 Welcome everyone to this week's video update. Today is Saturday December 24th, Christmas Eve, so Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everybody. Let's go ahead and jump in and go through the trades that we made last week. If we start with Monday, the first trade we made was we closed out at Strangle and EWW. So this is a trade that we head on for 20 days. We were able to take it off for a nice profit of around 50% of max profit. Let's go to the platform and take a look at EWW. Let's see what happened there. So we've got about 20 days ago, you can see how implied volatility was extremely high because of uncertainty around the election in Mexico and after everything came out. As typically is, fear was overstated in the market, implied volatility contracted, giving us the ability to take off that trade for a nice profit. So if we look at the next trade we did is we put on a calendar spread in the NASDAQ in the triple Q's. So if we go to the Q's, you can see implied volatility extremely low. Remember, we put on calendar spreads to take advantage of an increase in implied volatility. So we want to put on calendar spreads when implied volatility is under 10 and in fact when I put this on implied volatility IV rank was essentially at zero. So if we take a look at where we're at in that trade, click off that here. So we're still very centered. We're in a profit. We want to take these off for about 20 to 25% of the debit paid or the risk that we take. So risk on this one about $485. So we're looking to take this off for about $85 to $100 profit. So we're at about $39 right now. So we'll continue to wait on that one. We sold an iron condor in GLD and this was an opening slash adjusting trade. So we're collecting more credit, widening our break even. So if we take a look at GLD, this is the iron condor that we just put on the one I just mentioned. We do have, we still have another GLD iron condor on. So if we click on that trade, you can see it's moved down on us. So we're right here still in the profit, but I wanted to layer on another iron condor. So we're simply widening out our break evens. We're bringing it out here. So we've got two separate GLD iron condors on and implied volatility for GLD still around 36. Not bad. We had a good contraction. I was hoping to take that off. If we would have gotten a little bit of an up-moving GLD, we would have been able to take our one iron condor off, but now we've got two on. So hoping to keep that credit on both of those positions. So we'll see what happens next week. Need a little bit of an up-move and gold. Next trade was a closing trade in GDX. So this is one where Ivy spiked up. We put on a strangle and then it contracted and we were able to take this off for about a 30% of max profit in just five days. So let's take a look at GDX. If we see what happened to implied volatility, it was way up here. When we put that on, we got a quick contraction price stayed in a very narrow range. It's not normal that we can take these trades off in such a quick amount of time, but when you get those opportunities, those are excellent trades to take profits on. So let's go to the next trade. By the way, you see all these unsubscribed test posts. Some of you may have gotten multiple kind of test text messages and emails over the past weekend. And so I apologize for that. My developer was doing some testing on our unsubscribe issue. And so I apologize for that if you got multiple text test messages. So we got that corrected. So all is good there. Let's see. So if we go to the next trade, it was a closing trade on XLV. So the Ivy percentiles contracted down all the way down to four gave us a good opportunity to take that off for around 50% of max profit. So if we take a look at XLV, you can see it. It was up here kind of when we when you entered the trade, price moved up and then down a little bit. Volatility contracted gave us that chance to take that that nice profit in XLV. And we don't have a current position in XLV right now. So that one is completely closed out. SLV, the Silver ETF. Ivy was currently at 71 when we took when we put this on. So great time to be putting on premium selling strategies. And we did it. We did a straddle. Now one of the reasons we did a straddle over a strangle or an iron condor is because SLV is a very low priced stock. So if you see, you know, look at the amount of premium that you're looking at the pricing of these options. So you've got to get really close to the money to get any type of decent credit. So on something that's like a $14, $15 stock, really the only strategy that you can do is like a straddle or a very tight strangle to collect enough credit to make it worth your while. So you can see implied volatility is contracted a little bit. We're in the profit here on straddles. Remember, we want to take these off for about a 20 to 25% of max profit. So give this a little bit more time. If we get a little bit more contraction in IV, we'll take that one off for a profit next week. XLU, closing trade in XLU. So this one, we made a quick 30% of max profit in about eight days. So remember, when you're doing these one standard deviation strangles, just like I teach in the course, if you, you know, ultimately we want to get 50% of max profit, but if you get, you know, 30% of max profit in less than 10 days, in this case we got it in eight days, you got to take those profits and run. Take those profits, redeploy the capital. Now we still have another very tight strangle that had been adjusted at 46 and 47. So let's take a look at that. So XLU, so here's our, here's our previous adjusted strangle. And so you can see we're right up here against the break even. So if it keeps moving up to the upside, we will both roll our puts up and collect more credit. And depending on what implied volatility does next week, if we, if we stay in this area or spike up a little