 What's up Navigation Traders? Today is Friday April 13th. Hope everybody had a great week of trading. If we take a look at just the S&P 500 to start, you know, the 9th was the first day of the week and we just had kind of a volatile grind hire, I like to call it. So some big swings early in the week and then just kind of a little bit of a grind hire. And so looking for an anticipation into next week of potentially a rollover back down to the downside. We're positioned for that. We've got some short delta which I'll go over towards the end of the video here to show you kind of where we stand as a portfolio. But that's what we're anticipating. Doesn't mean it's gonna happen. I mean this thing could obviously rep hire and we would just adjust and play the necessary positions to adjust to that. But keep continuing to keep short delta in our portfolio for the case of some downside movement. So let's go to our alerts for the week. We had actually fewer alerts this week than we have in most. Just was waiting for some positions to come in a little bit more. But we started with on Monday a closing adjusting trade in soybeans. So we closed out a put vertical spread in May and that was part of an iron condor previously. But price popped back up and gave us a nice little profit on this piece of the trade. And then we're still holding a full iron condor in the June cycle. So if we go to soybeans and take a look at our Analyze tab, you can see prices hanging out right here. So no profit or loss on the trade at this point. Could use a little bit of downside movement and some more time to pass before we do anything else on soybeans. Next trade was a closing adjusting trade in FXI. So this is a trade where we had a couple different positions on. We closed out one of our short strangles for a profit of 40% of max profit. We were only in this piece of the trade for 12 days. And so now we're just holding on to our other adjusted strangle in FXI which looks like this. So it's the 49 call 50 put. So slightly inverted. Could just use a little bit of up movement in FXI to benefit that. And overall with the we've made multiple adjustments in FXI and we're at a profitable point in the trade overall. But I'd like to take a little bit more profit out of this trade and if we could get some more theta to decay and potentially a little up movement into next week, we'll look to book that fairly soon if that happens. Otherwise we'll continue to manage as needed. Next trade was a closing trade. So we had a position on in oil for CL in the oil futures. Booked a nice profit of around 35% of max profit only in the trade for about 15 days. So we took that off and booked that profit. The very next alert actually not two alerts later. So I'll just go jump to this one and then we'll come back to IYR in CL a couple alerts later. So basically the next day we took that off on 410 on 411 the next day. We entered a new position on CL and so IV percentile popped up to the 64 level at that point and so we put on a new strangle in oil. And if we take a look at the chart of oil first what we'll see is the IV percentile is still hanging out around the same area that we put it on. So IV percentile of 63 and so we're just waiting on this one. There's no not much decay has happened since we just put it on. So it's still very centered right where we need it. So just need some more time to pass there. And then coming back to IYR we did a closing trade where we had a short strangle in IYR. I had to make a couple adjustments on the trade but ended up booking a nice profit. If we take a look at IYR now we actually have another strangle on that we put on in a later alert and just a little bit of profit but not enough to take off yet. And we wanted to continue to keep a position on an IYR because the IV continues to stay high. Percentile is 83, IV rank of 42. And so just wanting to continue to keep that exposure to real estate. IYR is the real estate ETF. So we like to keep exposure to different asset classes and that's part of the reason we're able to be so consistent is because of that diversification in symbols but also be sure to diversify in actual asset classes. So you're not all loaded up in different stocks. We have as you can see here we've got oil, we've got the S&P, we've got NatGas, we've got notes, we've got soybeans, wheat, we've got a couple stocks. Then we've got some emerging market ETFs like EWZ and EWW, FXI, Chinese Large Cap, Gold, Small Caps, Real Estate, NASDAQ which is primarily tech stocks, Tesla, XLK, XLU which is utilities and XRT which is retail. So we've got a really good mix of trades. I love where our portfolio is and we continue to have high implied volatility in a lot of different symbols giving us the ability to have a very nice diversified portfolio. So we'll continue to keep it that way as long as we can keep that IV high. I went over the oil one. Next trade was a closing adjusting trade in ES. So in this one we had an iron condor price came down and breached our downside break even so we were still holding the short put vertical. And then when this week as the S&P has moved up we were able to take that off, booked a small winner on that piece of the trade and then we're still holding our other full iron condor in ES. So if we take a look at that