 What's up, Navigation Traders? Today is Friday, September 7th. Welcome to this week's video update. Before we jump into the alerts, just wanted to give you a quick reminder that the new course is in your member's area. So if you are listening to this, you are a pro member and it's right down here. It's called How to Trade the VIX with 92.3% accuracy. Just drop that down and you can start going through the course. The strategy is really very simple. I mean, it's a short call vertical strategy, which you're probably already familiar with, but in this case, it's structured a little bit differently. The VIX and VIX related symbols are different animals. And so there's a lot of nuances, which is why it warranted its own course by itself. So we've been trading this strategy for a long time. I never really utilized it in the alerts. I've actually sent it out a few times. It's been a while, but I want to, and I trade it in our other accounts, but before sending it out for you guys, I wanna make sure that you really understand the methodology and mindset behind it and you have all the training. And that's what you have now. So you'll be seeing more of these throughout sprinkled into the alerts as we go forward and as the opportunities come. But if you haven't already, jump in there and we would love to hear your feedback. Any input or feedback, let us know. We can always improve the courses. We're always going back and updating videos and different things. So any feedback or questions, let us know and we wanna make sure it's the best it can possibly be. All right, let's jump into the alerts. Had a short week this week, Monday was Labor Day. So starting on Tuesday the 4th was when we made our first trade and that was a closing adjusting trade in EWW. So we had an adjusted short strangle and we ended up booking a nice profit on that piece of the trade after the roll, still holding our other short strangle in October. So let's take a look at EWW. You can see the IV percentile is still nice and high at 72. And so let's go to the Analyze tab. Here's the other piece that we still have on. I can see prices hanging out right down here in the kind of lower portion of our range but still well within range, nothing to do here except for weight. If we get a little bit of upside and some more theta decay, we'll be able to book that winner. If we do continue a little bit lower, the first thing I'm gonna do is I wanna potentially add another piece to this, another centered strangle around where price is with implied volatility. As high as it is makes sense to continue to sell premium in there. So we'll see what happens but look for that potentially next week. Next trade was a closing adjusting trade in EEM. So kind of a similar situation. We had two pieces to this trade on. We closed out our adjusted strangle in EEM and we're still holding our other piece. So if we go to the Analyze tab here, price is in a very similar situation. It's kind of in the lower portion of that graph but just kind of in a wait and see period with that one. Wait for some more time to pass. Next trade was an opening trade. We sold a strangle in gold forward slash GC. And I've been getting a lot of questions about this of if I have an IRA, I can't trade the options on futures, what should I do? Well, a couple of things. One, you could, A, tasty works is working on the possibility of trading options on futures in an IRA. So that I think is coming. They're working on it. They haven't provided confirmation that they will get that done but they got short calls in an IRA done. So if anybody can do what they can. So hopefully that becomes a capability in the near future. But until then, I try to give an alternate trade if there's one available. In the case of gold, GLD is a great trading vehicle so you could trade a short strangle or an iron condor on GLD. For trading something like the NatGas futures and you have an IRA. I mean, that's something you just can't put on because UNG is the corresponding ETF. It's such a low priced symbol. It's just not really tradable so there's really nothing you could do. The other thing I would suggest is, and this goes for if you have a smaller account and you're not putting on all the alerts. And what I would suggest is have a paper trading account. So even if you're not putting on the trade for real in your real money account, put it on in the paper money account. The whole goal of these alerts are to help you see what we're doing, see how we enter, exit, adjust trades, roll trades, and so forth. It's not so you can mimic our exact portfolio. I mean, that's just not gonna happen. Everybody has different account sizes, everybody has different risks, tolerances. So that's not the goal. The goal is for you to watch what we're doing and learn how to trade. Obviously, everyone's heard the saying you teach a man to fish. Excuse me, you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, you teach a man a fish, you feed him for life. I mean, that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to help you guys become traders on your own. And so take that into account when you're looking at some of these alerts that you may not be able to put on. So that one we just put on, so it's still fairly centered. I got a tiny bit of profit, but not enough to take off yet, dead center in the middle of the graph. So just waiting on that one. Next trade was a closing adjusting trade in FXI. So this is one that we've been working on for two or three cycles now. Put a butterfly on there. And in this