bit, I'd be looking to layer on another position to collect more credit, widen out these break evens and manage another position in XLU. So we'll wait to see what happens and obviously send out alerts as they're needed for XLU. Natural gas. So in this one, we opened another strangle, added more credit, implied volatility, still very high at 73. So now we've got two positions on in natural gas. So we've got our original position, which was an adjusted strangle that we rolled from January to February last week. So we're still fairly centered, just looking for a contraction in IV and price to kind of stay in this range. And we'll, we'll continue to monitor that. But because of the high IV, we wanted to add another position on. And so we added another strangle. We can see we're in good profit here, up about $275. Not enough to take it off yet. We want some more profit in that one. So we'll continue to wait and manage natural gas. And then on, on the 22nd, we put on an iron condor in Lulu, which is Lulu lemon. So for all you men out there with your yoga pants, this one's for you. We IV was currently at 63. So just taking advantage of that high IV. Now, one question I got from several members was, Hey, you know, Lulu is not on the watch list for iron condors. Why did you decide to put this trade on? And the reason is from time to time, different symbols will become more liquid, there'll be more activity. So if you look at Lulu and you go to the the right kind of the at the money strikes, I mean, look how tight these these bids. And in fact, when I put this on, the spreads were only one or two cents. You can see that about four cents. Now, when I put that on, the spreads were extremely tight. There's a lot of liquidity. You can see the open interest on both the calls and the puts. And so if that's the case, I mean, that's that's what we're looking for. So if this continues to stay as liquid as it is right now, I'll probably add this to my permanent watch list. But in this case, it ends up being it's a great trading vehicle right now because of all the activity. And so we're still very centered, a little bit in the profit pretty much at a break even at this point. So we'll continue to wait. You can see, you know, after earnings implied volatility got crushed a little bit, but look, it's still at 64. So it's still staying high enough to give us the opportunity to where the options are expensive enough to sell some premium in Lulu. So there's obviously some uncertainty around Lulu, which obviously was what causes those options to be more expensive. So we'll continue to monitor that. And that's why I, you know, in this kind of situation, I wouldn't put on an undefined risk. I wouldn't put on a strangle or a straddle. I'm going to put on an iron condor, which has this defined risk. You know, I'll put on strangles and straddles all day long in commodities and futures and indexes and ETFs, you know, because they don't really have much of a chance of going to zero where a stock, you know, if there's something crazy happens, they can, you know, a stock can go to zero. So we want to define that risk. And so that's what that's the way I like to trade those to find your risk on stocks. And you can use a better probability of success, like a strangle or a straddle on ETFs and futures. So let's see, going on to the next trade in bonds had a nice trade in bonds. We were actually in this for 24 days, but we're able to finally wait it off and take it off for a 50 percent of max profit. So if we look to see what happened in IV and bonds and remember the bonds are not going to give you, ZB is not going to give you an accurate reading on the implied volatility. So you've got to use the ETF TLT. And so as you can see, I mean, bonds have just been grinding lower and lower and lower. So we've been in the lower range of our strangle for the last 24 days straight, but we just got a tiny pop up and gave us a chance to take that off for 50 percent of max profit. So it's just a little bit of a little bit of a waiting game, but we ended up benefiting from doing so. Then in IWM, we closed out our iron condor for a nice profit in 10 days. You know, this was again, part of one of our adjusting trades. Glass cycle, we had a ended up having an overall, we had a losing position in IWM, but again, you keep putting these trades on, collecting more credit, taking off those trades for profit, and you'll get back to that, get back to that point. So IV is currently at 14, so I didn't want to put on any more trades in IWM. If we get a pop in IV next week, we'll look to add a position in IWM. That's one of the symbols that we almost always want to have a position on because it's so liquid, so easy to get in and out of in such a good trading vehicle. And then TLT, we had an opening trade, so we sold an iron condor out in the FEB cycle. IV is currently at 54, so good time to sell some premium. So if we took a look at our TLT, so here's the position. So here's our January position. We have an iron condor and it's got enough profit that we want to take this off. I was trying to get filled on this trade both Thursday and Friday, but just did not get filled at the price that I wanted. So we give it a couple extra days of theta decay over the weekend. And hopefully, unless bonds make some crazy move over the weekend, we'll take this off for a nice profit on Monday. And because the IV is over 50, we went ahead and put on another iron condor in the February cycle. And as you can see, we just put that on, so we're centered, and so we'll wait to see what happens in TLT for that one. Next trade, XLF, closing trade. So we took that off for a nice profit in just 11 days, about a 30%, about 20-25% of max profit. Remember, this is a straddle, so we take it off for 20-25% of max profit. Now, we've got another straddle that we are still holding in XLF. So let's take a look at that. So