Weekly Update on May’07 Income Trades

 

Here is an update on the income trades that I had opened for May expiration cycle.

  • Trade-1 RUT Iron Condor (750/760/860/870), Current profit = $52/$795, +6.54%
  • Trade-2 Dow Double Diagonal (35/40/50/55), Current profit =$25/$485, +5.15%
  • Trade-3 SPY Iron Condor (1:1 risk reward), Current loss =$54/$105, -51%
  • Trade-3 OIH Double Calendar (150/155), Current profit =$50/$1035, +4.8%

There trades can be found here

All the trades are still opened. April expiration is gone and now Theta will start its magic from the next week. Besides SPY Iron condor, no other trade requires any adjustments. On the surface it may seem as if it is a big loss, actually this trade was more of an speculative than income as I opened it with the speculation that SPY will drop after touching 148 and if you notice that breakeven points for this interesting iron condor were 140 and 147.9 with 1:1 risk reward ratio. That’s where portfolio management comes into play. If you consider 1 spread each on all 4 trades, that is overall $2420 investment but only $105 into SPY i.e. only 4.3% of total investment is in SPY.

Leaving aside portfolio allocation, It breached the upper breakeven point yesterday and hence requires an adjustment on Monday. I shall update once it is filled. With this adjustment, I shall have to give away some credit and therefore reduce my Reward/risk ratio. With this new adjustment, the upper breakeven point will increase to $149.5.

Profitable trading, OptionPundit


Posted

in

by

Tags:

Comments

11 responses to “Weekly Update on May’07 Income Trades”

  1. ginko08 Avatar
    ginko08

    thks for sharing ur trades. Ur portfolio approach is one that Dan advocates a lot in his cboe webinars.
    Have u tried using cottles postion dissection to analyse ur trades? did u find it a useful exercise?
    if so, how?

  2. OptionPundit Avatar

    Dear Ginko08, Dan is a great instructor and has done good to lot of investors who might otherwise pay huge sums of money to learn basics. Yes, I use portfolio approach to the investing vs individual pics or tips. My portfolio plan is heavily in favor of income trades and speculative occupies only a small fraction.

    I have tried Charles position dissector (one may download for free from his site) and it’s a great tool. But I think it is useful exercise if you have lot of inventories of options (different strikes). My trades currently involves only a few strikes per trade and therefore I find (debit/credit type basic accounting) more useful.

    Hope this helps. Do let me know if you wanna know more on that.

  3. OptionPundit Avatar

    I decided to close SPY trade instead of spending time on adjustments and the markets are at a juncture where it may continue to go in one direction. I bot back the whole IC (filled one spread by one) for $1.35. That make this spread as loss, $0.43 per trade i.e. $0.43/$1.08=39.8% on this trade. Based on $2420 portfolio value (assuming 1 spread per tickers) that is 1.7% loss to overall portfolio.

    Profitable trading,

  4. OptionPundit Avatar

    OIH portfolio is generating excellent returns. Today it jusmped over $2 which converted my portfolio into short delta (though very slighltly). But since I have bullish bias on this, I opened one more calendar with $160 strike, same months trade as the original ones for $5.50. With this trade, I am positive delta. There is resistance around $156, but if that’s penetrated OIH may fly so I need to keep my delta in check. With this new trade, the break evens are $147 and $166. Total investment in OIH, $1035+550=$1585 per spread.

    Profitable trading, OptionPundit

  5. OptionPundit Avatar

    OIH – It was a good decision to convert OIH portfolio into positive delta as OIH rallied yesterday. Now I am little short delta further and requires a pull back of OIH. From this point till $160, OIH is not really going to affect my returns significantly so I am going to watch how it behaves today.

    DOW- I also closed the put diagonal position for $0.10 credit. With initial $0.25 credit, my returns on this trade are already $0.40 credit. From this point if DOW falls, my results are not going to be affected. I will now look to close my short DOW position to buy it back or roll it to June.

    Profitable trading, OptionPundit

  6. […] Weekly Update on May’07 Income Trades […]

  7. […] Weekly Update on May’07 Income Trades – Portfolio up 10% […]

  8. […] Weekly Update on May’07 Income Trades – Portfolio up 14% […]

  9. […] Weekly Update on May’07 Income Trades – Portfolio up 20% […]

  10. TraderR Avatar
    TraderR

    Quick question on how you allocate money for each trade in your portfolio:
    Do you allocate equal risk $$ per trade?
    Or do you use as many contracts to make your portfolio delta neutral?

  11. OptionPundit Avatar

    Trader R,

    I allocate based on the underlying. Generally speaking I don’t spend more than 5% /position. But the strategies where I am very confident I may spend as high as 20% of portfolio.

    I don’t use portfolio delta neutral approach. I use greeks per position vs portfolio.

    Hope that helps.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *