 What is up, Navigation Traders. Happy Friday. Today is Friday, December 15th. Welcome to this week's video update. Before we jump into the alerts, couple announcements. One, don't forget, you should have received an email where you are doing a Tasty Works free web class next Wednesday, December 20th at 3.30pm central time. Just go to NavigationTrading.com forward slash TW dash registration. It's going to be an awesome event. We've got Tom Sosnoff leading the way for us. And if you haven't heard of Tom, he's a really interesting guy. He's been in the option trading world for a long time. So should be fun. Make sure you go register there. Spots are filling up. We've had a huge registration flow already. So our webinar software I think holds 250 people. And we're going to probably surpass that. So we'll see what happens. But make sure you register. Get a spot there. And then secondly, if you want to open a Tasty Works account beforehand, make sure you go to NavigationTrading.com forward slash Tasty Works. And you can click on the link there and open an account. You don't have to fund it or anything, but at least you can download the software. And that way you're a little bit more familiar for the web class next Wednesday. So really looking forward to that should be exciting. All right, let's jump into the alert. So I had quite a few alerts this week, mainly due to being expiration week. We always have a lot of roles and adjustments to do as expiration is nearing. So the first trade we put on on Monday morning was a opening trade. And that was a calendar spread in SPX. So implied volatility is super low. It was actually at zero when we put this on. And with calendar spreads, with our back testing and just kind of trading over the years, we're starting to understand that they're a little bit different animal than are typically premium selling strategies like iron condors and strangles from a standpoint of we're actually do better by putting these on with the front month in a shorter time frame. So whereas our other trades are kind of that 30 to 60 days to expiration, with these looking at the back month in more of that 30 to 45 days to expiration, but the front month actually being under three weeks is what really worked well. So we put this on with 18 days to expiration, actually used the weeklies here. Now, I talked about this on our live broadcast Monday morning when I was going over this trade, and that is I don't typically use the weeklies unless I'm doing an earnings trade in a super liquid stock or in a super liquid index or ETF. There's nothing more liquid than SPX or SPY or IWM. So those are really the only few that I would tend to enter into the weeklies on, but SPX is fine. So if we take a look at that and oh my gosh, this market is strong, isn't it? I mean, this thing will go down one day and then just rip back higher like it is today. So if we take a look at our SPX calendar, you can see it's almost testing our upside break even. So we need a little bit of downside to benefit that piece. And by the way, if you notice, my charts look a little bit different today. I've got a developer working on some different things to help kind of look at your charts a little bit differently, spotting up trends and down trends and that sort of thing. There's nothing magic about it, just like there's nothing magic about any indicator, even though some people try to act like there is. But it's just a different way to look at things and it looks a little messy here. I like my charts really clean, but once we kind of perfect this, I'll be getting this out to members so you can put it on your charts as well. And of course that's all going to be free. So just another kind of value added thing that we'll probably be releasing sometime early in 2018. So be on the lookout for that. Next trade was an opening adjusting trade in wheat. So we opened another iron condor to collect more credit in wheat. And if we take a look, let's take a look at our wheat position. I can see price has been pretty weak. So price is kind of hanging out down here on our lower end of our range on this iron condor. And then the alert that I just mentioned, so we've got two iron condors on. One with three contracts, one with four, all of them in February, but this one's still very centered. It's got a little bit of profit, but not enough to take off yet. So we'll continue to monitor wheat. Next trade was a rolling adjusting trade in IWM. So we did a vertical roll. So we rolled this all-in-one transaction and basically rolling our 151-155 call vertical from December to January. We only had four days to expiration. So just looking for a good point to roll. We're able to collect the credit to roll, which is always good. And then we still have the full iron condor in IWM as well. So if we take a look at our IWM position, you can see we've got this vertical on here. That's the one we rolled from December to January. We had a later alert that actually booked profits in the full iron condor piece. So that's why you don't see that here because we did end up taking that off at a later date. Next trade was a rolling adjusting trade in Ford slash ES. So we rolled our 2580, 2540 long put vertical from Dease to Jan. And remember, this is not part of our iron condor trade. This is just our hedge using for short delta in our portfolio for downside protection, which obviously with the market ripping higher has not... We haven't needed downside protection. We need upside protection, but trust me, this thing will go forever. And the velocity to the downside is always much quicker than to the upside. So you've got to keep that short delta in your portfolio. But if we take a look at the ES, this is our put spread here. Let me reset this so I can check the correct boxes. So we will uncheck these. So this is the put spread here. And so you can see where we just need some downside in ES to benefit that piece. But we got that rolled out to January, so we're all good there. And then our next trade was a rolling adjusting trade in DIA, the Dow ETF. So we rolled our 235, 238 call vertical from Dease to Jan. And it moved our strikes from 247 to 250. So again, we're keeping this in our portfolio because we do want that additional short delta, kind of like the ES trade. But this was originally part of an iron condor. And so if we take a look at DIA, there we go. So here's what that looks like. So just looking for some downside to benefit that piece. We also have this other full iron