 What's up everybody hope everybody had a great week of trading today is Friday March 23rd Welcome to this week's video update No, a lot of guy. We got a lot of new members who joined us before we close the membership to To new members so welcome everyone if this is your first update first week of trading with us You know one thing I was going to mention it is we did a lot of adjustments this week Which I know for newer traders Can sometimes be really confusing so I might take a little extra time to explain the adjustments here So bear with me But let's jump into the trades for the week We started out on Monday the 19th and our first trade was a closing adjusting trade in FXI So we closed out one of our strangles booked a nice profit on this piece of our trade and We're still holding the other piece of that now This was a little bit frustrating There's two frustrating trades this week that I that I was trying to get out of and then they With this huge move down the last couple days. They moved away from us FXI being one of them So we took off one booked a nice profit, but then this one was fairly centered as well And it's run all the way down at a range now. So I was actually I had orders in I was trying to get filled I didn't want to chase which is what you should do. It's frustrating, but it just it's trading It's what happens sometimes so prices now run all the way down So what we're gonna look to do next week Let's first look at the calls to see what we're at and we still have a little bit of premium in there So not necessarily any reason to roll the calls down quite yet But what we will look to do next week is add another position This one's in April so we'll look to add another kind of centered strangle around the current price Collect more credit give ourselves more time to be right and continue to manage manage our way out of the trade It was if I had gotten out, you know back when it was fairly centered it would have we would have booked a We would have been out of FXI booked a really nice winner. Unfortunately. That's trading it ran away from us So now we'll continue to to manage it I mean that the implied volatility obviously is super high IV percentile of 99 So even if we had gotten out of it, I'd be looking to to re-enter and add positions anyway So that look for that next week in FXI Next trade was an opening trade Excuse me in XLU and we added a we sold a strangle in XLU IV percentile at the time was 83 So if we take a look at XLU, you know, we've had a little bit of a down movement just like a lot of things It's still well within the range here. Not much to do except for weight in XLU Next trade was an opening adjusting trade in Ford slash ES, which is the S&P 500 futures. So what we did here is we added an iron condor IV percentile at the time was currently at 92. So if we take a look at ES That's some big moves the last couple days in the market. So let's let's reset this so we can Uncheck the correct boxes here. We've got a couple different positions on an ES and you can see with this big down move We're already way down here at the lower end of our range. So we haven't adjusted yet We will continue to monitor that Next week, you know for for all of 2017 and then, you know, even the first part of 2018 We kept getting tested to the upside tested to the upside and managing our way out of trades that way and now it's interesting We're getting tested to our downside. So it's kind of actually a refreshing thing I like getting tested to the downside way better because that means volatility is spiking Giving us more opportunity to make additional trades. So You can look at adjusting as an opportunity as well We've also got this long put vertical in ES that we that we had rolled which is an alert I'll go over and you can see with the down move. We've already, you know Can't come into the profit on this piece quite a bit So we'll be looking to potentially roll this again next week to continue to keep that downside bias in our portfolio I have been getting some question from from new members about the whole short delta short bias in your portfolio So I want to address that right now as well When you trade the way that we do when we're selling premium and doing iron condors and strangles in our core a lot of our core trades are Selling premium and high implied volatility. You know, we're trying to capture price within a specific range So the way that you protect yourself from that type of trading is to keep short delta in your portfolio keep short a Short bias in your portfolio to protect yourself from the velocity of what can happen with down moves Like we saw in February like we've seen this week So this is a perfect reason why you want to keep short delta in your portfolio So you can see that was a huge Benefit of having that piece in there because we we made money. We're making money on that trade now So that's that I've we've got a couple blog posts about how to hedge your portfolio using delta How to trade options like a professional those are two different blog posts with videos that you need to watch if you want to understand that concept a little bit better All right, so moving on next trade was a closing adjusting trade in ES so we actually closed out of an iron condor in this one made a nice profit on that piece of the trade Next trade was a closing trade in Oracle So this was a an earnings pre earnings long straddle that we had put on and we were looking for an expansion and implied Volatility and a decent price move leading up to