New May 10th SPX Trade

I opened a new SPX trade, but decided to only open the top side of the trade for now. With volatility up, I feel like the market could make swift sell offs which could be difficult to deal with. I may add in the bottom leg of the trade if we have a big sell off, but for now I plan to just use these Bull Put spreads to keep my downside risk low during these volatile times.

 Sold 250 of the May 10th SPX 1610/1615 Bull Put Spread for .85

This trade has a potential profit of $21,250 on $103,750 investment which would be a 20% return in two weeks.

Closed out SPX trade

I decided to close out the SPX trade as the market is putting in a good rally and it will probably end up testing market highs by the end of the week. This would put our upper strike in jeopardy so it's easier to just take the profits now and start looking for the next trade. The final profit on this trade was $15,800 which was a 17% return on investment in a little under 3 weeks. The account is now at $125,800.

SPX Trade update

Our SPX trade is looking great as we are right in the middle of our top and bottom strikes which is a perfect spot to be in with 4 days left till expiration. I plan to keep a close eye on our trade as the market is pretty volatile right now. As long as we don't make any large moves then I will plan on letting the trade expire on Friday for the full potential profit. Otherwise we will close the trade out for a smaller profit. Currently this trade as it sits, is up $15,990. The adjustments last week of buying the lower portion back and being able to sell it back again later during the sell off for more money has added another $6,000 in potential profits for this trade since Apr 8th.

4/16 - SPX Trade

After a nice pull back yesterday I was able to add a lower position back to our trade and get our profit potential back close to where it was. I placed the following trade:

SPX Apr4 1520/1510 Bull Put spread for .75


I'm hoping we will chop around in the area for the next week or so. Our trade is still set to expire Friday Apr 26th.

Close out lower part of trade

I closed out the lower portion of our trade on the impressive rally of the S&P 500. Was able to buy back the 1495/1485 strikes for $2,750. The current rally is putting pressure on the upper section of our trade. I will keep an eye on the market as our plan will be to roll the 1600/1610 trade out on a decent pull back in the SPX after this quick rally.

New trade for 4/26/2013 expiration

I opened our next trade today and decided to go with the 4/26 expiration which is an extra week longer than normal. This was due to the low returns for the strikes I wanted on the 4/19 expiration. The market is very tight right now and I expect there will probably be a volatile move within the next couple weeks on the S&P 500. Those are quite dangerous for these credit spreads so I will have to keep an eye on the market.

I sold 110 contracts of the SPX Apr4 13 1600/1610 1495/1485 Iron condor for $1.50 credit. This results in a potential $16,500 profit on $93,500 investment for 18 trading days which would be a 17.6% return.

The green bars below represent our strike prices and we need SPX to stay in between them. I could not get my chart to extend higher so I placed the top green line at the top of the chart, but our real line should be placed at the 1600 level.

Friday's 4/5 SPX trade

The SPX trade expired last Friday successfully for a $10,000 profit. That was a 11% return on investment for 11 trading days.

4/3/2013 Update

Beautiful sell off today on the S&P 500 for our SPX trade. I now feel comfortable holding the trade through expiration on Friday to get the full amount. The trade is now currently up $8,497 of the potential $10,000. After today's sell off I don't see much risk to either of our strike prices so we will hold through expiration as to not have to pay the extra commissions to close out the trade.

Trade update

The SPX had a nice rally today to get back to new highs again. It gave back some of it towards the end of the day which leads me to believe the upside here is still very limited this week. I still feel safe keeping this trade open, but will need to keep an eye on the market tomorrow. Bollinger bands are starting to squeeze and the chart is up against the top Bollinger band. Ideally I'd like to see some action similar to the chart area that I highlighted in yellow below. This would see us pull back to the lower Bollinger band around 1540.

Tomorrow should be interesting.

SPX - Nice pull back

The S&P 500 had a nice pull back today which helped drain a lot of the option premiums in our trade. Our trade has 4 days left and is currently up $6,840. As long as the market doesn't make any big moves up, we will plan on letting this trade expire on Friday to collect the full amount.