 Hello, Navigation Traders and hello, October Volatility. What a week. Today is Friday, October 12th. And let's jump into the alerts before we do so. Just a reminder, I sent out a special video update to pro members on Wednesday. So if you haven't had a chance to watch that, it's gonna be located in the same area as the video that you're watching now under weekly video updates. And I sent that out on Wednesday in light of the massive move that we're seeing in the market. So if you haven't watched that, check that out because I'm not gonna repeat a whole lot of what I talked about in that video, but the bottom line is this. This kind of situation is why it's so critical to keep that short delta in your portfolio. And while it does hurt a little bit and put a little bit of a drag on performance in times when the market seems like it's just gonna continue going up, up and up, but we still did very well during this period. And then we really cashed in on this period. You know, I mentioned in the video, we had our biggest one day gain in our alerts portfolio ever on Wednesday. And then Thursday, the market continued lower. We had another nice profitable day. And then today, where we see the market rebounding, we're profitable today too. So it just shows the power of the methodology of being able to make money regardless of market direction. And that's the goal. And that's what we are trying to teach you, not only with the individual trades, but also the overall management of your portfolio. So I'm actually recording this at 11 a.m., not gonna be able to record it later this afternoon. So as volatile as it is, things could change between now, the time I'm recording in the end of the market today on Friday, but let's go over our alerts and our portfolio. And then we will say goodbye for the weekend. So starting on the eighth on Monday before the craziness hit, first trade was a rolling adjusting trade in Ford slash ES, the S&P. So we basically were rolling one set of our short call verticals from October to November. And we adjusted our strikes from 2965 to 2900, 2940. And basically what I'm doing here is that piece of the trade had reached the point where it was over 50% of max profit and it was in October. So it made sense to go ahead and roll out. We've done some other trades in ES here. So before I go to the platform, we'll get to those. Next trade was an opening trade in VXX, which is the strategy straight out of our trading VIX and VXX course that we released a few weeks ago. Ivy percentile at that point jumped up to 92. Let's take a look at a chart of VXX now. And obviously this one is going to be down some because of the massive up move in volatility. Markets go down, volatility goes up. So if we take a look at the analyze tab, you can see we're down on this trade a few hundred bucks because of that. But of course, overall, we're still making money with our other short Delta related trade. So we need some downside in this to get back into range. I mentioned in the alert, we may look to add another piece to this. If we look at the charts here, I mean, if this spikes and gets up to, you know, above its recent high here, gets into the 40 plus handle, we'll probably add on to that and put another piece onto that trade. So look for that potentially. Next trade was an opening trade in gold. So gold implied volatility spiked and it's gone up even more since we put this on, but we sold some premium, sold a strangle in gold and then had a big move up yesterday. Kind of an interesting delayed reaction to the market because it used to be more inversely correlated. If stocks went down, gold was kind of a flight to quality and kind of a safe haven. And, you know, on Wednesday, when we had that huge move down to stocks, gold barely moved, but then yesterday it had huge move up. So kind of a delayed reaction, which is interesting, but price is still well within our range here in gold. So we'll just continue to watch that one. Next trade was a rolling adjusting trade in SMH. So price breached our downside break even and downside short strike, excuse me. So we rolled down our calls to the 30 Delta, stayed in November with 37 days to expiration at that point. And so if we take a look at SMH, we still have that same position on. And so you can see price is still hanging out here near the lower end of our range, but just kind of waiting for either a little bit of a bounce back. If it continues lower, we'll probably add another piece to this centered around the current price and may potentially have to roll down our calls, but, you know, obviously it depends on what happens. So we'll just continue to manage that as needed. Stay mechanical, that's a key thing. Sometimes when massive moves happen, people want to freak out and do all kinds of different things than they normally would. Stay mechanical, stick with the program. That's why we've put these kind of rules in place, not only for your normal markets, but also for your volatile markets like we're seeing. Next trade, rolling adjusting trade in ES, another S&P roll where this was on our long put vertical. We rolled it from October to November and then adjusted those strikes down and to continue to keep that short Delta in our portfolio. And again, I'll go over ES here in a minute. Next trade was an opening trade in XRT. So got a spike in implied volatility in basically