 What's up, Navigation Nation! It is Friday, April 20th. Welcome to this week's video update. Before we jump into the alerts, just wanted to make you aware of a couple updates we've made to the members area here. One of which is just on the alerts tab here. We archived some of the older alerts, so if you scroll all the way down to the bottom, this was getting pretty long as far as the number of alerts. So we archived those starting at the end of 2017 and prior we archived those. So if you're looking for alerts prior to the first of 2018, just click on that previous alerts button, it'll pop up and it's got them in order of timing starting with the most recent, going all the way back to when we very first started. So all that's still there, just want to make sure you're aware in case you're looking for some old alerts for some reason, it's just getting too long and so we wanted to kind of archive those and we'll continue to do update that as we continue to post more alerts and then the second update I wanted to show you and this is a request that we've received from members over the last few months and I think it's a great suggestion. What we've done here now for some of these trades, so if first off if we just post an opening trade and there's been no adjustments or anything like that, exactly what you see here is the trade that we're currently in. However, once we start making adjustments, so the first one for example here is the the notes short strangle, we made another adjustment, so what we're gonna start doing is posting an image of exactly where we're at in the trade. So I know it looks pretty small but if you just click on it that will pop up a bigger version so you can see that these are the exact strikes that we're in, the number of contracts, all that good stuff, so we just take a quick screenshot from TOS and it'll give you that information. I get a lot of questions about you know it's great that you post you know the different trades. However, if we could have just kind of a snapshot of where exactly we're in the trade, where we are in the trade at you know in the immediate time frame that's gonna be helpful. So hopefully you guys like that it is another step that we have to do to produce, so if you do like it, don't like it, let us know. Hopefully that's helpful. You can go through and see any trade that has had any type of adjustment. You're gonna see that for example here's one in Apple, obviously FXI, you can see we've had a lot of adjustments so you click on this you'll see exactly the different positions that we have it right now. We've got a strangle on in May at the 4950 strikes and then we've got a strangle on in June at the 4350. The Mays with four contracts, the June is with five so we will always update that anytime we make an adjustment that will be up to date so I hope that is helpful. Alright let's jump into the alerts. Quite a few alerts this week, awesome opportunity just I love when there's some two-sided action had some up movement in the market in the first part of the week and some down movement the last part of the week so always makes our type of trading a lot more fun when we get that two-sided action. First trade we started out of the gate on Monday with a pre earnings long call in Microsoft and so we like to put these on as we teach in the course leading up to the earnings announcement because a lot of times in some of these tech stocks you get some upside momentum as well as you get the expansion in implied volatility to help offset some of that theta decay so we did that in Microsoft so if we take a look at the chart we got in here this is 416 and the very next day Microsoft shot up and we got out for a nice profit and the amount of profit we got on that let me just skip ahead here real quick was yeah we booked a profit of over 65% just in that one day so awesome trade there and I'll get into here in a later alert we actually jump back into Microsoft because we still had some time before earnings so I'll go over that here in a minute next trade was a closing adjusting trade in DIA so we had an iron condor on in DIA we close that out booked a profit of over 40% of max profit and then we're still holding our two sets of short call verticals I'm gonna go to DIA on the platform here in a minute because we haven't another alert for for DIA coming up here next trade was a closing trade in XLU so we bought back our short strangle in XLU booked a profit over 45% of max profit so early in the week when we had some upside movement in in the market we saw implied volatility really contract so we were able to book some winners premium guy kind of got sucked out of a lot of things very nicely so that was good here's the mark Microsoft closing trade next trade was a closing trade in XRT so we had an adjusting adjusted strangle which in this case was a straddle so we closed that remaining piece we're able to book a profit on that on that trade if we go to our closed trades real quick just to take a look that was a that was one that we made a bunch of different adjustments on so we started all the way back in November 21st of 17 and I actually did a video on this trade from beginning to end so you can check out our YouTube channel or it'll be posted on our blog I can't I don't know if it it's already posted or not but it will be but you know this trade went entirely against us