earnings didn't quite get there And so we booked a small loser on that trade and just you know We had to be out before the earnings announcement and so we needed to close that trade took a small loss on that one next trade was another closing trade where we had an iron condor on in SPY and And so we took that off booked it booked a nice profit on SPY And I'll look at the closing trades here in a minute to show you what those what the profits were on some of these closing trades had a great week of profitable closed trades Next trade was a closing adjusting trade in ZS. So like said, we had a lot of adjustments this week So this one was in soybeans and basically what we did was we closed out our call vertical Booked a nice profit on that piece of the trade and then we're still holding a full iron condor in ZS So if we take a look at that you can see it's hanging out near the lower end of our range But still well within nothing to do there. No adjustments needed at this point Next trade was a rolling adjusting trade in ES. So this is these are the kind that kind of Give a little bit of confusion To newer traders. So Remember when we roll a position essentially what that is is you're closing out the current position and you're reopening at a different expiration cycle and possibly different strikes as well and So this is one that we you know We made some profit on this piece of the trade and then we wanted to so we closed it out and reopened it Now when you're trading options on futures the platform in this case thinkorswim Does not have the functionality to do the one transaction role like you can with options on stocks or ETFs So we actually have to manually do this as two separate orders. So that's why you'll see it look like this We sold this vertical and we bought this one. Okay, so we were rolling from April to May So we're rolling from one expiration cycle to the next and we are adjusting our strike So we closed out the 2840 2810 spread and we reopened the 2780 2750 spread so I always then reiterate that this is what we're currently holding That's the put vertical we're holding and as you can see that, you know This was back on Tuesday that we did this role and you can see Which I already already showed you is that? That long put vertical, you know price was right here after the roll It's already moved all the way down giving us that much profit in the trade So to give you an idea of that that's why we continue to keep that short delta in our portfolio Okay, so we're gonna keep keep on holding on to that We may we may roll it again next week if the if the market stays Steady to lower so look for that next week We want to book that little profit that we took in the Where we're currently at with that one and we want to continue to roll it give ourselves more time in the trade You know in case there's further down moves in the market Next trade was a rolling adjusting trade in DIA So this was a very similar trade the difference of Why it looks the way it is is because on toss you can do this in one transaction So you don't have to buy back the other one and then resell in two separate trades When you do a roll you can actually roll it in one one trade one transaction on toss, but it's the same Concept so the difference with this one is we did not roll from April to May We rolled Based because we had you know 30 days to expiration. We just stayed in April So we just wanted to roll our strikes closer to the money So we closed out the 255 257 and we rolled that down to the 248 251 Okay, so that's what we're holding now So if we take a look at DIA Let's take off the uncheck the iron condor that we have sometimes toss makes you reset these Before it lets you uncheck them. So if we take off the the current iron condor This is the make sure I'm looking at the right one because we did two of these simultaneous Back to back so the 248 251 So if we just check on the 248 251 That's what we've got. So again price was right here right after the roll with this big move down We've seen the last couple days. Boom. We've already booked, you know, we've already getting that booked We've already gained that amount of profit about $323 on this piece and then the next alert was the same thing rolling this one down So price started off about right here and it's always it's already moved all the way down here So same thing early next week We'll be looking to potentially roll these again to keep that short bias in our portfolio that we need and To you know lock in these gains and reposition the the strikes a little bit closer to where to where price is now Okay, if you're a newer trader, you might be thinking. Oh my gosh. This is so confusing I don't know if I can you know grasp this Give it time. Okay, this you've got to go through multiple trade cycles multiple expiration cycles and Eventually this stuff will become second nature. So just stick with it, you know Especially if you're not in these trades already This is gonna sound almost like a foreign language at first until you go through the course Understand the concepts and then you actually do it from beginning to end So once you have a trade-on and you have to go through a few cycles of making adjustments You'll you'll start to grasp this stuff a lot better. So please don't feel overwhelmed But but just you know keep on Keep on with us for a while until you understand the whole concept because it's a very powerful tool Once you understand the value of the way that we make adjustments and the way that it can provide