5/3/09 – Decided to put another March trade on, so with 16 days to go I have sold a put vertical for $0.92 and risking $500 – I aim to get out if I am wrong, or take my profits within 10 days or so.
7/3/09 – Wow, only 2 days in the trade and my stoploss is hit already! – oh well, I’m out for a cost of $1.99 meaning I have a net loss of $112 over 2 days.
17/12/08 – After listening to Tom on TOS chat last wednesday, I felt this might be a reasonable trade. I have put on 4 bear call verticals, risking a total of $800 over 31 days for which I recieved a credit of $0.65 per spread, or $2.60 in total. This i-Share product is supposed to track a basked of 20+ year bond indexes, and the theory goes that the prices of these bonds lately has spiked big time forming a quite a bubble. So, if this trade works out, the bubble will burst soon!
1/1/09 – Ok, this trade didn’t work out! So, I closed it last night for $1.20 per contract, giving me a total net loss (including commissions) of $240 or 30% on the total risked – not great!!
16/10/08 – I loaded another speccie order last night before going to bed, deciding to put on another put vertical if the market tanked – and what do you know, it tanked and I got filled right near the end of the day! So, I received $1.49 to risk $1,000 over 64 days.
19/11/08 – Rolled the 380/370 puts down to 360/350 due to the deltas hitting 24 – it cost me $0.60 to do this, meaning the trade is on for only a net $0.89 now.
21/11/08 – Closed the trade because the deltas were getting too high again, I had already rolled once, and so my next step is to close. This market has made a huge move this week, falling more than 10% in just a few days! Anyway, my cost to close was a bit too high, because I didn’t look at the market until near the end of the trading day (shows I should have had a stop in place!) – it cost me $3.40 to close, giving me a total loss (including commissions) of $261 over 37 days.
6/9/08 – This is the second put vertical I sold last night to try and see if I can ride out this massive market and eke out some money, and maybe the beginnings of a nice IC somewhere down the track. I sold this for $1.80 risking $1,000 over 73 days.
4/12/08 – This trade is not going according to plan! So, I decided to roll it out a LOOONG way and up slightly to try and give the market more time to move up. I have rolled it from Dec 08 to June 09, and from 500/490 up to 530/520, all for a cost of $1.30 which means I have recieved only $0.50 to risk $1,000 over 255 days.
5/6/09 – Righto, time to run up the white flag and admit defeat – I lost! I have closed this trade now, for a cost of $4.90 meaning I lost $448 (net of commissions) over 242 days.
6/9/08 – Wow, this market is huge!! Last night I decided to break my own conviction (of not trading until the elections are over) and dip my toe in the water – I just couldn’t resist the huge RVX reading over 55 and decided to sell a couple of put spreads, one for November and one for December just to see if I could ride this out to maybe make the basis of a nice looking IC somewhere down the track. So, I sold this November one for $1.89 and am risking $1,000 over 45 days.
7/11/08 – There are only 14 days left to expiry, and the RUT price has dropped below the 500 mark again. As a result, I decided to roll this vertical forward from November 08 to January 09 thereby giving RUT more time to consolidate and move slightly higher again. This roll trade was done for $0 plus commissions. There are now 70 days until Jan 09 expiry.
17/12/08 – There are 30 days left until January expiry, and I have decided to roll it up and out, so I have rolled from Jan to Mar, and from 500/490 to 520/510 for a $0.25 credit, meaning I now have the trade on for a total of $2.14 credit.
3/3/09 – I have rolled again – this time from 520/510 to 530/520 and from March to May, for a cost of $0.40 - I am not confident of ever being able to redeem this one! However, this roll was fairly cheap and buys me some more time – but it is a long way up from where we are today!!
4/5/09 – Now I have paid for breaking my own convictions! Last night I closed this trade down. The RUT has made a huge move up over the past month or so, and I decided to take one of these trades off the table. I should not even have these trades on – they break all my rules and make me feel uncomfortable. So, it cost me $7.70 to close this trade, meaning I have taken a net $616 loss (62%) over 211 days (net of commissions) which is not nice – expensive lesson!!
25/8/08 – Another bull put spread utilising margin I alread have tied up with the left over call sides from my IC trades. I received $0.71 over 25 days, with no additional risk.