from the very beginning we put this on back in November of 17 so we needed to make some adjustments along the way close that out on 417 end up booking a profit of 307 so you might think wow big deal right you're in the trade for four months and you only made a profit of 300 bucks but the key thing to remember is this trade went way against us from the very beginning so if we would just close it out we may have take I can't remember exactly off the top of my head but we would have taken a trade a loss of you know somewhere between six and eight hundred dollars something like that so turning a loser like that into a winner is a huge huge deal and once you kind of understand that and kind of grasp that concept of of course a lot of these trades are high probability so we're just gonna put them on and take them off and book a winner and those are the easy ones but if you can really learn how to adjust and roll and be mechanical in your adjustments like we teach and and learn how to turn those losing trades into winners that's when you become a more consistent and a more profitable trader so check out that video if you haven't already next trade was in EWZ so we this was a we're still on the close trade sorry let's go to the alerts back to the alerts so next so that was DIA XLU Microsoft XRT okay so EWZ so we did a closing trade in EWZ booked a profit almost 50% of max profit only in the trade for 14 days so a nice quick winner like I said we had that Ivy contraction the early part of the week gave us an opportunity to book that winner Ivy drop down Ivy percentile drop down to 25 at that time so nice nice trade in EWZ if we take a look at the charts take a look at EWZ and I'll show you the contraction in implied volatility we can get it to come up EWZ so you can see here you know we put this on obviously when when implied volatility was was higher got this just slide down in in contraction price stayed in a decent range we're able to book a nice winner in a very short period of time and that's the power of that putting trades on in high implied volatility waiting for them to contract next trade was an opening trade in Nvidia so this was a pre-earnings long strangle so I didn't get a question because we don't specifically get into long strangles in the earnings course we just talk about pre earnings long straddle but this was basically the same thing the the strikes were so tight so close to the money that we just got a little bit wider and the reason we did that is one it reduces the amount of capital required to put the trade on and just gives it's a little bit wider but still you know if we get the expansion in IV and in a decent move in Nvidia we'll look to we'll look to book a winner here if we take a look at that trade right now in videos pretty flat today after a pretty significant down move yesterday so if we look at our trade you can see we're up about a hundred bucks about 90 95 bucks and that's purely due to just a slight move in price but mostly due to the increase in implied volatility from yesterday's yesterday's down move so we have until May 10th on this one so we will we'll be out of the trade before May 10th but we'll continue to watch and monitor that leading up to that earnings announcement next trade was another pre earnings long straddle this one in Starbucks so we took a look at Starbucks and where it was from pricing standpoint and implied volatility and we've seen a down move a nice little down move today on Friday as well helping out this position so if we look at the analyze tab here you can see put it on when price was right around 60 you've had a nice move down up about a hundred bucks on this trade took about you know nine hundred forty one dollars in capital to put this trade on so I like to see about a twenty percent profit so we get a little bit more down move maybe another pop in IV hopefully look to book this winter early next week Starbucks announces earnings on 426 so we've only got six days including the weekend so we'll be out of this early next week regardless of where it goes next trade was an opening adjusting trade in DIA so we added another iron condor in DIA in the June cycle IV percentile popped up to 84 at that time and so and then we have the short call verticals still on as well so take a look at DIA we've got three different positions on one is the iron condor that I just mentioned tiny bit of profit not enough to take off yet and that's in June and then in May we have these two short call verticals which with the price move up in DIA it's it's popped out of our range in both cases so we're just holding these for some additional short delta we will be looking to roll these you know unless price makes a major move down we'll continue to roll these to keep that short delta in our portfolio which by the way we'll go to our monitor tab here at the end to show you where our portfolio is from a from a delta standpoint so stay tuned for that next trade was an opening adjusting trade in ZN so we added a another strangle in the notes price started to come down fact let's just go to the analyze tab and I'll show you in ZN so this is the one that we just put on so this is the new new strangle we put this on for a couple reasons one we got a little bit of a pop-up in implied volatility if we look at TLT so it had been kind of down here and then we got this nice pop-up in