we've got two different positions on here. The first one that I just mentioned with that alert is the iron condor. So let's reset that so we can uncheck these boxes. So you can see this is still very centered, got some profit, not quite enough to take off yet so we'll continue to monitor that. And then the other piece which is a separate trade not part of our iron condor trade is the long put vertical which we have on for that short delta. And so just you know price is just barely out of our range. We just need a little bit of down movement in the S&Ps to benefit that one. Next trade was an opening trade in IYR. So remember we had a couple days previous we closed out that trade implied volatility continued to stay high. We wanted to keep that exposure in real estate so we opened up a new position sold a strangle sold some premium in IYR at that time implied volatility percentile was at 88 and already showed you that on the graph still very centered nothing to do at this point there. I also mentioned and I try to do this as much as possible but I also mentioned on the trade comments if you prefer to find a risk you could buy the wings and just make sure you're collecting enough credit to justify the risk and transaction costs. So I get some questions about that sometimes and it really just depends on what kind of credit you're getting. So for example on IYR you know we are we've got a max profit of $325 on this trade. Well if you do an iron condor and you buy the wings that max profit is going to come down significantly but of course you do have the defined risk and that's what you kind of give and take but you just got to make sure that the amount of risk you take is worth it. So as a rule of thumb just like we teach in the course we want our max profit to be at least a third of the total capital used or max loss on an iron condor. So with these smaller price symbols like IYR if it's under $100 this one's about 74 bucks. With those sometimes it's a little tough to get enough credit to make it worthwhile on an iron condor. You might have to buy the wings out a little bit further out which is definitely an option as well but on these smaller price symbols I like to do the naked options. I like to do the naked strangles and straddles just because it gives you that credit that you need to make it worth the trade. So it's just a personal preference but that's why I try to put on these alerts you know if you are in an IRA or if you just are not quite there as far as your comfortability if that's even a word with undefined risk then you can you can buy those wings to to define that trade so hopefully that's helpful. And then lastly last trade was today was a closing adjusting trade in XRT. So this is another trade that we have made several adjustments to so we took off you can see it's zeroed out now we took off the 41-47 strangle booked a nice profit there but we're still holding this 46 straddle which originally was a strangle but we have adjusted into a straddle and so now price is just hanging out right here so if we closed it out right here we would we would book a nice profit of I think a little over $160 after all adjustments and everything but I'd like to see a little bit more profit so if we get a little bit more up move we'll probably take that off next week as well as you know obviously if implied volatility contracts significantly giving us some more profit we'll take that. If price does continue lower then we would probably add another centered position around that to adjust taking some more credit extend that duration if we look at the options in May they've got 35 days to expiration so we'll still continue to put positions on in May into early next week and then you know we've got just 63 days in June so we'll start adding some June positions probably late next week so that's kind of the game plan in XRT and in some of these other equities where we've got 35 days in May and 63 in June we'll start to build up that June portfolio so those were all the alerts let's take a look at some of the other positions I went over oil went over ES Nat gas so we've got an iron condor and Nat gas still has 42 days to expiration you can see it's still very centered we've got some profit there but we want to we want to wait for a little bit more before we take that off in the notes forward slash ZN we've got a short strangle on here widen that out for you so we've got some profit here a little over 108 bucks could use a little bit of an up move and some more contraction in IV before we book profits in ZN ZS soybeans already mentioned wheat we've still got an iron condor in wheat so I've got a nice profit there very centered looking for a little bit more profit before we take that one off and I'll have to go back and double check but I think I mean we've been in this wheat trade for months and just continuing to manage and adjust as needed after a huge move against us in the last year in 2017 I think if we took this off right now we'd actually be to the point of profit after all those mechanical adjustments that we've done but I will I'll make sure I calculate that second a second time just to be sure and we'll either add another piece to continue this position or if we're in the profit we'll probably just get out of wheat because we do