everything. So XRT was just the ticker of choice to sell some premium in just to kind of layer in just to continue to add positions. We don't want to, you know, if implied volatility spikes, we don't want to load the boat because it could go higher. You know, so we want to have some dry powder, some cash on the sidelines to continue adding to that if needed. But XRT was a good choice to add some short premium in. So if we take a look at XRT, you can see it's still very centered right where we put it on. So nothing going on there yet. Next trade was a rolling adjusting trade in the Qs. So one question I got is on the actual order, it's saying sell condor. And that's just, again, that's how TOS classifies it because this is, if we open this up as a new order, it'd be considered a condor, but don't pay attention to that. We're really just rolling down our short call verticals, staying in the same November cycle. And again, same situation as ES, we were over 50% of max profit on this piece. So we just wanted to roll down those strikes closer to price, keep that short delta in our portfolio. I'll come back to the Qs too, because we had another there. ES, again, another rolling trade, a lot of rolls here. You know, it's been a while since we've rolled down, right? I mean, with the market going up, we've kind of rolled out and rolled our strikes up and continue to keep that short delta. It's nice to roll down, collect a credit and keep that short delta in our portfolio. So it's kind of a nice change of pace, but the same story, had over 50% of max profit on that piece, so rolled those down. And next trade was same thing in DIA. So rolled down our short call vertical in DIA. In this case, we rolled from October to December. So we just skipped over November. We went ahead and rolled out to December with 72 days to expiration. The reason I did that is, A, obviously 72 days is kind of outside of our typical wheelhouse of 30 to 60 days, but as we're rolling all these, I didn't want to roll them all to November. I didn't want to have everything exactly kind of in the same spot from a price standpoint and a timeframe standpoint. So I just wanted to diversify and roll some of that out to December. So what's the difference? Let's talk about that. If we would have rolled to November and the market keeps going down, we would accelerate profit a little bit quicker in November because it's a shorter timeframe. Whereas in December, it's a longer timeframe, so that profit line's a little bit flatter. So if the market continued down in our favor, we wouldn't gain profit as quickly, but if it turns the other direction on us, we're not going to lose as quickly either. So it's just a little bit of a flatter profit line. So if we take a look at DIA, here is that December position. So you can see, since we've done that, it's already gained a decent amount of profit here. So we're just continuing to hold that. And then we've got this one in November as well. Same story. We've got some profit here, but nothing to do at this point on our November piece. So we've got two different short calls. These were originally part of iron condors that we've continued to roll for a few cycles. And we're just going to continue to manage those as needed. And then another ES trade. And we did the same thing here. We rolled one of these sets of ES short call verticals out to December. This one was already in November, but we hit over that 50% of max profit. And so again, when that profit line starts to really flatten out, we want to roll that to get a little bit more bang for the buck. So we rolled this one out to December. So I think that's the last of our ES trades this week. So let me go to the platform and kind of recap where we're at now. Look at that, ES is only up six points now. It was up as much as 30 some earlier today. So here's the story here. Here's the short call vertical that we still have in November. And you can see what I'm saying here. Profit line starts to really flatten out as you get more into the, as it moves more in our direction. So we want to roll that out. I'm waiting till next week to do this just because, you know, again, we don't want to roll it all in one day. We want to kind of spread out our trade, spread out our diversify our time. So we're not doing it all at one price or one timeframe. So that's the short call vertical. And then our short call vertical in December, you can see right here. Got a little bit of profit here. Just if we get some more downside, obviously that's going to benefit us there. So holding onto that for that short delta. And then we also have the long put vertical, which is a separate trade and same kind of story. I'm just, I'm holding onto this to next week. Even though this, if you wanted to roll this, it would definitely be, it would definitely warrant doing so being that we're, you know, we're at about, what is that about 80% of max profit at this point. But we're just, we're just kind of, again, spreading that and spreading those trades out to diversify not only our strategy and our symbols, but our time as well. Next trade was in DIA. I already went over this. This is the one that was in November. And we just rolled down our strikes, but stayed in November. Next trade was a closing adjusting trade in IWM. So we had an iron condor on here. Price moved down past our break even. So we closed out