IV so gave us an opportunity to sell those options for a little bit higher price I did get a question from one of our members saying because at the time I think implied volatility percentile was in the mid 40s so not quite above that 50 level but you know when we do when we put on new trades we typically like to do that when implied volatility is over 50 or the IV rank or IV percentiles over 50 but when we're making adjustments we like to collect more credit extend that duration so we will we will do that when implied volatility is under 50 obviously we like it more when it's above but well on an adjustment we will go ahead and add a piece to that trade outside of that that normal criteria and then we reset this real quick so I can uncheck those boxes and so then here's our other piece of the trade and you can see as prices move down in the notes you know this has breached our short strike but what I wanted to do is I added that additional strangle to collect more credit centered around price so I'm giving this a little bit more time if it if it stays here or continues lower into into early next week if we look at just the value of the call see there's not much left in those so we will go ahead and roll those calls down I just wanted to give it a few more days to see if if price was gonna bounce back you can see we've had a little bit of a slide the last week or so so seen if it pops back up but we'll we'll be managing that early into next week next trade was a closing trade in IYR so we closed out a short strangle in IYR booked a profit of over 35% of max profit in just seven days so nice contraction in IV there sucked the premium out gave us the opportunity to book that quick winner and then next trade was we opened a new trade a new short strangle in EEM and so if we take a look at EEM we're still in this trade still very centered and so nothing to do here except for wait for some more time to pass next trade was an opening adjusting trade in ES so we added an iron condor in the June cycle there continuing to add add credits and manage that position so if we go to ES this is the iron condor that we added still very centered nothing to do here at this point and then remember we also have this long put vertical which is a totally separate trade but this is on just really as a short just to add short delta in our portfolio we've had this on and continue to roll it for several cycles and we'll most likely continue to do so so just looking for some downside to benefit that piece next trade was an opening trade in Microsoft so I mentioned we we put on and took off that pre earnings long call booked a nice profit over 65% in just one day and then Microsoft yesterday came down in price a little bit and implied volatility still hadn't expanded too much so we added another long call on this day here and obviously we now today on Friday we've seen some more down movement so if you haven't gotten into this and it's still you know relatively around this area you could still enter potentially on Monday depending on where price goes but so we're looking for a pop higher into earnings Microsoft earnings is on 426 so I think that's Wednesday of next week maybe could be awful a bit there but anyway we'll be out of the trade before then if we take a look at where we're at here so we're down about 80 85 86 bucks on the trade so just looking for some momentum higher some expansion in implied volatility would also help that position which we typically get leading up to earnings next trade was a closing adjusting trade in yes so we closed our May iron condor booked a profit over 45% of max profit in just 15 days on that piece and then as as previously discussed we we have that June iron condor that we put on earlier in the day next trade was opening adjusting trade in zs so we added another iron condor in soybeans in the July cycle now in this one we we opted to enter in July which has 63 days to expiration instead of June with 35 part of the reason was there was some overlap in strikes if I was trying to enter in June so I just opted to go out to July typically we like to stay in that 30 to 60 days but three days difference you know three eight three days outside that 60 days isn't a big deal and then we also widen the wings to 20 points instead of 10 I just like the risk reward a little bit better we take a look at soybeans so here's that position here so we've got a max profit of 918 and we're out of the June position and just have the July soybean iron condor on so on the on the soybean trade overall remember we've been in this thing for quite some time because it had that huge move against us out of the gate and we've just been kind of managing managing that position since then if we look at the chart you know going all the way back here we had some pretty massive moves in soybeans so just been continuing to manage that we're actually break even on the trade at this point after all adjustments and roles and so after this piece here assuming it stays in a nice range for us we will book this and potentially be out you know we may continue to to re-enter and keep a soybeans position on it's a great uncorrelated asset to some of the other stocks and bonds and and and gold and oil and other assets so I like having at least one of these grain positions on but we're getting to the point of profits in soybeans now so look