trhanson

I use Robinhood, because I'm a scrub (actually, I just had a lot of my investing money there since I've had the account forever). Fees there are just pass through fees for the exchanges. Just opened 4 units of a DD. Fees were 0.48 for the whole trade which is .03 per contract.

Yup, you got it. CCS -> bearish CDS -> bullish PCS -> bullish PDS -> bearish

To add to that, I am trading an incredibly conservative version of steady yields in my Roth at Schwab. You have to have a margin enabled account there, but of course, actual margin is not available in an IRA. That means that you must have the cash on hand to cover the actual risk of a credit spread. Schwab allows you to trade Iron Condors in an IRA at absolute risk level, IE, the cost to open an IC is the wingspan minus the total credit received on both legs since you can't have a loser on both ends simultaneously. I also have a leveraged anchor going on in there (the majority of that portfolio is a leveraged anchor), and that strategy requires you to trade a diagonal, which is allowed in an IRA at Schwab, but again, you need to have the cash on hand to cover the absolute risk of the trade.

Ended up buying back yesterday for 1.15 Rolled shorts today DEC 7 169 C (D 28) 0.53 (.02) DEC 7 165 P (D-25) 0.49 (1.15) Loss: -.15 (0.8%) This week: DEC 14 166 C (D 25) 0.52 DEC 14 161 P (D-25) 0.56 Max credit: 1.08 (5.79%)

Ooof, this one sure got busted this week. Right now, you can buy the 165 back for 1.25. At best, we're looking at a 7.5% loss on the week if you close now. I was looking at the wrong values. The question is, do you let it try to come back or take your lumps? I think that we just take our lumps, right?

I agree that as gld slides, your margin requirement is going to go up, but in order to hit what we currently outlay at the beginning. For the GLD trade, i had to outlay 18.65 meaning on the other trade i could get hit for up to $16 in margin and be equivalent. GLD would need to be 175 or 159 of course. At that point in time, I'd probably just roll it. I do know that going OTM is going to be a huge bookkeeping PITA as the % return is going to change every week depending on your margin requirements. If I had a TOS account, i'd help with the backtesting, but as of right now i don't :-(

You make some good points. I'm trying to think of a good reason to use DITM options, but I can't for the life of me figure one out. Lets take GLD for an example. I just reopened this up on a PT. I bought FEB 159C 175P for 18.65. That leads to a max possible loss on the long of 2.65 If I were to have bought the 159P and the 175C, I would be in about 2.62. Close enough to even. (again, that would be max possible loss on the long) Continuing the strat, we sell the DEC 7 169C for .53 and the DEC 165 P for .49. Assuming your broker has smart enough software to know you can't get hit on both sides simultaneously, you will be required to put up $6 margin on the trade. This leads to an outlay of 8.62 or so making this trade have a possible return of 1.02 on 8.62 or 11.8% vs 1.02 on 18.65 or 5.47% That just doesn't seem right to me, but I can't poke a hole in it... Chris, what are your thoughts?

As mentioned in the VXX thread, I needed to start my PTs over, and I'm going to continue to do this one LONG FEB 159 C (D 79) 9.40 FEB 175 P (D -76) 9.25 Total long: 18.65 (Max loss 2.65, or about 2-3 weeks of credits) Note, i went for the lower delta put. While the 176 had a D closer to 80, it was only costing my a max of .15 to shave off some cost. SHORT DEC 7 169 C (D 28) 0.53 DEC 7 165 P (D-25) 0.49 Max credit: 1.02 (5.47%)

As mentioned in the VXX thread, I have to start my PT over so here we go again. LONG JAN 36 C (D 80) 4.6 JAN 45 P (D -82) 5.5 Total long: 10.1 SHORT DEC 7 41.5 C (D 21) 0.23 DEC 7 39 P (D -23) 0.27 Max Credit: 0.50 (4.95%)

So last week, I ended up getting crazy busy and couldn't roll my paper trades. Now that I understand the strat better, i've decided to push the reset and start over. Still PT, I want to make sure I can go a full cycle on a paper trade before doing it with real money. LONG FEB 16 24 C (D 80) 5.95 FEB 16 40 P (D -76) 12.25 Total in long 18.20 SHORT DEC 7 31.5 C (D 25) 0.41 DEC 7 27.5 P (D -25) 0.37 Max Credit: .78 (4.29%)

I totally missed that ahead, which makes sense now. I'm probably going to shift down into the FEB longs next week and restart on my PT.

Had to roll my 35 short put today. 5% swings in a day being the norm, I really don't know if this strat is going to be ok for VXX. At least not at 30 deltas. ROLL NOV 23 35P to 33.5 P for .73 debt. Yuk. Could have saved some but I was in meetings all day and didn't have a chance to roll it earlier.

Since I'm paper trading, I decided to try to get closer to .30 on my put, which is a more agressive play. Last week: STO NOV 16 90 (.19) .25 (.01) STO NOV 16 85 (.17) .26 (.02) Crazy good net credit: .48 (4.08%) This week: STO NOV 23 87.5 C (D .29) .30 STO NOV 23 85 P (D-.28) .35 Total possible credit: .65 (5.44%) I agree with Chris that this is riskier this week being only a buck and change from the short put...

Last Week NOV 16 170 C (D .29) .66 (.03) NOV 16 166 P (D .29) .67 (.57) Net credit: .73 (3.33%) This week: NOV 23 168 C (D 0.3) 0.59 NOV 23 164 P (D -0.27 ) 0.53 Max credit 1.12 (5.11%)

Loss last week was .33 or 2.72% NOV 24 41 C (D .26) .29 NOV 24 38.5 P (D -.29) .39 Total credit .68 or 5.6%