April 2011

This blog will be shifting focus as I have finally funded my real account and will begin trading soon. Since my account capital is small I will be using a different strategy than the previous options income strategy I have been practicing so far. I plan to come back to this strategy once I have built my account capital up.

Mar 2011 trade

Opened a SPY iron condor spread as market action looking choppy.


Mar 2011 SPY 128/129 135/136  Iron Condor spread for .41 cents credit.

This would be a 41% ROI, but I will likely close it out during the last week of expiration.

Feb 2011 Results

Feb was an interesting month as the market stayed bullish all month. My calendar spreads needed a lot of adjustments which ate into a lot of the profits. I would have been better staying with credit spreads until I saw some real pull backs starting. Either way is was nice to get some good practice trading and adjusting the calendar spread strategy.

IWM trade ended up down 12%
SPY trade ended up 16%


Overall my account was up about 1% on the month for a $225 gain.

Closed out IWM trade

IWM continued to climb and I decided to cut losses today.

Total losses for the IWM trades for Feb were -$665 which is about a 12% loss on the trade.

IWM adjustment

Added another calendar to the IWM trade to help extend the right wing out more as the market continues to move up.

Feb/Mar 81 Call Calendar for $1.17 per contract.


I will be looking to close out and hopefully take some small profits at the end of this week or early next week.

Feb 11 SPY adjustment

Markets had a nice bounce today causing met to need to adjust most of my trades.

I closed out the previous SPY iron condor for a loss of $67.

I have opened a new SPY iron condor trade with a ROI of 15%:

Feb11 135/137 Call
Feb11 126/124 Put

Another IWM adjustment

IWM moved up nicely today and I decided to adjust the trade to get delta closer to neutral.
I opened another calendar, which will cost me about $145 in profits, but extends out the upper wing to around 81 price level.

Sell Feb11 79 Call
Buy Mar11 79 Call

2011 Feb Adjustment

The market has made a fairly nice pull back today. After checking my positions it appears the IWM trade I placed yesterday needs an adjustment. After looking at the possible adjustment opportunities I decided to buy back my spread and open a Double Calendar. After buying back the IWM spread from yesterday that trade was a net loss of ~$250, which was about a 8% loss on the trade.

The new double calendar trade is:

Feb 2011 78 Call/76 Put

Mar 2011 78 Call/76 Put

Margin requirement and risk on the trade is the purchase cost of $980 with a max potential profit of ~ $686. This would be a potential profit of 70% on the trade, although I will be looking to take profit several days before the front month expiration.

2011 Feb IWM trade

With the IWM bouncing at the 77 level I have opened a Bull PUT spread just below that new support level. This will be the first leg of a possible Iron Condor play.


Feb 2011 IWM 76/75 Bull Put Spread for a ROI of 15%

Feb 2011 Spy Trade

I have opened two trades to create an iron condor position on the S&P 500 for February.

Feb 2011 SPY 123/122 Bull Put Credit Spread
Feb 2011 SPY 133/134 Bear Call Credit Spread

The iron condor trade will give me a ROI of 24%

Jan 2011 Results

Unfortunately GLD hovered around the 133 -134 resistance for a couple weeks, causing me to stay in the position hoping for a bounce, but eventually having to cover late during expiration week. I had to cover for big losses causing this month to be down pretty big. The SPY trade expired successfully.

Jan 2011 GLD 134/133 Bull Put Spread for a ROI of - 86% for ~ - $3,310.

Jan 2011 SPY 123/122 Bull Put Spread for a ROI of 11% for + $985.

This left my account down ~14% for the month of January.

Jan 2011 trade

Added a new position on SPY today.

Jan 2011 SPY 123/122 Bull Put Spread for a ROI of 11%

2010 Performance

It amazes me that another year has gone by. Overall 2010 went well, especially since I didn't trade during the month of Sept and missed out on the best month of the year for the S&P 500. Even with missing that month of trading my results finished decent.

For 2010 my account finished up 62% on the year.

The S&P 500 finished up 12.6% on the year.


Any time I can beat the market I will be satisfied with the year.