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As I’ve done the past few years, I’ve broken down the Steady Options 2015 trade performance by trade type (there are a few open trades but these may not be closed until January). Here’s are this year’s stats along with some comments from my perspective... Pre-Earnings Calendars 51 Trades – 41 win, 10 loss (80% win) Average gain 12.67% Comments: Again one of our best performing trade types. Basically the same number of trades as last year (51 vs 48). We were probably on pace to have significantly more of these trades than last year, but large volatility jump in the Fall made entry prices not good from a historical perspective and therefore not many of these trades were placed during that timeframe. Win rate up from last year (80% vs 71%) Average gain down slightly from last year (12.67% vs 13.80%) Note that there are a few non-earnings calendars in here (like GOOG), but I included all company calendar trades in this section. Pre-Earnings Straddles/Strangles 34 Trades - 23 win, 11 loss (68% win) Average gain 2.61% (3.88% if you exclude the large QIHU loss) Comments: Count of these trades way down from last year (74 down to 34). Avoided trades on low IV stocks that were the poorest straddle/strangle performers in past years. Win percentage and average gain both up from last year’s percentages of 62% and 2.54%. Despite modest gains on straddles/strangles compared to some of the other trade types, these trades receive a lot of discussion in the forums. Rolling strikes as the stock price moves around is a big topic – note to some of the newer members, rolling does not lock in profits! (it may do so on one leg of the trade but the overall trade may still be down). There is no right answer to the rolling vs not rolling question as sometimes each will perform better. Index trades (RUT, SPY, SPX, TLT) 31 Trades - 21 win, 10 loss (68% win) SPY/TLT Combo: 6 win, 4 loss, avg loss -0.32% SPX and RUT Iron Condors: 3 win, 1 loss, avg gain +4.95% SPX and RUT Calendars: 5 win, 1 loss, avg gain +4.73% SPX Butterfly: 7 win, 4 loss, avg gain +3.49% Average gain 2.69% Comments: Large market moves this Fall were not good for these trades. When the market was relatively calm these trades performed well, when the market was volatile they performed poorly. VIX trades 11 trades - 10 win, 1 loss (91% win) Average gain 28.15% Comments: Overtook pre-earnings calendars as our best performing trade type this year. 8 of the 11 trades were VIX calendars and the ability to place these trades is very broker-specific. If you are not using IB ($150 margin per calendar) other brokers margin requirements are much higher and some will not even allow you to open the trade. I fear that many SO member missed many of these trades because they use brokers other than IB, which is a real shame as the stats clearly show that these trades were the best performers.

Kim, Sorry about using the term "mediocre" when referring to the straddle/strangle gains, "modest" would have been a more appropriate term to use. The year to year increase in avg gain is also very good as you've gotten more selective. You are certainly correct when calculating the annualized gain, although annualized gains of some of the other SO strategies are also high. From my personal trading perspective, my biggest issue with the straddles is the amount of trade management involved with the rolls relative to the potential gain and not being available at all times during the trading day to react (darn "real job"). With my limited trading time, I only play a few of the straddles and spend more on strategies with higher potential gains and look to other vehicles for hedges to our theta positive trades. When I'm finally able to retire and have more trading time, I may very well place more of these trades. I just noticed that the QIHU trade you refer to is not yet in the "performance" tab, looks like the trades closed in December are not there yet. I'll update the main post when those results show up in the performance tab but the straddle numbers will likely go down some because of QIHU and the index trades will go up a bit based on the profitable SPX butterfly closed in December.