some consistency for returns over time, okay Also in DIA, I haven't see I haven't gotten over this alert yet, but we also while we're here I'll show you we also added another iron condor, okay? So the price is hanging out right here still well within our range. No profit or loss So just continuing to wait on that piece of the trade and by the way I've said this a lot of times before and this is in our course, too But we don't like to have it on more than three positions Three trades on any one symbol at a time, okay? So we've got these two short call verticals that I just mentioned that were from previous iron condors that we've continued to roll a couple times So that one and this one so that's two separate trades You know this one's got three contracts This one has four and then we've got another iron condor, which is in another expiration cycle. That's out in May So we've got three different positions on in this one symbol. That's it That's that's where we kind of stop so we're going to continue to manage and You know if we get a profit on this one we can we book it You know then we can potentially add another position in the future But we never have more than three trades on in any one symbol at a time a It gets very difficult to track and remember what you're in and be you don't want to just keep adding and adding We like to scale into positions as implied volatility goes higher Well, we've got great high implied volatility after this week and so that's why we're you know We're continuing to add positions and we'll have multiple positions on in certain symbols But no more than three. That's kind of our rule of thumb So we had those back-to-back rolling di a verticals next trade was a closing trade in XLV So this was a nice one. We you know, we had adjusted this multiple times Price kind of ping-ponged around we adjust adjust adjust and and ended up booking a really nice profit completely out of XLV Either percentiles at 91 we will potentially look to re-enter something in XLV next week assuming Plied volatility stays high if we take a look at the chart you see up at the 97th percentile You don't want to go all in. I mean look at IV rank. It's still at 40 So that's got a lot of room to go up still meaning the options can continue to get more expensive So we don't want to jump in we like to be methodical about this put on a couple trades new trades today You know wait till tomorrow put on another one or two and just and spread those out So as price moves around you're continuing to add these positions on at different time frames different price levels in different symbols and that's how you build consistency is that continual methodical diversification and Adding and booking and adding and closing and adding and adjusting over time. Okay So that's XLV next trade was a closing trade in EWW. So this was a short strangle that we had on an EWW I had to make a few adjustments, but again by staying mechanical booked another nice profit in that trade And then we had we actually added a new position in EWW So I'll get to that here in an alert next trade was another closing trade. We bought back an iron condor in GLD The gold ETF booked a nice profit of over 45% of max profit Had a nice contraction in implied volatility IV percentile when we closed this was was down at Current Ling should be currently at 21 So we had a nice contraction which allowed us to get out of that trade If we take a look at GLD now after the last couple days, you'll see implied volatility is shot back up Okay, so we'll be potentially looking to add a gold trade GLD probably an iron condor in GLD next week. Okay Next trade an opening adjusting trade in DIA. So that's the that's adding the iron condor in the May cycle I already went over that Next trade was an opening trade in EWW. Like I said, we went ahead and jump back in here Implied volatility popped its head back up. So we jumped back in with a short strangle in EWW You can see it implied volatility increased even more after we put this on so it's still very centered But we're just down slightly on it. So just looking for some time to pass and for theta to the K in that one Okay, let's see moving on to the next trade By the way, oh one thing I was going to mention on EWW for for your newer traders You know sometimes the question is well, can I can I just buy the wings and define this to make it an iron condor if I'm trading an IRA or if I'm trading a Or if I don't have permission to trade naked options or if I just like to find risk Can I can I trade an iron condor and the answer is yes, you can But the problem is and why I typically don't on these lower price symbols I mean this this stock is this ETFs trading at around 50 bucks, right? Yeah, right at about 50 bucks. So when you define the risk, you're going to be collecting a lower credit So meaning your max profit is going to be lower and And and and you double the amount of contracts you're trading so your transaction costs are going to be higher So you need to determine is it worth it? You know is it is the risk that I'm taking worth the max profit or the reward potential reward and Taking into consider consideration the the amount of transaction costs Okay, if you're trading on tasty works that's significantly reduced your transaction costs because there's zero closing commissions But but you just you need to be aware of that. So on lower price symbols where you collect less credit I'm typically doing your uncovered Positions like strangles and straddles and things like that