case, one of our butterflies, we closed out our put butterfly side and booked around 35% of profit on that piece of the trade. We still have this other adjusted butterfly. And so you can see price is right here. And so this is really at a point where, we don't want it to go back up in price because you can see our profit sloping down at that point. If it goes up, we're gonna make a tiny bit more money or be about where we're at right now. So what I'm looking to do is, I'm looking to take this off probably sometime early next week. And the reason is is because, A, we already put this one on in October. We did this today. And so it's an alert that I hadn't gotten to yet, but we also have this October butterfly that we just put on today. So it's very similar to rolling. We're just doing it in a couple different stages. We put this one on first and then we'll just take this one off probably early next week. Hopefully if it continues a little bit lower, we'll squeak out a couple more dollars. Even if it starts to go up though, I think we'll look at taking this off early next week. So look for that. Next trade was an opening trade in IYR. So the real estate ETF, IV percentile, popped back up above that 50 level. It was at 64 when we put this on. And so we sold an iron condor. Now, due to where the premium was and the strikes and that kind of stuff, we did a little bit tighter of an iron condor. And so we take a look at IYR. You can see the strikes that we sold, the short strikes were at the 81 and 83. So just two points wide from that standpoint. That does a couple things for us. A, it does lower our probability of profit. So the probability of us making money on the trade is a little bit lower, but it increases our max profit. It gives us more credit for what we sold it for. So when we do something a lot tighter, whether it's a straddle or a really tight strangle or a tight iron condor or a butterfly, we're not gonna wait for 50% of max profit. In this case, we're gonna take this off when it gets to 20, 25, 30% of max profit. So we're gonna take those profits earlier because of the lower probability situation. So that's what we've got in IYR. And if we take a look at the chart, you can see that implied volatility is still up there above 50 at the 58 level. So looking for price just to kind of continue to bounce around in this range. And hopefully we book a profit in that one. Next trade was an opening trade in VXX. So I went ahead and sent out an alert very similar to the way that we teach the strategy in the course. And the reason is is we got an IV percentile pop up to 78 when the market, being that it was going down this week, that increased implied volatility, and with VXX being a VIX related ETF, we put on a short call vertical in VXX. I go over this in detail in the course, so I don't wanna spend a bunch of time on it now, but remember, I mean, if you look at a long-term chart of VXX, this is going back to 2012, I mean, look at this thing just continues to go down. And that has to do with the fact that it's based on Vic's futures and the futures continually roll. So it has that contango and backwardation effect. So it's got that downward drag to it. And so that's one of the reasons that we like to sell these short call verticals on VXX. You can see it's popped up in price now, and we're just waiting for it to contract to benefit this trade. So you can see what it looks like here. And we're looking at, we've got about a 63% probability of success, and we're looking for some downside in this. Now remember, the VXX is inversely correlated to SPX or the S&P 500. So if stocks go up, volatility is typically gonna contract and go down. So this is actually a, when we beta weight this position to the SPY, this is actually a long delta position. So if the market goes up, this trade will benefit by going down. And conversely, if the market tanks, this price of VXX is gonna go up and cause a losing position for us. Now, one question I got from a member, and again, this is explained in the course in more detail, but they were like, well, look at the risk reward. Isn't this a problem? You know, we've got a max profit of 364, a max loss of 2436. Well, think about it, undefined risk. I mean, theoretically you have unlimited risk if you're trading a strangle, right? Well, the reality is stocks don't go up forever and they very rarely go to zero, right? So that's a theoretical. In the real life of trading, we, unless we have just a significant, abrupt market crash, we're never gonna take full loss on this trade. And so this is really a catastrophic loss. You almost wanna think of this as a naked short call, a naked call position. And we're just, but on volatility related products, we want, we always wanted to find our risk, okay? And the reason is, is because this, if things get crazy and the market were to tank, I mean, these things can just shoot through the roof. So we wanna have that catastrophic protection in case something crazy like that does happen. But the reality is, most of the time, we're not even gonna get close to that, even if we close it out for a loser. And we talk about this in the course. So make sure you go through that in detail. But typically, I mean, we're looking at over 90% probability of making money on this trade, the way that we teach in the course. All right, next trade was a closing adjusting trade in ZW, which is wheat. So price had breached our downside breakeven of the October iron condor that we had on. So we closed out the untested side, which