condor on in DIA, which you see is still within our range, so nothing else to do on that piece at this point. Next trade was a closing adjusting trade in soybeans. So we closed our call vertical. That was previously part of an iron condor. Price moved up nicely, gave us the opportunity to book that winner for that piece. We're still working our way back in soybeans, but coming back very nicely. And we still got the full iron condor in FEB, which we'll take a look at here. And you can see we've had a decent down move the last few days in soybeans. So we're almost testing, just started to test our break even there. So if we take a look at how much premium is left on that call side, you can still see we've got a tiny bit. So if we get continued down movement early next week on Monday, we will most likely close out this call side and potentially add another iron condor in soybeans. But we are working our way back nicely after that huge move that we had earlier in the year a few months ago. Next trade was an EWZ. So we had a strangle on there. Ivy contracted down to 26, gave us the ability to book about 45% of max profit in around 16 days. So that was a nice trade. And if we take a look at a chart of EWZ, whoops, we will see EWX. Not even sure what that is. EWZ, you can see implied volatility was nice and high for quite a while. We were putting on trades, taking them off and on trades. Got this huge contraction in Ivy, gave us a chance to book that winner. So we've had a lot implied volatility sucked out of the market this week. Going into a holiday, sometimes that happens. So next trade was a closing trade in ZN, which is the 10-year note. And implied volatility contracted down to zero in TLT, which is the corresponding ETF that we used, booked a nice profit there of 40% of max profit. If we take a look at TLT now, implied volatility is still very low. Ivy percentile of four, Ivy rank of 12. So we got out of that at a good time as well. Next trade was a closing trade in IWM. So that's the one I mentioned before where we closed out that iron condor for about 35% of max profit on that piece. I originally sent this out as a closing trade and then immediately followed it up with a correction because that should have been classified as an adjusting closing trade because we still have that other piece of the trade on. So that trade is not completely closed out yet, but we'll continue to monitor that trade. Next trade was a rolling adjusting trade in the Qs. So we rolled our 154-157 call vertical from Dece to Jan. And so if we take a look at the Qs, we've got three different pieces of the trade on in the Qs. So we've got the call vertical I just mentioned. We've got 155-158. So looking for a little bit of downside there to benefit that. And then we've got the 154-157, which we also rolled. And so same very similar position, just looking for some downside in Qs so that we'll continue to roll that to keep that short delta but as well as add additional pieces on. Now remember, I only like to have up to three positions on in anyone underlying A. You just don't want to get overextended. Sometimes that's how you can get yourself in trouble if you get too many positions on. So we limit that to three. And then secondly, it gets too confusing with just monitoring the different positions. So we've got three on now. This full iron condor is almost to the point of booking profits. So if we can get a little bit more theta decay out of that over the weekend, we'll probably book profits on that piece early next week. And then that will give us the ability to kind of recenter a new one if implied volatility pops up and collect some more credit. So that's what we're doing on the Qs. Next trade was another rolling adjusting trade in Ford slash ES. So this was our short call vertical, the 2590 to 2620. So we moved that from these to Jan and moved our strikes to 2670, 2700. We have to remember with futures, we got a role in two separate chain transactions. So we essentially bought this one back and then resold this one out in the next month to extend duration. And if you go back to ES, I already showed you the long put vertical. Then we've got the short call vertical here. Let me reset these again. Sometimes toss has that little quirk where it makes your reset before you can check the correct boxes that you want. So the call spread that we're looking at here is, you know, still barely in our range here, but again, need a little bit more down movement to benefit that piece. Next trade was a rolling adjusting trade in the Qs. I already mentioned that one. That was 154, 157. And we just rolled that from these to Jan with the same strikes. We're able to collect a little credit, which is always helpful. Next trade was an earnings butterfly that we put on in Adobe. So if we go to the chart in Adobe, we can see that right before earnings implied volatility per centile is near 100. So really high. The anticipation was, you know, after this big announcement that we got caught up in October, you know, there was a lot of uncertainty around what the earnings would look like. And a lot of times when that happens, all the fear is kind of, you know, priced into the market. So we were able to get a really nice big wide butterfly spread on before earnings. And of course, we got the little bit of a volatility crush right after, right after the earnings announcement. And we were able to book a quick profit in Adobe the very next morning. We put this on on Thursday, took it off this morning on Friday and booked a nice profit. You know, we put it on for $5.97, sold it off at $9.40. So about $343 in just overnight per contract. So that was a nice one. And then the next trade was a opening trade in Costco. So Costco also announced earnings last night on Thursday after the close. So anytime a stock announces earnings and then their expected move the next day is above. So the expected moon is above or prices above the expected move. Then we typically look for price to kind of stabilize to grind higher. So we put on a short call vertical in Costco. Now had a couple of members email me that they didn't necessarily get in at that price. And that's just that's part of how that works sometimes in a fast moving market. It kind of Costco kind of jumped up on us pretty quickly. You know, I think I got in about about right here and price shot up. And so a lot of people didn't get in right away. Now it has subsequently pulled back. So you're not going to get filled quite as good a