18/9/08 – Hmmm, I didn’t get out of this one until the very last minute – I had a loss stop and a profit stop in place and neither of them got hit! So last night I decided to close out before I went to bed, as I didn’t want to risk holding this trade into expiration on the RUT – WAY TOO SCARY!! So I closed out for a cost of $0.45 giving me a $26 profit over 25 days – huge!!…
22/8/08 – Woops – I obviously left an order in from a week or so ago to close down a put side of one of my IC’s, and then I have done another order later on to also close down the same IC – and both got filled!! Soooo, I know OWN 1 put spread way out of the money, which I “bought” for $0.10 on Friday night! Oh well, hopefully I can shut it down for enough to cover my commissions, otherwise it will just expire worthless!…
25/8/08 – Closed out for the same price I bought it, so only lost $5 in commissions.
18/8/08 – I decided to use some of the spare margin I have sitting around from the call spreads, and sell 1 put spread last night. I received $1.00 and am risking $2,000 (although I am already risking the same $2,000 on a call spread) over 32 days.
16/9/08 – Well, the market seems to know exactly where my pain threshold is, and just puts in enough effort to knock me out!! Last night my stop on this vertical finally got hit, and I exited at the 24 delta mark (on the short) for a cost of $2.75 giving me a $175 loss over 30 days.
29/7/08 – I want another IC, and this time I have decided to try legging in from the top side first. So I have sold a Bear Call Spread for $1.25 risking $2,000 over 51 days. I have a bearish bias, so hopefully the market goes down soon, and I can sell a good put vertical to complete the iron condor.
12/8/08 – Hmmm, so legging in has not worked (again!) – last night I got filled on an order to roll the shorts up due to high deltas, so I have rolled from 810/790 up to 830/810 for a cost of $2.48 – not good!!
27/8/08 – I’m out! The 830/810 closed for $0.20 leaving me with a total loss of $143 over 30 days – not very good. I have decided legging in is not a good idea, and I should consult Bobby more often for my market direction bias!!
12/5/08 – Well, here we go again! I am a sucker for punishment – and I still believe the price of oil is too high!! This bear put spread is fairly wide, and I put it on at a cost of $3.45 when the price was around $102 for USO. Once again, we shall see how it plays out, and being July there is still 70 days until expiration.
4/6/08 – Over the last few days, this trade has finally started coming back from the losses it was showing. Last night I was playing around with my stop loss order, and decided to set it based on the ask price, and to tighten it up a bit to make sure I didn’t start incurring bigger losses again. Well, as fate would have it, the ask price I looked at suddenly dropped down just after I adjusted the order, and it triggered, and I was out! So, I have sold it for $3.26 after being in the trade for 26 days – a loss of $19 – well, it just proves I am hopeless at picking tops, bottoms, and direction!!!
7/5/08 – I entered a bear call spread last night on USO – I still think that oil is too high, and looking for ways to profit from it in the short term (it is hanging around above $120 per barrel at the moment). I got in early in the night, and then oil went higher! So I could’ve got more for this spread than the $0.60 I got filled at – never mind!!… It is for May, so only has 11 days to go with a risk of $700 per contract.
9/5/08 – Well that was strange! I had a stop limit order in at the $1.50 price of the spread, and last night it got triggered and filled at $1.25!! I am not sure what happened there – from what I can tell, the price of the spread should never have gone as high as $1.50 – and if it did, why did I get filled (on the open) at a much lower price? I have sent an e-mail to TOS to see if they can figure it out for me… Anyway, the oil price won’t come down! So maybe it is good I get out and take as small a loss as I can.
29/4/08 – I had a look at the chart of POT, and felt that the pullback that had started this session was enough to indicate that it was going to turn around and move higher soon (the pullback had gapfilled). So I sold a bull put spread 7% below where the price was, for $1.30 – I entered it as a “1st triggers OCO”, so that when I was filled, the system would automatically activate two OCO orders, with a stop loss at around $1.90 and a profit taker at $0.30.
30/4/08 – Well, that was a bummer!! I got filled early on the above, and then taken out again later in the night for $1.85 stop loss! I was wrong about the price having moved low enough (it was $188 when I got filled to open, and fell to $182 when my stop loss triggered) but obviously not… I am glad I had a stoploss in, as the price ended up closing at $181, and in after hours trade is now down to $179. Oh well, you win some and you lose some!!…. Total loss = $55
Peter