The Week in Review
This week, the portfolio did a better job of managing the risk even though we had some big moves up and down. For the week, the portfolio was down -0.40%. The SPY was down -2.14%.
I don't currently have on any naked SPY trades. I haven't been too happy with the results of the trending program lately so I am thinking I may just use this to try and balance out the overall deltas of the portfolio. It will probably be more of a hedge rather than a trend following program.
I put one calendar position on at the beginning of the week but I took it off later that same day because I wasn't comfortable with where the market was going. I may reconsider a position again for next week.
The big loser this week was the Iron Condor. I closed out the February expiration on Friday. I subscribe to this strategy on the Capital Discussions website and this is the first big loss for the strategy (known on the site as the Weirdor) since I began using it early last year. There was one small loss for the September expiration last year but it was pretty minor considering the big drop in August. There may be a chance to recoup some of this month's loss before we put on the March expiration trade.
I was pleased with the way the Butterflies handled this movement. I was able to close one of them out for a small gain while the market was heading down on Monday. I have two more Iron Butterflies on that expire Feb 19 and I am planning to put 1 or 2 more on next week that expire in March. This strategy seems to handle the volatility well provided I stay on top of it. The trades are based on strategies learned from both the optionstribe site and the thetatrend site.
I also added a broken wing butterfly at the beginning of the week. It held up pretty well and I will be looking to add another one in a couple of weeks.
So this month is definitely shaping up to be one where I will not be able to escape without a loss. Hopefully, this will teach me to be more disciplined so that I treat this as a business and not a hobby. I need to learn how to be as disciplined with this as I am with my running. I'm training to run both a half and full marathon this spring which requires a lot of time and dedication. Let's see if I can take some of the discipline used in my training and apply that to my trading. Stay tuned.
Contribution to Return
| STRATEGY | WTD | MTD | YTD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Naked SPY Trending | 0.00 | -0.38 | -0.38 |
| VIX Calendars | -0.04 | -0.25 | -0.25 |
| Monthly RUT Iron Condor, DR spread, long put | -0.72 | -1.95 | -1.95 |
| SPX Broken Wing Butterflies | -0.03 | -5.31 | -5.31 |
| RUT Butterflies, IWM long call | 0.39 | -0.02 | -0.02 |
| TOTAL | -0.41 | -7.91 | -7.91 |