when you get up to the higher price symbols, you know things over a hundred dollars That's when I'm typically defining the risk to make a better use of capital So it's just about an efficiency of capital and where your overall, you know risk tolerance is so that's that's why we you know When I do a strangle or some type of naked position, you know I try to put in an alternative trade for a defined risk, but sometimes it just doesn't make sense So you just you've got to determine for you and your your account if it makes sense or not Next trade a closing adjusting trade in the queues. So we close the call vertical side of the iron condor. So price on Wednesday when it was the Thursday when the price had that huge move down breached our downside break even and so we closed out the untested side and so we're still holding So we're still holding the the put vertical side and we're still holding those short call vertical spreads Okay, so if we go to QQQ This is one that I got quite a few questions on so let's first look at We've got these two different Short call verticals that were previously iron condors. Okay that we that we've rolled and you know We're already sitting starting to get some profit in so we've got that one We've got this one, which is a was just one strike different. So it looks very similar But then the alert that I just mentioned is we took off the call side because price breached our downside break even and So now we're left with the put vertical the losing side And so a lot of people kind of get freaked out about this or nervous or can't quite understand why we do this Because they're saying okay. This one's losing, you know price breached here What do we why are we holding on to the losing side and the answer is one the This is a defined risk trade so you need to be comfortable with that amount of risk when you put the trade on If you know if you happen to have a huge move and and you take a max loss now What will look to do with this trade is a couple things one If we look at how many days we have to expiration, we still have 28 days to expiration. Okay, that's a long time Okay, so there's definitely not any reason to do this You've got to let the probabilities play out if we change our calendar to the expiration date, which in this case is 421 What you'll see is I mean there there's still a very good chance that price could come back in the range I mean if you look at the shaded box, that's the one standard deviation move up or down So the probability of price, you know going back into range It's as good as any right? I mean there's still a decent probability You've got to let the probabilities play out So we don't want to just close this and take that loss because price may come all the way back and the fact that You know, we've seen this huge move down in price You know having a little bit of a bounce back a little bit of a retracement up It's definitely not unheard of and so we don't want to jump the gun and try to try to cut things off before the probabilities play Out. Okay, so that's number one number two is to find a risk. So we're not looking to do anything yet We won't do anything with it probably, you know, if it came back in a range and we get you know We're in a profitable position. We'd close it, but if it's still hanging out here I'm gonna hold it all the way till almost expiration week And then at that point we'll decide do we want to roll it and give ourselves more time in the trade Or do we want to close it and just take the loss? Okay, so that's the plan with that And remember we've got so this is you know, it's a losing position But we've also got these short call vertical spreads that are protecting us to the downside as well Okay, so that's the power of kind of playing both sides. You're you've got some short bias positions You've got some long bias positions and you're you know You're playing both sides and you're hoping price kind of ping-pongs around and you might potentially win on both And that's the name of the game. Okay All right moving on So I already went over the the two so we had two back-to-back rolling Call vertical spreads very similar to what we already went over in DIA. I already showed those to you You know, we've since we put them on, you know price came down even more So we're in the profit on those just holding holding on for more and again to keep some more of that short bias That short directional bias in our portfolio Okay, so that was those back-to-back Rolling adjusting verticals in the cues and lastly our last trade was a closing trade in IWM so we had an iron condor on an IWM had to make multiple Adjustments in IWM, which I'm going to show you when we go to the closing trades here But by staying mechanical. We were able to book a nice winner and And we'll look to re-enter Probably a position in IWM next week because with this down move implied volatility here is very high as well Okay, as you can see 99 have your rank is 78 Nice and high there. So really juiced up options a good time to potentially sell those. Okay So we'll look that next week if we take a look at the Closed trades that we made you can see this is the IWM iron condor Look at all those adjustments we had to make, you know, just close adjust roll adjust open adjust close All the way down the line when we closed out booked a profit of 164 bucks, right? Nothing Nothing crazy not a huge monster winner by any means but but when a but when we first got in this Price just kept moving up up up up up and and blew through our