 All right. What's up everyone. Welcome to today's FOMC special event live stream, January 31st, 2024. How's everyone doing today? Yeah, sorry. I, you know, I had good intentions of putting together an FOMC intro song between the last one and today just didn't happen. All right. So the plan is, I've got it in my trade plans sheet in the trade plans channel. But the plan is here in about four minutes. I'm going to enter my FOMC iron condor. Looks like it's going to be about 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 55 wide. Little red coming in today, though, to start the day, market getting pulled down by, it's like primarily Google and Microsoft. Google is down 6%, Lulu down 4%, AMD down 2%, Nvidia down 2%. I guess Microsoft's only down 1%, a little over 1% now. Google and Microsoft had earnings. The Dow is being held up primarily by Boeing. Boeing also had earnings and it did well. Boeing's currently up almost 6%. I did not do any zero DTE this morning. Looks like some of you guys squeaked out some couple of little profits as you, you know, if it's your first time trading it, as you saw, I mean, you're just, you're taking all the risk for a fraction of the return. So to me, it's just not really worth it. But glad to see you guys squeezed out some profits. So I put on a theoretical position right at the open. That would have been the $4 strikes would have been the 4870, 4930. So here's, here's, it was trading at about 790. You can see where it is right now. Could have maybe squeezed out a little profit or trading about the same little off center to the left. So it's kind of a refresher of my FOMC trade. So the logic and the idea behind these is selling an iron condor just before the data is released, which is going to happen in about 11 minutes. And what happens is typically after the data is released over that 30 minutes leading up to the press conference, we get some decent implied volatility contraction. And as long as the move stays somewhat muted, we should be able to book some profits. And then we'll close that out just before the press conference starts, because once Jerome opens his mouth, things tend to start getting a little bit more volatile. And so shortly after he starts speaking, I'm going to enter a long strangle and try to capture some of that volatility with some long premium. I'll manage just the shorts and then I will, yeah, I'll probably just close out the longs as well. Reenter my longs around 30 delta. Okay, so it's time for me to enter my short iron condor. So I'm going to go 55 wide. Oops, got to buy my longs. I posted earlier the calls are juiced today compared to the puts if you go equal distance away. All right, so I'm going the 4920 calls and the 4865 puts got filled at 855. So I've got, I just did my normal and I got to change my stops here. So I'm using a $4 trailing stop. Actually, the stop on my back test is not trailing. I used my template that uses a trailing stop into the $5 trailing stop. So I'm going to change that to a $4 fixed. And this template has a, has a scale out. I will, I mean, if I get to 20%, I'll close half. Actually, my back test is 30%. Sorry, if I get to 30%, I'll close half. I'll try to squeeze anymore. I typically, you don't hit your profit target of 30% very often. If you kind of look through the trade log, you'll notice that in the back test. Hey, Sharkey, if you go to the trade plans channel on my sheet there, it's the FOMC trades. There's two of them. And you can pull up the back test and see all the details there. I got 855 happy. Yeah, so I like to close it just shortly after the press conference starts because there's certainly more volatility typically during both when he's talking and then after he gets done. Yeah, that's what I was saying earlier, Daedalus. So if you look at like, okay, we're trading at 4890. So if you go 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, let's say 60 points away. On the call side, those options are trading for a little under a buck. 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60. The puts are only trading for 50 cents. It's usually the other way around. I'm doing my normal FOMC 10 lot for FOMC. It's your first time trading either paper trade or do it tiny. Five minutes until the data release. Chat I didn't see in Zoom before. Do you want to jump on here? Are you just going to stay in the chat? I was down some calendars this morning for some nice profits. It looks like it had done better, even better holding longer. Got quite a little ball pump this morning with the market dropping, which isn't that normal. Morning before FOMC, I mean volatility usually doesn't spike like it did today. It gives you a kind of stability. Yeah, I've never really traded the FOMC. So just