled out the call side (for a $35/contract credit; this was before price broke 2105) for a couple of more weeks to let the market digest the vote and then go from there. Since it looks like we're going to see more upside, I also sold a put side against for an additional $80 credit (I just noticed that I did a $10 wide; I'll widen it to $15 if there is continued movement to the upside and I can sensibly roll the put side in). Currently, my scratch point is $750/contract (excluding fees/commissions). (The scratch point is calculated by taking the total of the credits received for the original setup, plus any rolls, and subtracting the total of the debits, fees, and commissions paid). The original setup was put on for about a $300/contract credit, at which time I was shooting for 50% max profit or about $150/contract. Consequently, I'll look to take this off at the scratch point ($750) minus that $150 target or about $600/contract.
TVC:SPX
by NaughtyPines
ROLLING JUNE 24TH 2045/2055 SHORT PUT VERT TO 2035/2050Figured I'd balance the wings out width wise here, as well as capture some increase in value experienced by the long put (which gave a small strike price improvement assist to the short put), even though I promised myself I wasn't going to touch this bugger with only 9 DTE. Filled for a $75/contract credit ... . Dissatisfied with the resulting net delta of the setup, I also rolled the short call side down from 2120/2135 to 2115/2130 for an additional $45/contract ... . It's about as delta balanced as it's going to get ... . At this point, I will need to look at the entire option chain for this trade (original + rolls) to see what my scratch point is, the notion being to get as flat as possible in advance of Brexit.
SP:SPX
by NaughtyPines
CLOSED GLD JUNE 17 113/116 SPV; ROLLED CALL SIDEGold just won't give me any breaks. It whips to the put side; it whips to the call side ... . Lol. With 7 DTE and the put side nearing worthless, I closed it out here for $5 (near max profit). I then rolled the 121/124 short call side out to the July 8th expiry for an $11 debit and sold the 114/117 short put vert in the same expiry for a $50/contract, so that I was net credit on the roll. I still have a July 1st 111/114/118/121 GLD iron condor on in the July 1st expiry, but the put side there still has some value left in it, so I'll probably just leave it alone for now.
AMEX:GLD
by NaughtyPines
ROLLED TROUBLED SPY SHORT CALL VERTS/CLOSED IRON CONDORS ON DIPI was busy today, scrambling around this dip, and taking advantage of the opportunity to do two things: (1) Roll out and up any SPY short call credit spreads that were "troubled" and (b) Reduce exposure to the market by closing out any original IC's (iron condors without a side that had been rolled) that could be bought for a small profit or for scratch. ( Ordinarily, I try to make sure that I can receive credits for the sale of an oppositional side that exceed the debits paid, but I was in such a frenzy to take advantage of this potentially fleeting occasion of weakness (who knows) that I need to look over my options chains and see that the credits received for the sale of oppositional put sides were sufficient or not ... . (Hey, there's all weekend to putz with that ... .) In addition to moving some call side out of harm's way, my goal was also to reduce the number of SPY setups I have on and transition over to SPX and RUT, which settle to cash, which obviates the necessity of rolling merely because of the presence of a heightened assignment risk (e.g., around ex-dividend dates). These two instruments take some getting used to, but I think the lack of assignment risk trumps, well, pretty much everything else ... .
AMEX:SPY
by NaughtyPines
ROLLING SPX JUNE 15TH 2030/2040 SPV TO 2055/2065 SPVDoing a little delta balancing here in this short duration SPX iron condor I'm managing fairly aggressively ... . I initially rolled the short side up to the 2030/2040 for a $50/contract credit, and am doing so again here for an additional $55 credit. I hope that this aggressiveness doesn't come back to bit me in the ass in the little bit of time we have left in the setup (7 DTE). I don't usually like to roll with this little bit of time, but am doing so on this multi-day meltup were having here ... .
