Condor Options

Our September KO Supplemental Trades went very well, with an average return per trade of 8.99% on total capital risked and a Model Portfolio return of 6.08%. Even so, a few members wrote in to say that they felt overwhelmed by the frequent e-mail that resulted from opening and managing a full portfolio of Supplemental Trades in addition to the core newsletter portfolio. Our new practice of sending advance Trade Notices no doubt contributes to Inbox Overload Syndrome as well, but the feedback we’ve gotten about that new feature has been overwhelmingly positive.

Knowing how engaged most of you are, I was surprised at how little response I received from my request, in the September 11 Portfolio Update, for commentary about members’ level of interest in Supplemental Trades. So I made an executive decision to offer a new option…but first, a review of the reasons we started posting Supplemental Trades:

• Implied volatility sometimes remains too high to trigger a SPY entry trade for a month or more, and with some brokers temporarily (let’s hope) requiring excessive margin on double-diagonals, we might publish only one core newsletter trade—or none at all—in some months. I think most members subscribe, at least in part, because they want to see real trades in real time, so looking for individual stocks that might qualify for entry even when SPY does not is a way of increasing the odds that we can provide new real-world examples virtually every month.
• Some members are advanced options traders and know a lot about calendar spreads, whether from their own experience of from being long-time Calendar Options subscribers. These members are ready to take it to the next level, and are willing and able to accommodate a little more risk for the benefit of refining their craft and learning new ideas that aren’t part of the core strategy.

Since we were so active in the September cycle, I decided to take a month off from posting Supplemental trades while we implement an important new feature. As every Supplemental Trade alert states, Supplemental Trades are entirely optional, are not autotraded, and have no bearing on the core newsletter portfolio. Members who aren’t interested in participating in or following them can just ignore, delete or filter out any e-mail with “Supplemental Trade” in the subject line. Nevertheless, being the recipient of a deluge of e-mail myself, I understand that some members just don’t have time to deal with all the mail they have no interest in. So we’re creating a separate mailing list for members who want to receive alerts and updates about Supplemental Trades.

Initially, we’re putting all members on the list, with the presumption that most of you find them educational. But for those subscribers who have no interest at all, we’ll gladly do you the service of taking you off the list. Just send an e-mail with the subject line “SUPPLEMENTAL TRADES OPT OUT” to calendars@condoroptions.com, and you’ll no longer receive any of our mailings that solely pertain to Supplemental Trades. You’ll still be able to follow Supplemental Trades posts on the members blog, and, of course, you can change your mind about the e-mail alerts and updates at any time—all you have to do is send a request to the same address asking to be reinstated.

We’re investigating the possibility of providing a convenient way to select your e-mail options on the account-management page—but in the meantime, anyone who just wants e-mail alerts related to the core strategy can opt out as instructed above. As always, any and all comments, complaints and suggestions are welcome.