prices because yeah, you can see I'm in the profit about 30 some bucks. But I anticipate, you know, Costco to continue to kind of stay above this level. The trade sideways to kind of hire is what we would expect. And that would benefit this piece along with implied volatility continue to potentially contract a little bit more, which would also help that position. So I really like those trades. They're very high probability trades. So we'll see what happens in Costco. Next trade was a closing trade in EEM. So we had this on for just eight days and we're able to book a profit of 40% of max profit due to the contraction in implied volatility. So if we take a look at the chart of EEM, you can see again, we just had this all this premium just sucked out of the markets, which helps those short premium positions. Next trade and lastly was we got back into Adobe. So what we did is we sold a post earnings iron condor in Adobe and implied volatility was still at 77. At this point when we put it on, as I mentioned, we'll look to book this at about a 30 to 40% of max profit depending on how quickly it comes. And then secondly, I also included the back tester results. So you can kind of take a look at that. These are really helpful around earnings trades and if you haven't taken our earnings course, I'd highly suggest you do before entering any of these trades because there's a lot of nuances around them and we detail that out in the course. But I included the back tester here just to give you an idea of one of the things that I was looking at before I put this trade on. So you can just copy and paste that link into your browser and it'll actually give you this. And even if you're not a subscriber yet, it'll give you this. And take a look over the last 19 earnings cycles, we put this on at about the 20 delta 10, actually it was about the 25. So kind of in between the 20 and the 30 delta is what is the strikes that we sold. And so you can kind of see 18 wins, one loss, 16 wins, three losses, really high win percentage, good return on capital. So overall a really good trade. If you want to get full access to the CML back tester, just paste this link that I'm looking at here in your browser like I have. And I talked to Ophir, the owner of the other day, and he is re-extending that navigation trading to $69 instead of $99 a month. And that'll be going away sometime around the first of the year. So we don't control the pricing of this. This is completely a third party deal, but it's something that we use all the time. And if you have interest, you can check it out. So before we end here, one last thing, let's take a look at some of these other positions that we have trades on. We've got NatGas, which has had some pretty weak price movement here. If we take a look, we've got this, you know, and this one kind of blew through our break evens here to the downside. So we are just holding that, looking for potentially a reversal to come back. We've got about, I think, 11 days. Yeah, we've got 11 days left in that. So before we do anything, we're going to hold and wait on that one. And then we've also got another full iron condor in NatGas that is kind of also hanging out at our lower range here. So we need some up movement in NatGas to benefit that piece. The implied volatility in UNG, the corresponding ETF, has stayed really high. So we will definitely be continuing to stay active in NatGas, you know, potentially either rolling our short put vertical that's in the money and or adding another iron condor on there to collect more credit and to continue to add credit and take off positions in NatGas. You've got to take advantage when the implied volatility is high like this. And with everything else being fairly low, it's a great trading vehicle. I went over soybeans, went over wheat, went over adobe, went over Costco, went over DIA, EEM. It's the one we took off, right? Yep. FXI, so this is one. So we've got two positions on in FXI. One is a strangle that's kind of hanging out near its upper range here. If we get a little bit of a down movement, we'll be able to book a winner in FXI. So we'll look at that early next week. And then the other one is this adjusted strangle that we had rolled from December and use a little bit of up movement on this piece. So if we look at them both together, you can see we've got a nice big range to move around in. It just needs some more implied volatility contraction. You can see FXI, one of the other few that has high implied volatility. So we want to stay active there. And then GLD, we put the iron condor on when implied volatility popped above that 50 level last week. And we've got some little bit of profit there, not enough to take off yet. I want to get at least $125, $150 out of this one. So we're not quite there yet. And then IBM, this is a adjusted strangle that we rolled from December to January last week. And working our way back here, we're almost back to break even on the trade overall with adjustments. But I'd like to squeeze out a profit out of this before we close it out. Probably we'll do that before earnings is announced though, which they haven't even set their earnings date yet. So nothing too soon on the horizon there. IWM, I think I already mentioned that one. IWM, the Q's, SPX, and XRT. So we've got two positions on an XRT. This strangle here where price has breached our upside short strike, our short call. And a lot of times that's kind of a trigger to when we adjust. But a couple things here. One, we've got 35 days left to expiration. So there's still a lot of premium in these options. If we uncheck the call and just look at the put, you can see there's still a decent amount of premium in there. So we don't want to adjust too soon. But if it continued higher, we would roll up the untested side as we do. And then the other piece of this is another strangle that's very centered. And we'll look to potentially book profits on that piece if it stays in a decent range for us. But XRT, another one with high IV. So we've got XRT, FXI, and UNG, or Nat Gas, are kind of our three horses that have high implied volatility right now. So we'll continue to stay active there. That's all I got for this week. Kind of a long one. A lot of trades, a lot of adjusting, rolling trades, but overall good stuff. Hoping for some a little bit of downside to the market at some point. Gives some more implied volatility to play with. Other than that, everybody have a great weekend and we'll talk to you next week.