our untested side, which is our call vertical side. And we're still holding this, this same position here. So if we take a look at IWM, you can see we're looking for a bounce back higher in IWM to benefit this trade. What we'll look to do next week is potentially start as we continue to add on more positions. One of those would be to add on a new centered iron condor in IWM. Now, if this thing really continues to rip lower, we may just close out of this, but it's okay to have this. I mean, if the market does bounce and rip higher, that's gonna benefit this piece. And it's all part of a balanced portfolio, which I'll get to in just a minute. But so that's where we're at here. Obviously crashed through our break even here. We closed out the untested side. So now we're just waiting for a bounce back to benefit that piece. Next trade was a rolling adjusting trade in XLK. A lot of rolling adjusting trades, obviously. We stayed in the November cycle in this case and we just adjusted our strikes down. Same story, we're over 50% of max profits, so we needed to roll down. And so if we take a look at XLK, you can see this is where we're at now. So pretty close to where we did, prices still in range, just moved up a little bit since we've done this roll, but just looking for a little bit more downside to benefit that again. Next trade, RH. So this is a stock that we don't trade a lot, but I was looking for something to put on some additional short delta. Remember, when we have our ratio set, we like to have for every dollar of theta that we're collecting, we like to have anywhere from one to one to five to one of short delta. So we got down to the point where we're really low on our short delta, less than one to one. So we're looking for additional short bias trades to put on. And in light of the downside in the market, RH, which used to be called Restoration Hardware, they announced a big stock repurchase program. So a lot of times when stocks do that, their stock will spike up and it was up over 10%. So I looked at that as just a good, a good trade to put on some short bias on because everything else was down. And I was looking for something that was up a little bit that might continue to roll over. So we'll see if that happens. But again, I just looked at it as, I mean, this thing has been on a downside tear even before this recent downturn. And then because that buyback, it popped up. So looking for it to roll back over potentially. And that's why we did this trade. Since we put it on, it has moved up a little bit more. So you can see we're right at near our break even. So looking for some downside to benefit that. Next trade and the last trade that we did today was in EWW. So again, just kind of layering in these selling premium in this high volatility environment. In this case, we didn't have a position on an EWW. So we put on this one here and you can see price is still very centered. Nothing has happened there since we put it on. So that is all the alerts for the week. Going into next week, expect us to continue to add and layer new premium, short premium positions, strangles, iron condors, that kind of thing to take advantage of this high implied volatility. And then obviously manage our current positions. So let's take a look at what else we have going on here starting with oil. So we've got this short straddle that was originally a short strangle that we had to adjust and prices come down back nicely into range here. So we got a good profit on that piece. And then we've got another full short strangle unadjusted. And we're at about less than 30% of max profit on this one. So if price can kind of stay steady and we get a little bit of contraction of IV and oil, we might be able to take this one off early next week. I already went over ES, went over gold, natty gas. Natty gas has come back nicely for us too where price was way up here. Come all the way back into range on this adjusted strangle. And then we've got another full strangle here where price is very centered. Implied volatility has popped up since we put this on. So we're down slightly, but still very centered in nat gas. Wheat is playing nicely today. It's got a nice bounce back up and in the profit here, not quite enough to take off yet. So we'll just continue to watch that and potentially take that off early next week. By the way, on the grains, wheat, soybean, corn, these are trades that I like to have on if there's not a lot of volatility in other things. But so we may just take this off and I think we'd either be close to breakeven or maybe a little bit of a winner or maybe a small loser. I'll have to double check, but we've been in this wheat trade forever and we've been kind of bouncing around near breakeven, get down a little bit, get up a little bit. So depending on what's going on, if we want to free up that capital to use on some other high volatility vehicles, we may look to do that. But as of now, we're just kind of holding on to that. Apple, we went ahead and rolled this earlier this week and so you can see that price, this is a long put vertical. Oh, I'm sorry, no, we did not roll this. This is our last position that we have in October. I was thinking of a different one. So we've got a little bit of profit here, so we will be looking to roll this to extend duration, keep that short delta in our portfolio and we'll do that next