have high IV and so many other ETFs and other positions so stay tuned on that but potentially early next week if price stays pretty steady and we get some contraction in IV maybe booking that wheat trade apple so we put this apple trade on initially for some short delta in our portfolio and I've gotten some questions about this of you know why why apple you think it's you think it's going down and it's not that I necessarily think apple as a specific position is going to go down but it was you know it had that downside movement kind of popped popped its head back up I was looking for a potential continuation to the downside now we've had it you know with the with the rest of the market going up we've had some up movement this week but remember we put these positions on for a couple different reasons because of our assumption in that underlying symbol so because of our assumption in apple I was looking for some potential more downside in apple but also we wanted to add this as short delta to our portfolio and so you know apple is a stock that was as good a position to put a short piece of the trade on we didn't have any earnings coming up to worry about or anything like that we already had you know short premium positions and a lot of the ETFs and futures that we like to trade so that's why we just chose apple to look for some potential downside now we'll still continue to hold this let the probabilities play out we may roll or close as we get closer to expiration but remember we've got 35 days we've got a ton of time and so we'll just continue to monitor this and it is giving us some of that short delta that we like to keep in our portfolio you can see we've got a negative 20 delta as a piece of that short delta in our portfolio DIA we've got a couple pieces on here so first thing we've got is a iron condor which you can see we've got some nice profit on and we'll continue to to let's a little bit more theta decay potentially over the weekend hope to look to manage this one book a profit on this piece of the trade early next week and then we've got these two short call verticals which were originally from an iron condor you can see with the up movement of stocks price has kind of moved up out of our range but again we're holding these for some continued downside potentially and to keep that short delta in our portfolio and again we've got 35 days before before expiration so we'll continue to monitor that EWW we've got the short strangle here you can see price is kind of hanging up in the upper end of our range so it could use a little bit of down movement in EWW EWZ actually got try it was trying to get filled on this earlier today I didn't get filled and I didn't want to chase it I figured I'd give it over the weekend if we get a little bit of a pop higher in price and a little bit more contraction in IV we'll probably book this one we've only been in this trade for about about 10 12 days I think I'll have to double check that but about 12 days so we're at a point where we could take some early profits in this one if we just get a little bit more I just didn't want to chase on getting it filled so we'll look at that early next week as well FXI went over that we've got that adjusted strangle GLD we've got an iron condor on in gold you can see we got a little bit of profit just looking for some more premium decay before we take that one off IWM we've got an iron condor in here as well so it could use a little bit of down movement and some more theta decay to benefit that piece I went over IYR QQQ so we've still got a couple of short call verticals in the Q's they're just one strike different I've got the 162 165 we've got the 163 166 you can see we've got a little bit of profit at this point on these on these pieces but just looking for some more downside movement to benefit that and we'll continue to monitor that these were originally part of an iron condor and we've just been kind of rolling and managing them to keep short delta in our portfolio and just to continue to manage our way in the Q's trade so if we got a if we got a nice move or even if we don't potentially depending on where price and volatility in our other positions are into early next week you know the implied volatility in the Q's continues to stay high IV percentile around 90 so we could potentially look to add another iron condor in the Q's center that around current price I'd like to probably wait until June gets down to 60 days or under right in our sweet spot of where we like to enter trades not that three days makes a huge difference but just looking for a little bit more time to pass before we jump in that one excuse me Tesla so this is another one that we put on for some short delta and you can see it's still basically right prices right pretty close to where we put it on so just looking for some downside to benefit Tesla if you look at Tesla kind of the same thing as Apple we had this you know huge rally late last week and so we look to put on some short delta and and this looked like a good stock to do it in don't have any earnings coming up too soon we've we've we actually got them in about three weeks now but if we've got a couple weeks and then we'll decide if we want to hold through earnings or not uh but but but we went but we had this big move