kind of watching today. Yeah, let's close the balance at 225, correct. Interesting to see if we're going through all-time highs or we're going to get a pullback. Love to see some down movement. Let's wait till Jerome starts talking then we'll get some down movement. Yeah, I hope so. I like that juice in there. I like that juice that was in there this morning. Yeah, promise it doesn't start coming out until about two and a half minutes from now. Yeah, but I want some juice in there full time. With normal phase decay from starting tomorrow. Hey, Gonzalo, check the trade plans, the sheets in there with the option omega link that's got all the details. Thank you, discount. Make sure you guys have a plan coming in. Or just try to jump in willy-nilly without understanding what's going on here. Yeah, that's why I'm sitting out. Paper trade chat? Yeah, I suppose I could have, but... You still got a minute and 15 seconds. Yeah, I don't like to be rushed. Let's do 100 lot paper trade. 100 lot. Had a good conversation with somebody last night to join the pro membership. They're excited to get started. They're going to start paper trading. So did your 10% profit put you over the six-figure mark for the month? Yeah, because it's... Let me see. Let me go to her real quick. Yeah, I'm up. Yes, because I'm up 975 bucks in it. And the only thing I have on now is those wings. So yeah. I'd like to get something. No change in interest rates. Market's coming down. New low of day. Just keep on coming, baby. Yeah, 4880. Well, can we easily expect for the last hour of the day after an FOMC day, Steve? Yeah, a lot of times the most volatility comes after he gets done speaking. It's like the market kind of digested and kind of jostles around and then a lot of times finds its direction. So kind of keeps moving. So I see, and this is more anecdotal than statistical information, but yeah. Sure. What I remember is it just typically the most movement has happened either kind of during or towards the end of his press conference and then through the end of the day. And then the next day, I find the market kind of picks a direction and it's pretty trendy tomorrow as well. So if the market's lower here, do we expect it to just kind of then, I mean, for, you know, you don't do power hour, right? No. On days like this. And why is that? Because things are just volatile? Yeah. The premiums will look super attractive, but. Right. Just from testing and trading it live, it's just not my cup of tea. I was trading at 1080 my stops at 1255. So I need a little bounce. VIX above holding above 14, baby. Did we really get above 15 in the VIX two days ago? Or is that that little misprint spike? I think that was like misprint. Yeah, I can't remember. I don't think VIX got above 15. That doesn't sound right. Yeah. Happy. I sell an iron condor right before the data release. And then as soon as the press conference starts, I buy a strangle. So I'm trying to capture some of this initial decay. And we typically don't get the majority of the volatility of the price movement so you can capture some profits here. And then right before the volatility starts, try to, and after we've already had a decent contraction and volatility, then we buy. Buy premium. That's the logic behind it. And what a time does he come on? 25 minutes. Okay. Happy it's in the trade plans channel. So it's on my trade plan sheet or you can scroll up. Discount double check just posted it here in this channel. Yeah, trade plans channel, channel on the left right below this one. So every month I post a video and a spreadsheet of what I'll be trading for the following month. That's where I, that's where it's posted. Yeah, getting a little bounce. Got down to low of 48.72. Getting a tiny bit of decay so far. So what does it mostly, I'll go ahead. I was just saying my 30% profit target's at six bucks. So does it typically bounce around a little bit for the next 30 minutes until he speaks and then it easily see another move one way or the other? Yep. Gotcha. So my spread is trading at 730. My profit target to close half is at six bucks. Can I mute myself and listen to what the business channel is saying here? So it's 48.90 ish. It's kind of my sweet spot, my center. We can kind of bounce back up to where we started. That would be ideal. Sucks some of that premium out. Vic's still holding around 14. S&P down a full percent. NASDAQ down 1.4. Notes and bonds are up. Ten-year yield down about 1.7. Although it's bounced a little bit since we got started here. Euro in the pound flat. Closed out the Feb nine. Time fly. Feb two still about the same. But on a rut duck yesterday, our MES coming back. Coming back into range with this low down move. So this one that has 44 days. Probably hold