week. We have in October, just seven days left, so next week is expiration week, so we'll be definitely rolling that then. Costco, we put on this iron condor, which is really a synthetic short strangle. We put these wings way out wide just to be a little bit more efficient with our use of capital. Price is still just dead centered, no profit, no loss. Obviously the spike in implied volatility didn't help that position and that's why we haven't received any profit in there, even though we've been in there for a full week. But we'll continue to monitor that one. I went over DIA, EEM. We've got an adjusted strangle in here, which is actually the 42 straddle. So looking for a little bit of upside to benefit that. And then if this does continue lower, we will look to add to this, add another kind of centered short strangle around that, continue to collect credit. And if you take a look at the implied volatility, IV percentile nice and high at the 92 level, IV rank at 65, EWW is the one we just added today. EWZ, we've got a short strangle on here and price has come back into our range nicely. We've got some profit, not quite enough to take off yet, so if we get a little bit more downside in EWZ, we will book a profit there. And remember those elections are still going on, so we've got not only the overall market volatility playing into that, but also the uncertainty of the election keeping that applied volatility high. So it's actually contracting a little bit today, but we'll see what happens there. FXI, we've got two pieces on, we've got two different butterflies. One is our call butterfly, which you can see price has breached our downside, but we're just kind of holding to see if we can get a little bit of a bounce higher. And then we had added another put butterfly, which is pretty dead centered, got a tiny bit of profit there, but nothing else to do at this point. IWM, I mentioned IYR, we've got a couple pieces here. One is a short put vertical, which is creating some long delta in our portfolio, so not necessarily a bad thing, especially if the market rips higher. But if this moves too much lower, we may just cut this loose. We don't want to hold this for a max loss, but we'll see what happens. We've also got the full iron condor on in IYR, which has got a little bit of profit, but not enough to take off yet. QQQ, I mentioned that one. RH, SMH, yeah, I mentioned that one. TLT, so we've got an iron condor on here. Bonds had been getting pounded and we were about to adjust this. Price was right down here near the break even, and then bonds have kind of bounced higher, so we're well back into range. We just need a little bit of implied volatility to contract, and maybe a little bit more upside to benefit that one before we do anything in TLT. VXX I mentioned, XLK I mentioned that, and XRT. So that's all the alerts, that's all the trades. The one last thing I wanted to go over was where we stand with our short delta. So let's just go to the monitor tab here and get an idea. So I have these categorized by the expiration cycle. So we've got October, November, December. Just makes it easier to kind of keep track of these things. I used to categorize by trade strategy, so strangle, iron condor, that kind of thing, but I found doing it by the expiration date is a little bit more efficient. So Apple's the last one we have in October, and then you can see most of these in November, and then a handful in December. So what I wanted to show you is, hey, this is how I set it up, I don't show this that often, just because it's not necessarily that relevant, but if we look at our short delta, so we've got 37 there, we've got 54 there, and we've got 119 there, so call it minus 200 short delta. So that's where we're at with our total portfolio delta. And then we wanna compare that for a ratio to theta. So we've got $15 here, we've got 120 here, we've got 215 here, so call that 230, 330, 350. So we've got $350 of daily theta decay, and we've only got negative 200 short delta. So we like to have more short delta than that. Now, based on the huge move down, you could say, okay, yeah, but the market's probably a little bit oversold. Well, maybe it is, maybe it isn't, we'll find out. But I think we're in a good position right now. I don't wanna force anything, I don't wanna sell, I don't wanna get short in the whole, basically, is what they call it. So if you look at the S&P 500, we don't wanna get short a bunch down here. Was really looking for a little bit more of a rally. I was hoping if the market got up above 2,800, I was gonna be a little bit more aggressive about adding short delta. It came up here and it's sliding back down. So we'll see what happens, but I think we're positioned well either way. Obviously, if we have another massive move down, then we're not gonna have enough short delta to help us too much. So we'll see what happens and continue to manage things into next week. This is the most fun time to be trading these strategies. Volatility makes things interesting. You get a ton more credit when you sell premium. If you've got your short delta on, these big down moves don't hurt you. In fact, like I said, those are biggest one day profit day in the alerts portfolio since we've started this. So everybody have a great weekend. If you have any questions, let us know. Have a great weekend and we'll talk to you next week.