forward to that next trade was an opening adjusting trade in FXI okay so we added a another short strangle in FXI in the June cycle and and then we still have our adjusted strangle back in May so if we look at FXI here's our May position so this is a position that we managed could use some upside movement in price to benefit that we in May we've got 28 days so you know we'll look to potentially roll that once we get down to about 21 days to expiration is where we like to start looking to roll so for now we'll just hold that but we what we did do is add another piece of this out in June centered around current price to collect more credit extend that duration so we added that so we've got both of those pieces on in FXI and lastly we we bought back already mentioned we bought back our June iron condor in soybeans booked a profit over 45% of max on that piece of the trade so nice nice trade there all right so let's go over the other positions that we that we have in our portfolio one is CL oil got a nice little profit in oil looking for about 40 to 50% of max profit so if we get a little bit more down move and some more contraction in implied volatility potentially could book that next week let's take a look at the charts you know so we've got this little bit of contraction IV so if we get a little bit more contraction and a little bit more down movement in price should be able to book that winner if not we will continue to manage as needed already went over ES natty gas so natural gas we've got this iron condor nice and centered looking for a little bit more profit in that one so we'll continue to watch that already went over notes soybeans and wheat apple big down day and apple down over 4% and you know this price had actually gone out of our range and has come all the way back if we take a look at the charts here two massive down days in a row based on some reports on from apple whoops let's go back to the chart so remember we put this on to keep short delta in our portfolio so now it's come back into range got a little bit of profit looking for some more downside this is in May it's got 28 days so we'll just continue to hold that DIA I already went over DIA EEM I went over that FXI GLD so we've got an iron condor in GLD looking for a little bit of upside movement as well some more contraction in implied volatility in GLD you can see we're starting to get some contraction IV and if it if it declines further than that's going to benefit our position there IWM the Russell ETF I got an iron condor in here could use a little bit of downside movement and we could book a winner there early next week if that happens I already mentioned Microsoft NVIDIA Q's so the Q's we still have these short call verticals so price was up here came down nicely the last couple days here so back into our range again just holding these were these were previously part of an iron condor and we just kept the short call vertical side on to keep some of that short delta in our portfolio so looking for some downside to benefit that I mentioned Starbucks Tesla another another short delta position here so just looking for some more downside to benefit our Tesla position and then same thing with XLK as well just have this in here for some short delta in the portfolio so portfolio setup really nice so we've got a nice diversity oil S&Ps Nat gas notes soybeans wheat some individual stocks Dow emerging markets China Chinese large cap gold so you know a few earnings plays so I really like where we're positioned here let's go to the monitor tab and take a look at how our portfolio is structured based on delta so if we take a look here you'll see that our delta if we go to delta column we've got in May we've got negative 190 and then in June we've got negative 74 and then on our earnings plays is pretty flat so so we've got about 265 negative or 265 short delta and we like what we like to do is we like to compare that to our theta so we've got about 137 theta so the ratio is a little over one to one almost almost two to one and so we're in a good shape there I don't necessarily count the theta of the earnings plays although if you wanted to take that into consideration that would cancel out the theta here but we're a we're in we're in a very short period of time for those plays as well as we've got the potential expansion in implied volatility that offset that theta decay so I really just look at the delta ratio compared to the theta that we have on our core income strategies not not really taken into account the the earnings plays so got a great mix here hopefully some more profits coming in next week we've had a great couple weeks our overall P&L just continues to climb just booking winners putting new trades on making necessary adjustments hopefully you guys are starting to get how we trade for you for you newer people just keep on keep on learning keep on understanding how we do this we manage each trade individually but we also look at it from a portfolio perspective from a theta which is kind of our daily theta decay of the of the options and then keeping some short delta to to protect from that downside velocity that we can see from time to time especially that we saw it in February and March or excuse me February and then early April in the market so hope that's all helpful everybody have a great weekend and we will talk to you next week