we have this 22 straddle. We also had a 24 straddle that was centered right around where price is. Price stayed right there, so we took that off for a profit, so we're still holding this 22. Now, what we'll do next week is we will either, well, probably both, we'll roll the puts up closer to price to collect more credit. And if we get a pop in IV, I'd look to put on another trade, so another straddle or another strangle more centered around price to collect more credit and just continue to work this position into total profit. Let's see, so, and then the last trade we made was in XRT. So we sold a strangle in XRT IV at 67, so a good opportunity to sell premium in XRT. So you can see it's still very centered and we'll continue to monitor and manage that. So, I mean, look at this spike in IV. I mean, giving us the opportunity to put that trade on it in XRT. So what caused that? Well, XRT is the retail ETF. Well, what's going on in retail right now? There's uncertainty because it's the holiday season and when they come in and report the numbers on holiday sales, that's what's creating this uncertainty. You know, look, leading up to the holidays. Look what happened. IV's been fairly high. And then once the numbers come out, most likely implied volatility will contract, giving us a chance to take profit, assuming there's not too huge of a move in the overall underlying ETF. So just giving you a little background insight on kind of the philosophy of implied volatility and why it spikes and contracts and so forth. So we'll keep an eye on that. So let's go, let's take a look at some of our other positions in oil, the C, 4 slash CL. We've got this adjusted strangle. We've adjusted twice. We ended up having to go inverted, meaning the puts are now up here at 52. They're higher than our calls because oil has continued to move higher and higher and higher. So I want to, I want to put on another strangle more centered around price to help manage and widen out these break evens. The problem is, look at where IV rank and IV percentile are. They're at zero and one. So extremely low. I'm not going to put on another premium selling strategy when implied volatility is that low. If we get a little bit of a pop, even up to 20, I would look to add another adjusting position onto this one, but IV rank is just too low to do it right now. So we'll continue to monitor and manage this. If price continues to move up, we'll continue to roll our puts, continue to roll our untested side up, collect more credit, and if we get a move down in oil back into our range, we'll continue to just wait and collect that theta. I already went over natural gas, bonds. We've got a iron condor still in soybeans. So if we take a look at price has moved down in soybeans, so it hasn't crossed our break even yet, but it's pretty close. Most of the juice has been sucked out of that call side. As you can see, there's really nothing else to make. That call side is not really helping us. It's at full profit. So next week, I will look, I'll be looking to get out of that call side and potentially add another iron condor in soybeans to widen out those break evens and collect more credit. EWW, I already went over that one. FXC, this is the Euro. We've got a strangle in here. You can see this is one of the few symbols out there that's got really high implied volatility, a lot of uncertainty around the currencies right now. So giving us a good opportunity to sell premium. So we're in the profit there, not enough to take it off yet. FXY, this is a strangle that we had adjusted and adjusted to the point where now it's essentially a straddle where both strikes are at 83. So we'll continue to wait and let that theta decay. I was looking to put on another strangle to kind of widen out those break evens for FXY, but IV was just kind of too low. Now we've got to spike up to 38. That's good enough to adjust with. If it stays around that area goes a little bit higher next week. We'll add on another position in FXY. GDX went over that one. We took off a profitable position. We still got the 21-22 adjusted strangle in here. We're in the profit, but we need a little bit of a move up to take that one off. GDX, to put on another position on here, you see implied volatility. It's just too low, so I'm not interested in doing that unless we get a spike in implied volatility. GLD, we went over Goldman Sachs, those are money flow trades. So let's take a look. So we've still got this iron condor in Goldman Sachs that we've had on for a couple weeks. We put that on when implied volatility was high. Price did move up on us, and then it stayed pretty stagnant. We've got that contraction, so we simply need a little bit more contraction in implied volatility and or a potential small move down to take that one off for a profit. Let's see QQQ. We went over to that one with SLV. We've got a straddle there. I mentioned that one. SPX, we've got this double calendar. So originally we had on this calendar price moved up past our break even. So as I teach in my calendar course, you add another calendar to the side that the price is moving. So I added another calendar here. So now price is still in our range. We've got this double calendar. We need a move down and an increase in implied volatility to make a profit in SPX. SPY, we're in good profit here in our iron condor. We simply need a little bit of a move down, a little bit of a contraction in an IV, and we'll take this one off for about a 40% of max profit. Hopefully do that early next week. TLT, already went over to that one. XLF, already went over to that one. XLU went over to that one. XLV, nothing there. And XRT, we've gone over that. So hope that helps. If you have any questions, please post them in the forum on the website and we'll be looking forward to making some more good trades next week. Happy trading and have a great holiday. Talk to you next week.