SP:SPX
by NaughtyPines
ROLLING/MERGING IWM IRON CONDORSDoing a little bit of housekeeping here ... . Originally, this started out as two separate IWM iron condors, one in the June 17th expiration and one in the June 24th expiration. Today, I covered the short put sides of both of these setups, as they were nearing worthless (each was closed for a $5 debit). With 11 DTE for the June 17th setup and 18 for the June 24th, I decided to roll the call sides of both up and out to the July 1st 116/119 short call vertical to give the call side additional time to potentially work out, and sold the 109/112 short put vertical in the same expiry to be "net credit" on the roll. Although I don't gain any particular advantage my merging the two setups into one, it means fewer balls to juggle going forward ... . The combined credit received for the two individual iron condors on setup was about $195, so I'm still looking to exit this merged setup at 50% max of that, or about $98/contract ... .
AMEX:IWM
by NaughtyPines
BROKEN OPTIONS SETUPS AND THE ART OF PATIENCEPeople have frequently mentioned to me that they can't make iron condors work for them, primarily because a single broken setup can undo a long string of profitable trades. This, of course, is a true statement if absolutely nothing is done to attempt to repair these broken trades and get them back to at least scratch or, ideally, into profit. It's all a question of patience. Here is one of my most patience-testing trades I've been diligently working since October 2015 earnings -- YUM. I'm showing only the original setup here, along with the "current state of affairs" (a July 15th 70/75/82.5/90 iron condor); there are a bunch of rolls in between. And, lo and behold, we're back to where we started with YUM price, although my setup isn't currently ideal to take advantage of it (the short call is right at where price is now). And even though the current setup looks "troublesome," I've collected enough credit with rolls to be able to contemplate getting out of this trade for scratch with the July 15th expiry (or even a small profit, depending on how patient I am). This trade naturally presents an extreme example of how long it can take to work out one of these broken trades. It may take a few days to get the movement you need; it may take a few weeks; here, it's taking months. Regardless of how long it takes, however, a couple of factors and/or variables are constant -- patience and trade sizing. Going small on trades allows you to be able to have a bit of buying power tied up with messes like this while you continue to work and book profit on higher probability trades. Go too big, and you're losing sleep over one broken setup that you feel pressured to close early because you lack the patience to give it time to work out. A Side Note: YUM isn't the most volatile underlying in the world the vast majority of the time, but implied volatility does ramp up a bit around earnings, so it's to your advantage to exercise patience and roll on these implied volatility ramp ups if you can, since you'll collect more premium if you do so.
NYSE:YUM
by NaughtyPines
ROLLING GLD JUNE 17TH 117/120 TO JULY 1ST 118/121 SHRT CALL VERTMore housekeeping ... . Taking advantage of this down move in gold to roll the call side of this June 17th iron condor for cheaper than I could do so at the top of GLD's arc at nearly 124. I did the roll for a $28/contract debit. Here's the complicated part: In rolling the 117/120 out to July, I was left with an unpaired short put vertical in June. I didn't want to cover it yet, since the spread had increased in value with this down move. Consequently, I sold a June 17th 121/124 short call vertical against that unpaired short put vert for a $45/contract credit (to replace the spread I rolled). This created a June 17th 113/116/121/124 iron condor (the 113/116 was the unpaired short put vert). I'll look to take that "new" iron condor off at 50% max profit. Now, however, I had an unpaired short call vertical in July (the one I just rolled). To complete an iron condor in that expiration, I sold a July 1st 111/114 short put vertical for an additional $51/contract credit, resulting in a July 1st 111/114/118/121 GLD iron condor. The result is two iron condors, one in June and one in July. Although I don't like to generally increase exposure to an instrument merely to work off a "broken" setup (here, what was the 117/120 short call vert in June), I'm comfortable doing that in GLD due to its liquidity and the fact that I could easily see working it as a core position, particularly since gold instruments have been on a volatility hot streak here recently (e.g., GDX, GDXJ), making selling premium in them fairly worthwhile. I'm similarly comfortable with working things out this way with an instrument like SPY, where I have trades on virtually all the time. With everything else, I like to confine the exposure to the given setup and not add setups to work my way out of a broken side ... .
