The Condor Options newsletter portfolio returned 21% in 2012, versus 17% for the S&P 500. The strategy also beat the S&P 500 in the final quarter of the year, giving back 1.1% versus the SPX loss of 2.05%. We also bested the CBOE Volatility Arbitrage Index (VTY) for the year by about 3 percentage points.
The purpose of the strategy is to profit from the volatility risk premia that are priced into options. While the volatility risk premium is a consistently…
Last week SPY-options implied volatility dropped by almost 15%, which, along with the share price climbing above the center of our risk curve, was a drain on both unrealized return and projected profit at expiration. However, following the strategy rules for managing volatility risk with our entry trades is paying off: at Friday’s close, the unrealized return on our February trades was up from the week before. In post-session options-trading, we were showing about a 3.8% unrealized return on total…
One point I emphasize over and over—no doubt to the annoyance of veteran subscribers who’ve heard it hundreds of times before—is how crucial risk-management is to achieving high risk-adjusted returns. Keeping losses small, and locking in profit when you can—not when you have to—are among the keys to profitable trading over the long-term. I harp on the risk-management theme again in this post because the December and January cycles provided a perfect example of how these principles work well for…
Since we closed out our January positions this week, the lede for this Update normally would be a quick review of the month’s results. I stopped posting stand-alone monthly performance reviews a long time ago, in an effort to help members stay focused on what’s important: long-term risk-adjusted returns. But as I thought about how we handled this cycle, and how that compares to last month’s trading and results, I saw a number of valuable lessons about risk-management that are…
As discussed in this afternoon’s trade notice, we’re rolling out the short legs of this position by selling a double-diagonal, as follows:
Day limit order
Buy to close 2 SPY Dec 128 calls
Sell to open 2 SPY Jan 127 calls
Buy to close 2 SPY Dec 113 puts
Sell to open 2 SPY Jan 114 puts
for a net credit of $2.45 or better.
Note that 2 contracts represent our entire short positions at…
We’re reducing our risk this afternoon by closing the call side of our December/January double-calendar, as follows :
Day limit order
Buy to close 2 SPY Dec 131 call
Sell to close 2 SPY Jan 131 call
for a net credit of $0.36 or better.
Note that the 2 contracts specified above represent all of our current position in the Dec/Jan 131 call calendar portion of the 123/131 double-calendar.
Analysis: I’m going to start off the analysis…
With SPY near $127, we’re neutralizing portfolio delta and selling some additional premium by rolling the short December 125 calls up to the 128 strike, with the following order:
Day limit order
Buy to close 2 SPY Dec 125 calls
Sell to open 2 SPY Dec 128 calls
for a net debit of $1.76 or better.
Note that the 2 contracts specified above represent our entire short position in the Dec 125 calls.
Analysis: Given the moderate,…
Traders continue to see and hear no evil except European sovereign debt, as the market shrugs off U.S. economic data that, while not significantly worse than expected aren’t exactly indicative of a major turn-around. SPY rallied off its opening half-hour low, broke above its opening-range high of $126.89, and held an initial retest of that level. Breadth is solidly bullish on hope of a swift, long-term resolution to the euro-crisis.
With SPY January implied volatility down nearly three points but…
We’re unwinding half of our core November Double-Diagonal position with the following order:
Day limit order
Buy to close 1 SPY Nov 133 call
Sell to close 1 SPY Dec 137 call
Buy to close 1 SPY Nov 125 put
Sell to close 1 SPY Dec 119 put
for a net credit of $1.10 or better.
Note, again, that the 1 contract per leg specified above represents half of the original double-diagonal, and all of…
While our portfolio hasn’t changed all that much since the last time we added up our net position at each strike, we have some closing orders to place before expiration, and this would be a good time to make sure account positions are in line. For each base-position unit traded, we currently have the following open positions:
+2 SPY Nov 111 puts
+3 SPY Nov 113 puts
–3 SPY Nov 117 puts
–3 SPY Nov 119…
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
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