OptionPundit

Tag: Iron Condor

  • OPNewsletter (Jun’08) : Closed +11.1%

    An excellent month for OPNewsletter with double digit gains. OPNewsletter’s June 2008 was closed for +11.1%. This is nearly double of my own target of 5-7% per month. These returns excludes the bonus speculative trades on JOYG (+40%), RIG (Multiple Profit Points), GLD and CME (Multiple Profit Points-Shared for free with OP Readers), With this June’s closing OPNewsletter is up nearly 60% in the past 5months, i.e. nearly 9.9% compounded monthly that is nicely above even my own internal target of 5-7%. We usually assume US$10,000 as minimum investment and these can easily be scaled to $50, 000 or above. Considering market actions in the past 5months, this is a good and satisfactory returns.

    This month’s strategies included Iron Condor, Debit Spreads, Calendar spreads, Straight calls, Diagonal Spreads and credit spreads.

    I have opened two OPN Mini-portfolios for July expiration cycle and shall be opening 2-3more next week. If you want to sign-up for the newsletter, Pls read more about OPNewsletter here. If you would like to read customer testimonials pls read those here (Part-1, Part-2, Part-3, Part-4)

    A few more things about the Newsletter-

    1. OPN uses its Member’s fills for tracking (Not the newsletter suggested one)
    2. OPN uses maximum investment for calculating returns for the month, even though it was for 1day (For example- 10K portfolio, we used 6K for the month, but we used 1K more for one day, the whole portfolio returns are calculated using 7k as base)
    3. Starting May’08, OPN now factors commission in it performance tracking.

    Next week is going to be interesting week with Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS) reporting earnings and setting tone for the financial sector. I may play these two and share my thoughts with OPNewsletter subscribers.

    Profitable trading, OP

  • OP Newsletter (Jun’08): +5% for Week, +11.5% for Month

    What a week!! Absolutely fascinating for OPN as well for my personal account. We are up nearly +5% vs last week and to +11.54% for the month. This is nearly double of my own target of 5-7% per month. Before you proceed reading further, pls note-

    1. OPN uses its Member’s fills for tracking (Not the newsletter suggested one)
    2. OPN uses maximum investment for calculating returns for the month, even though it was for 1day (For example- 10K portfolio, we used 6K for the month, but we used 1K more for one day, the whole portfolio returns are calculated using 7k as base)
    3. OPN now factors commission in it performance tracking.

    Out of 5 mini-portfolios, We have closed 3 portfolios :

    • RUT Iron Condors for +18.35%
    • VISA Mini-Portfolio for +17.6%
    • PBR portfolio +16.2%

    We have two mini-portfolios, CTRP and FLR, via debits trades that are losing but we invested only 1.55% and 1.8% respectively. We have cash available that we can use anytime after finding opportunity that might have surfaced after big sell-off on Friday. I am on the lookout for trades for next month.

    Some interesting things about the market action yesterday, and yeah it’s not good:

    • All 30 DOW components closed in red
    • Top 10 active on NYSE and TOP 10 on Nasdaq (with exception of Yahoo) all closed lower
    • 98 out of 100 stocks of Nasdaq 100 closed lower.
    • Down volume on NYSE was > 90% of up+down volume
    • It was probably the highest daily volume for S&P500, NYSE and Dow in past nearly 2months.
    • VIX is now over 50 as well as 200 days MA.

    It was a panic day and seems everyone just wanted to get out of the market. Let’s see what next week brings.

    I would also like to share some of the milestones that I have achieved with the May calendar month closing. These are my actual capital results and are different from OPN which is rather far superior. I have compounded my capital at +3% per month in 2006, +7.11% per month in 2007 and +10% per month in 2008 so far. I injected capital 4 times (every time more than last time) during those periods which means the returns are increasing even with a increasing capital base. There is not a single loss making month in 2008 in spite this being one of the worst recent years of the market. 2008 has been the best year so far.

    The Asset allocation played a very important role yesterday, else my portfolio would have also suffered big loss. It was one of the worst possible days for me when I was >90% invested (I am generally 60-75% invested). However due to mix asset allocation the effect was a minor 4% only.

    Have fun and profitable trading, OP