AMEX:GLD
by NaughtyPines
ROLLING SPY JUNE 17TH 203/210 SHORT CALL VERT ... ... to July 1st 204/211 short call vertical (for a $24 debit). This is a left over spread from a May monthly iron condor that I'm slowly massaging upward. I figured I would roll it here even though there are 25 odd days left until expiry, since -- if price moves up from here -- the roll could get more expensive and with not much premium selling to do, there is no time like the present to work on setups that are either currently problematic or may become so. It cost a debit to roll, which I "financed" with the sale of a short put spread in the same expiry (a 195/198 short put vertical that I filled for $58/contract). In short, I'm net credit on the whole operation. The roll also left me with an unpaired short put vertical in the June 17th expiry, so I also sold a June 17th 210/213 short call vertical for a $53 credit/contract. This will complete a June 17th expiry iron condor, which I will proceed to take off at 50% max profit. Naturally, for some, this seems like an awful lot of work to "repair" a broken setup. Since, however, I regard SPY as one of my core positions with multiple spreads set up at multiple strikes in multiple expiries, I have no problem working these broken spreads for "a bit" to try to get out of them net profitable.
AMEX:SPY
by NaughtyPines
ROLLING VXX JUNE 10TH 17.5 SHORT CALL TO JULY 1ST 17 SHORT CALLThis is part of a poor man's covered call setup in VXX, the back month of which is a September VXX 12 long call. I'm being somewhat mechanical here in rolling the 17.5 short call to the July 1st 75% probability out-of-the-money short call. I say "somewhat mechanical" because the usual thing to do is to wait until the short call is near expiration and then roll it out for another 30 days (assuming you haven't yet taken the whole setup off in profit before then). The notion here is to have my three VXX poor man's covered calls kind of straddle Brexit/FOMC, which is when I think the best chances for a volatility pop will occur. In any event, picked up an additional $56 credit for the roll, further reducing my cost basis in the long. Given the credits I've received so far for the rolls, I'll look to take the entire setup off for what I paid for it ($418/contract). The credits collected for the rolls will be my profit for the setup.
CBOE:VXXLong
by NaughtyPines
ROLLED SPY MAY 20TH 207/211 SHORT CALL VERT TO MAY 27TH 208/212I didn't like how close price was getting to my short call with 10 DTE, so I decided to roll the call side out another week and up one strike while I can pay the least amount possible in order to give it more time. I did the roll for a $10 debit, and then rolled out the short put vert side of the setup for a $13 credit, so I took in a small credit on the deal (although this was washed out by fees/commissions). Nevertheless, a small price to pay for a little bit of extra duration, a little more wiggle room, and a higher probability of profit ... .
AMEX:SPY
by NaughtyPines
ROLLING IUX/RUT APRIL 15TH 1075/1085/1105/1120 IC... to April 15th 1060/1080/1110/1135 iron condor. The short put side and short call sides were rolled separately: the put side for a .48 credit and the call side for a .59 credit. Notes: I widened the spreads on both sides here (rolling the short call up and the short put down) to increase the probability that I will be able to exit either one or both sides at or near max profit some time prior to expiration. A word of caution is in order: widening the spread increases the profit potential of the spread, but it also increases max loss. As a general matter, I only use widening as a last resort in rolling where I simply cannot get enough credit from the sale of an oppositional side to offset the roll of the tested side adequately. Here, I'm doing it largely for practical reasons: first, I want to insure that at least one side is not "too close for comfort" such that I have to roll both sides out (i.e., I want to be able to close at least one side for near max profit); second, I may not be able to watch the setup attentively next week to be able to take advantage of a short-term move ... .
I
by NaughtyPines
ROLLING: VXX MAY 6TH 21 SHORT CALL TO MAY 20TH 21 SHORT CALLI'm rolling the May 6th 21 short call of this setup to the May 20th 21 short call for an additional $23 credit, as the May 6th had lost a good deal of its value ... . The long-dated option leg of the setup cost a $752 debit when I put it on, and I've collected a net of $229 in credits so far -- about 30% the value of the long option. Naturally, as price moves toward the long option, its value decreases, so the entire setup as of right now is "in the red" ... .
CBOE:VXX
by NaughtyPines