was the call vertical side. So if we take a look at the graph, this is the put vertical side that we still have on. You can see price came down, breached our downside breakeven, and is hanging out here outside of our range. So we could use some up movement in wheat to get back inside our range there. And then we've also got a November iron condor on, which is this one here where you can see prices well within our range, just looking for some more time to pass before we do anything on that piece. By the way, going back to gold, one thing on that opening strangle. So in thinkorswim, and I didn't realize this, I've seen it a couple of times, but I failed to mention this in the trade alerts, and actually one of our members pointed this out. So thank you for that. And that is in TOS, the options that we put, we put this on with 50 days expiration. It's got 48 days to go now, but TOS classifies this as the November options. They actually expire towards the end of October. So in Tastyworks, they actually classify them as the October options. So just what I'm gonna do from now on in situations like that, I'm gonna try to be more specific about how many days it has to expiration to help make sure you understand exactly which contracts you're trading, because sometimes depending on the timeframe and depending on where we're at in the cycle, Tastyworks classifies them a little bit differently as far as October versus November. So in case anybody else had that question, I just wanted to point that out. And next trade was an opening trade in SMH. So this is one that we haven't traded in a while. In fact, it's not on our standard short strangle watch list, but we're gonna put it back on because they've proven that they have a lot of liquidity. It used to be, I mean, even about a year ago, SMH was really hard to get filled in. The bid ask spreads were wide. The liquidity just wasn't quite there. And so I took it off the watch list. I stopped trading it, but it's come back. And SMH is the semiconductor ETF. So if we look here at our Analyze tab, we put on a short strangle. And so you can see it's still dead centered so nothing to do here except for weight. If we take a look at the chart, you can see implied volatility. Ivy percentile is still at the 62 level. So when we get high implied volatility here, we're gonna continue to trade SMH because it's a good price, right at $106. So if we sell naked options, the buying power is not crazy. And then if you wanted to find your risk, you still collect enough credit. So if you wanted to trade an iron condor here, you could buy the wings to define your risk and it ended up being a good trading vehicle for both undefined and defined risk. Next trade was closing trade in Baidu. So we had a short call vertical in Baidu that we put on to add some short delta in our portfolio. We ended up booking a profit over 50% of max on that one. So that was a nice trade. If we take a look at a chart of Baidu, get an idea of what price is done here. What you'll see is, obviously, along with the rest of the market this week, we've had a nice down move in the stock there, which gave us the opportunity to book that winner. So good trade there. And then the last trade already went over, which is the opening adjusting trade in FXI where we added a butterfly in the October cycle. So those are all the alerts. Let's take a look at some of the other positions that we have starting with the Euro, Euro future, 6E. You can see price is hanging out well within the range here. Got a little bit of profit. Could use a little up movement to get a little bit more profit in that before we book it, but just playing the waiting game in the Euro. In oil, forward slash CL, we have this adjusted strangle that we rolled. Price has come down nicely this week. So we're up about 470 on this piece of the trade. Once we close this out, we're gonna be a little bit more aggressive. We're not gonna wait for a full 30, 40, 50%. We'll probably book this when we get to maybe 25% of max profit, partly because we've already got, I mean, we're up several thousand dollars on this trade. So we wanna go ahead and book that. If applied volatility stays high and we're getting close to, let me click on the continuous contract here. If we get close to the point where this gets down to 60 days. So in the next eight days, in the next week or so, we may just close that one out and then reenter a new position going out 60 days. So oil has been a good trading vehicle for us and the implied volatility has stayed up nicely for us. So right now it's about 58 on the percentile. So good time to be selling premium there. So we'll see what happens. Of course, if price doesn't stay in our range and it goes and breaks out to one direction or the other, we may just add an additional piece to this and continue extending duration on this piece of the trade. But we'll just see what happens. Those are just kinda hypotheticals of what we might do, depending on where things are at the time. ES, S&P 500. So we've got a few different pieces on here. This is a short call vertical that was previously part of an iron condor. Spread that out so you can see a little bit better. And I'm not sure what TOS is doing with these squiggle lines, but it should be straight. Let me uncheck these, check, there we go. So prices right here, it's just outside of our range. So we need some downs, a little bit more downside to get back into our range there. And then same thing on this one. This is a short call vertical. This one is actually back