upside range blew through our upside range And so just by staying mechanical adjusting extending duration just continuing to play the game We turned a loser, you know a big loser into a winner, and that's the name of game if you can if you can Extend duration and continue to book profits and manage out of When price makes huge moves out of your range and then you can just book the winners as they come the ones that stay in your range The easy ones put those together. That's consistent profitability, and that's that's what we do So that was a so that was a nice one. We had the GLD iron condor We closed for a nice winner that you the EWW short strangle again had to make a couple adjustments couple roles and a book in a nice profit of $160 XLV again remember we had we had three different iron condors on at one time and we just kept You know price was just kind of going up and down up and down that two-sided action is what we love It's those one directional moves that just keep going and going and going like we saw in 2017 that are very hard to manage You know but with this one booked a nice profit of $686 okay SPY iron condor booked a profit of 272 Oracles the pre earnings long straddle that we took a little loss of 66 dollars on The ZN short straddle booked a nice profit of 468 Now, you know some of these some of these profits are bigger than what we've seen in in previous months, too And one of the reasons is we've had high implied volatility right implied volatility was so low all of 2017 That when you put on a trade your max profit is Only so much well when implied volatility gets higher Your max profit goes up because you're collecting more premium or collecting more credit, which makes your profits bigger That's that's why we do it EWZ short strangle made 144 XLE short strangle this is from last week 168. So anyway, those are some of the closed trades Let's take a look at some of the other current positions We have on that we didn't necessarily do alerts in this week one of which is the euro ford slash 6e This was another frustrating one. We're up money on this trade still But it was kind of the same situation of FX eyes I was trying to get filled to close the trade out and book about a seven hundred and some dollar winner When price was right here never got filled and prices then moved up on us it moved moved away So we could still close this for a really nice winner But but I'd like to get a little bit more out of it So looking for a little bit of a down move in 6e if it does continue to rip higher We would probably add another centered strangle around that in the next expiration collect more credit Give ourselves more time to be right on that one Natty gas we've got an iron condor in in that gas got a little bit of profit on this piece of the trade not enough to Take off yet. So we'll continue to monitor and manage that. I think I mentioned soybeans We've got this iron condor on need a little bit of a move up a little bit more time to pass to benefit that Got this iron condor in wheat. So just waiting on that one could use a little bit of a move higher Some more contraction in IV there Apple so this is one that we Price had moved against us initially we rolled it to extend duration Now we're now we're in the profit here and we'll look to potentially keep that on by rolling Next week or or we might just close it out for a little winter DIA already mentioned that one eem kind of the same situation as apple We put this we put these on around the same time and just kind of adding short Delta Looking for some downside bias We had to roll this one because price initially moved against us and now we're again same thing We're in the profit now So we will look to either continue to roll that one to to book more look for more profit more downside Or we may just take it as a winner next week EWW I mentioned FXI I mentioned IYR. So this is the real estate ETF We've got an adjusted strangle in here. So we've adjusted this one time Price is just kind of hanging out here on our lower end of our range We might potentially look to add to this one next week You know price comes back into range. We'll probably just you know keep keep watching it keep managing it But if it keeps lower, we'll probably add another centered strangle around that You can see like everything else right now implied volatility is nice and high So it's a good time to add and continue to to be in these positions Q's I mentioned XLE. So this is the oil and gas ETF Not much profit or loss there. So just waiting on that one XLU same thing strangle just waiting on that one XRT So this is one that we were about to break even to profit on to profitability on this one We've had a few different adjustments prices hanging out here on the lower end of the range. It continues lower We will probably roll our calls down And then maybe potentially add another piece to this trade as well So that's all the alerts. That's all of our positions that we've got going on I do want to get some more positions on here because we did close out quite a few which is good Because we booked those for profits But now we need to add some more on with with implied volatility popping its head back up So definitely look for some new opening trades early next week potentially GLD potentially adding to some of these that I mentioned SPY IWM, you know some of these stock indices will get into at least one or two more of those and Continue to keep the game going. So hope everybody has a great weekend and we'll talk to you next week