Thursday, June 2, 2011
In my previous post, I went over the basics of our calendar-spread income strategy. Now let's look deeper into how we adjust for underlying price movement and changes in implied volatility, starting with an upside move. Suppose we bought the SPY June/July 131/136 double-calendar on May 26, as described last time. Now imagine that SPY was trading over $135 yesterday (wishful thinking, I know)...
Thursday, May 26, 2011
In a discussion I’ve been having with other volatility traders on LinkedIn, I’ve been trying to get the point across that a properly constructed and hedged calendar-spread portfolio won’t exhibit the “exploding gamma” (their words, not mine) one sees in a single, one-strike calendar spread as expiration approaches. This made me realize that a lot of options traders—including many very intelligent, seasoned veterans—still hold fast to that myth. Our Calendar Options strategy combines staggered entries and a variety of hedging techniques…
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
What's interesting about the Calendar Options newsletter's fourth-quarter performance isn't so much the significant, but tolerable, quarterly loss, or even the record drawdown in November (any strategy will experience outliers, both positive and negative)—but rather the strategy improvements that we developed in response. We pinpointed what went wrong in November, applied some hedging techniques we've been experimenting with for months, and backtested the strategy adaptations for the past 15 months...the results were astounding....
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Considering the spike in implied volatility during the July options cycle, followed by an equally sharp drop—and then by another significant rise in August and fall (no pun intended) in September—it was relatively smooth sailing for our Calendar Options newsletter in the third quarter. We continued to outperform the S&P 500 and keep a respectable pace with the VTY. Our returns since inception and for the trailing twelve months continue to overwhelmingly outstrip those benchmarks, with comparable risk on a…
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
For our educational newsletter subscribers, we are pleased to offer autotrading through tradeMONSTER. tradeMONSTER is a relative newcomer to the field of options-friendly brokers, but they’ve quickly distinguished themselves by providing unique analytical tools, a flexible trading platform, and very competitive commission rates. Barron’s recently named tradeMONSTER “Best for Options Traders.” To have our iron condors or calendar spreads newsletters autotraded in your account, you need an active subscription with us and a funded tradeMONSTER account.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
The Calendar Options second-quarter return trounced the S&P 500 as well as VTY (link below). Our Model Portfolio return was 15.46%, compared to –3.65% for the S&P and nearly –4% for VTY. Overall, market conditions differed little from the first quarter, so it looks like our latest strategy refinements are proving successful. Nevertheless, we continually use feedback from our monthly, quarterly, and annual results to improve the strategy and adapt it to long-term changes in market conditions (more about this…
Sunday, April 25, 2010
“A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner,” goes the proverb, and we've sailed some rough waters in the relatively brief history of our calendar-spread newsletter. As Jared noted in his review of Condor Options performance for the first quarter of 2010, we've demonstrated time and again that market-neutral strategies can and do work in all kinds of markets. Nevertheless, some environments are more challenging than others, and the measure of a strategy depends as much on how it performs when the going gets tough as when the market hands us an “easy” month...
Sunday, January 17, 2010
The Calendar Options newsletter continued its positive trend in the fourth quarter, giving us our best return to date. Our model-portfolio¹ return for the quarter exceeded 40%, bringing our total return for 2009 (not including the cost of commissions) to 55.62%. The maximum drawdown, standard deviation, and number of months positive for the newsletter model portfolio were all comparable to the S&P 500...
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
We’re sorry, the Charter Member Discount program expired on January 23, 2010—but be sure to check out our price list on the Products page to see our standard discounts for 6- and 12-month prepaid memberships (non-refundable).
Jared Woodard is a registered commodity trading advisor who specializes in trading volatility as an asset class. With over a decade of experience trading options, futures ... Read More
© 2013 Condor Options. Powered by Wordpress.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
0 Comments