in our range. And once we get back to around about the 2850 mark, where we're back to the zero line break even on the P&L, we'll probably take this one off, which would equate to a profitable iron condor trade overall on that piece. We're still down on our ES iron condor overall. We've been adjusting and managing this one for several cycles. But on that piece, we would book that and take a profit on. And then we've got one other piece to this and that is a long put vertical. And you can see price had that strong move over the last couple of weeks, and not this week, but the last couple of weeks. And so price has moved significantly out of a range. It's come back pretty good this week, but we're just gonna hold this for now, see if we can get a little bit more down movement back into range, or we will potentially look to roll this next week. We've got 14 days to expiration. So really, especially once we get under seven days, we'll definitely be more aggressive about rolling that. But if it's moving in our direction, which would be down, then we may give it a little bit more room and not start rolling it next week. But all these September positions that have 14 days left next week, we will start to roll them. We wanna be rolled by expiration week, and we don't wanna roll them all in one day. So we'll start to gradually roll any September positions that we have starting next week. I mentioned gold, I mentioned wheat, apple. So apple, even with the market being weak this week, did have, actually had a couple down days, which is crazy, I didn't think apple could go down. But we've got this long put vertical, you can see price as well out of our range. We're almost at max loss, it was way out here. We've gained back a tiny bit. With as close as this is to a max loss, there's no reason for us to do anything with this because there's no adjustments or anything that we can do to help save this. All we're gonna do is we're just holding it until we get a little bit closer to expiration. If by chance, apple makes a significant move down and comes back into range, that would be awesome. But probably won't happen, but we don't really gain anything from doing anything at this point. So we're just gonna continue to hold that. DIA, the Dow ETF, we've got a couple of short call verticals that were previously part of Iron Condors. We have continued to roll those for several cycles and to keep that short delta in our portfolio, you can see price is a little bit out of our range, so looking for some downside to benefit those. EEM, I mentioned that one, EWZ. So this is when we've got two pieces to the trade. One is this adjusted strangle, prices sitting right here and we're up a little bit after the roll that we had done and so we just continue to hold that to collect more theta and then we've also got this other piece which is a strangle that has not been adjusted. You can see price is dead centered here. I've got a little bit of profit but not enough to take off yet. EWZ has been interesting because this week it's actually gone up when the rest of the market's been going down and so that's always good when you need an up move. The rest of the market's going down. We needed EWZ to go up so that benefited us nicely and the same with Johnson and Johnson. The rest of the market was down but J&J was up and we had a bullish position on here so you can see we're profitable on this one. I'd like to get a little bit more profit before we take this off. So I'm hoping we get a little bit more upside going into next week and if so we'll probably book this one but we'll see what happens. Let's see one other one I skipped over. IWM. So IWM we've got two pieces on. We've got an iron condor. You can see here we need a little bit more down movement to before we book that. Hopefully we get that early next week and we can go ahead and take that one off and then we've got our short call vertical which was previously part of an iron condor kind of in the same situation as the Q's and DIA just looking for some downside to benefit that piece. IYR I mentioned that one, did I? Yeah, that's the narrow iron condor. J&J I just mentioned that one. The Q's I mentioned that one, I think. No, I didn't. So Q's are, we've got a couple short call verticals that were previously part of iron condors and you can see this is both of them together but they're only one strike difference. You can see we are in range here just looking for a little bit more downside to benefit that. And again, keeping this on for short delta and just to give you guys an idea of where we are, we're at about, right at about three to one of short delta to theta. So we like to be in that one to one to five to one range and we're at about three to one right now so sitting really good as far as where we wanna be. So we'll just continue to wait on that. SMH I mentioned that one. That was the short strangle VXX I mentioned and lastly XLK. So this is very correlated to the Q's and we've got some short call verticals on here. You can see prices back in our range. We're up a tiny bit on this piece but just continuing to look for a little bit more downside before we do anything else in XLK. And that's in September. So this may be one of the ones that we looked to potentially roll early next week but we'll see what happens where price and volatility and everything else in our overall portfolio deltas are. All that comes into play and we will address that next week. So hope that was helpful. Everybody have a fantastic weekend and we'll talk to you next week.