There’s no denying it—we had a rough month in May. Under the circumstances, our 8.48% Model Portfolio loss was well within our tolerance for a one-month drawdown, and a vast improvement over prior losses under similar conditions before we updated our risk-management rules—but, as long-time members know, we never take a loss lightly.
Nevertheless, at this point I don’t see any reason to modify our strategy. Our track record, based on a combination of real results and backtesting, indicates that…
To finish out our Supplemental Trades closing orders, we’re selling our initial, double-diagonal position (adjusted), as follows:
Day limit order
Buy to close 2 XLE May 80 calls
Sell to close 2 XLE Jun 80 calls
Buy to close 2 XLE May 75 puts
Sell to close 2 XLE Jun 73 puts
for a net credit of $1.05 or better.
Note that the 2 contracts specified above represent our entire remaining position in this trade.…
We’re closing out our May Supplemental Trades portfolio with two orders. I’m sending both in one alert because they have opposite delta, so the orders will have to be managed together:
Order #1
Day limit order
Buy to close 2 XLE May 75 puts
For a net debit of $0.74† or better.
Note that the 2 contracts specified above represent our entire position in the XLE May 75 puts from Butterfly Hedge #1. We also are short the…
I’ve gotten a few email messages from member asking, “Are we going to hold our May portfolio open until Friday?” So while we await the typically senseless, but always inevitable, fireworks traders insist on setting off after any news from the FOMC (in this case, minutes from the last meeting), I thought I’d lay out our strategy for the remainder of the week in more detail.
The backwardation (skew toward the front month) we’ve been seeing in SPY options implied…
Our second order this afternoon adjusts our remaining downside delta hedge to produce the risk profile we want overnight. We’re selling 1/8 of our contracts in this position, as follows:
Day limit order
Sell to close the XLE May 74 put
Buy to close 2X the XLE May 70 puts
Sell to close the XLE May 66 put
for a net credit of $1.03† or better.
Note that because the total number of contracts currently open depends…
We may be able to reduce our May Supplemental Trades loss a little more by keeping most of our positions open for the next day or two—but only if we begin to take off some risk now. We’re closing the one position with negative theta, and will adjust our delta bias with a second trade to follow shortly.
Here’s the first order:
Day limit order
Buy to close 2 XLE May 84 calls
Sell to close 2 XLE…
Implied volatility for May increased since a week ago, without a corresponding rise in June IV. This has effectively offset the time-decay we normally would have seen last week, making it difficult to start unwinding our positions as we normally would be doing by now. Both of our portfolios have wide range between risk-management delta thresholds, so from that perspective, we can afford to stand firm and look for a little more time decay; on the other hand, we still…
Sometimes staying in the game takes deep pockets, and as the saying goes, “The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent”. XLE’s 3% drop today has crushed our May Supplemental Trades portfolio…but we have an opportunity to make back a good portion of this month’s unrealized loss—at the cost of taking on additional risk.
Make no mistake: Any member who has real cash on the line and who doesn’t have the means and/or desire to accept the…
While we’re waiting for our prior order to get filled, we’re putting in a similar order for BF Hedge #2, as follows:
Day limit order
Buy to close 1 XLE May 70 put
Sell to close 1 XLE May 74 put
Sell to open 1 XLE May 78 call
Buy to open 1 XLE May 82 call
for a net credit of $0.94 or better.
Note that, as in today’s other XLE trade, the number…
With today’s 1.5% jump in XLE, we’re planning to adjust both of our butterfly hedge trades, starting with BF #1. We’re turning the butterfly into an iron condor by selling the following, overlapping iron condor:
Day limit order
Buy to close 2 XLE May 75 puts
Sell to close 2 XLE May 79 puts
Sell to open 2 XLE May 78 calls
Buy to open 2 XLE May 82 calls
for a net credit of…
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
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