down and this pop higher and what we were looking for is just kind of like Apple just maybe a potential uh continuation to the downside so we'll see what happens in Tesla but again it's it's utilizing Tesla that position to continue to keep some short delta in our portfolio as well XLK kind of a same same thing we were using this for short delta see we've got a long put vertical a little bit out of our range just looking for some downside movement to benefit that and then XLU this is this is one that I was trying to get filled on as well but again didn't want to chase we're almost to the point of where we want to be of you know we're over 40% of max profit and I'd like to get 50% of this one obviously I'm not going to let it run away from me either so I'm going to you know we'll look to manage this one book book profits here potentially next week and then XRT I already went over this one so so those are all the trades those are all the positions I want to take just a minute to go over to our monitor tab and give you an idea of where we are with our you know I always talk about this keeping this short delta in our portfolio and remember we like to beta weight this to SPY okay so that turns all these different apples and oranges and bananas and grapefruits and helps us compare apples to apples so we're just comparing it to SPY so depending on what you know to give you an idea of based on what SPY does it potentially give you a theoretical idea of of where the rest of your portfolio is going to go so what we've got here is spy weighted delta is you know in May we've got negative 184 and in June we've got negative 32 call it 33 so we've got over 200 short delta and what we like to measure that against is our theta so we've got theta of 81 dollars in May and 67 in February so we've got what is that 140 hundred between 140 150 and then we've got over 200 in short delta so remember we like to keep a ratio of short delta to theta of about you know one to one all the way up to one to five so if we have a hundred dollars in theta we like to have a short delta of a hundred to five hundred and so we're right we're right there we've got a little bit of short delta we've got some nice theta working in our favor so those options decay we're collecting that premium and booking profits and then we've got that short delta for a little bit of downside protection so that's how we that's how we like to manage these and keep that short delta because remember when you're selling premium and you're putting on these range bound type trades you've got to protect yourself from the downside and so that's why we that's why we keep that short delta now if you see us you know if we're it like we were trading at all time highs in 2017 and into January of 2018 we were closer to 500 of short delta compared to about a hundred dollars of theta so we were at about a five to one ratio and when we think the markets it it potential extremes that's when we like to load up a little bit more on short delta in case we can get some downside action if we had a huge move down and and ended up having long delta you know we like to be a little bit more neutral uh in our delta at that point so it's just it's a constant management game managing your portfolios we put on and take off trades and we look at those on an individual basis but then we also look at each position as it relates to our overall portfolio with that short delta to theta ratio by the way one other thing you'll see down here i wanted to mention this i don't know if anybody else is having this problem with thinkorswim but i keep getting these potential reg t calls and and what that means it basically is what that means is they're saying it's a potential margin call but we're using about we're using less than 40 percent of our capital right now and uh but i keep getting these in and just to give you an idea of what you can do when this happens all you got to do is you can hit the little support chat tab in toss and this pops up and you can see here i said hello why is my account showing a potential reg t call this has happened a couple weeks ago as well is this another error so about once a week over the last few weeks i keep getting this this kind of an error reported and and they just said you're not in danger of reg t call this is a glitch in our platform that our developers are working on blah blah blah as rule of thumb as long as your option buying power is positive you are not in danger of a call okay thank you so anyway i just wanted to point this out uh a so that if you saw this in the video you you know what what what that is it's just a glitch in their system and if you've had the same problem with thinkorswim you know giving you that the easiest thing to do is just click that support chat button ask them what's going on and as you can see that it was just a little glitch so just a little fyi i use that support chat quite a bit instead of calling the trade desk it's just easier to kind of type that in and then they'll answer when they do and you can you can kind of respond whenever you're ready so neat little feature in toss all right guys that is all hope everybody has a great weekend look forward to some more good trading on monday and into the future everybody have a great weekend talk to you soon