this till early next week. We're basically after adjustments basically right at break even right now. Maybe up a little bit. This one is pretty close to break even as well. QQQ up a little bit. Just need a little, little 10 point bounce. Dan the B man. He had a 12 points. Oh, you must be doing a ratio. So you just had like a little or two and a half dollar stop. I'm sure that's big enough. If I'm reading your post correctly. A little bounce back up to 82. The expected move to start the day was just under 29. Still over 25 for the remainder of the day. Alright, so I'm up about a thousand bucks. Just need a little, little more bounce. Little more theta decay. Spreads trading at 760. My profit target to close halves at six. I've not tried or tested that happy, but so you're saying after the FOMC release, they increased by 10%. I have not seen that. It usually starts contracting fairly quickly. You know, I guess it depends on where price moves, but we're talking about the same strikes. You know, and then you run into the, well, if I miss my fill, then you miss out on the entire trade. You know, is it worth trying to, you know, pick, try to get the best fill for the entry, but missing out on the fill. You know, you start getting into that whole thing too. But you can certainly test that in option Omega. Just change the time of entry. Yeah, right when the data came out, we did get a little, I mean, it's pretty normal to get kind of a big fluctuate, you know, the bid-ask spreads get pretty wide in VIX right about then. So I don't know if it'd be considered a misprint or not. Previously, March had been more likely for a rate cut. Now it says March and May are both priced at about even odds based on the interest rate futures. Alright, so if we can get it to bounce here in about the next seven minutes, that'd be nice. He starts speaking in about 12 minutes. Yeah, 2.30 Eastern. Yeah, my PNL's now, it's hovering right around unchanged. Going to need a bounce to profit. Right about five and a half minutes till I exit. Back down towards loads of day. I've got a $4 stop loss, happy. So it's, so I got in at $8.55, so it's at $12.55. My spread's currently trading at 9.40, 9.30. Not giving me the bounce I'm looking for. New lows of day. Check the, I checked the test. You can actually hold it a few minutes longer and it's just as good or better. Going in a couple minutes past 25. Let's see if we can give it a little bit more room. I think he uses a pretty, pretty big stop, doesn't he Ken? If I remember right. All right, so I'm going to change my, see if I can get out of it. Get out for a few shekels if we get a little bounce. All right, so it is time to start looking to close. I'm just giving it a couple minutes. See if we get a little bounce. Scratch out a couple of nickels. Press conference starts in about four minutes. Just a little bit more. All right, there we go. So the 8.50, so the 8.40, so the 8.35. All right, so basically a scratch trade. Paid for commissions. Plus a little lunch money. All right, so now I am going to wait until about five minutes after he starts speaking. So 2.35 Eastern, 1.35 Central. And I will be buying a long strangle. Oh, I still have my longs here. I'm going to go ahead and get rid of those. So my long strangle I'll have to do at the 30 Delta. Which currently would be the 48.95 calls, 48.60 puts. That's what it would be right now. I'm going to wait. Every bounce is getting shut down so far. What do you mean by IV is still above 25? What IV are you talking about? The implied volatility for the zero day options is 45.5. The expected move is 25. The thesis is that we've gotten some contraction. And so we're trying to buy premium to take advantage of the volatility of price really moving. So price came out. We got some decay. Of course price didn't go back to our center. Never passed back through our center. So we weren't really able to hit a profit target. But you still got some decay after the announcement and the move. I mean this was a pretty fairly muted move. I mean I guess it was 18 points. But I would assume we'll see a bigger range than that throughout the rest of the day. I mean the expected move still remaining is 25. J-Pow comes on the stand. The market starts to bounce. So I'll be getting in here in a few minutes. Most likely be hitting profit target on that iron condor. But that's not how it tests. All right. So it looks like the 4900 calls and the 4870 puts. Give it just another minute. All right. Going in 4900, 4865. So that 1080. So my profit target is 1460. All right. Jerome, do your magic. Make the market move. Make the VIX come up, Jerome. Has a skin tone, Maro. Jerome, drop the bomb. Do it. Do it. It will likely be appropriate to begin reducing rates sometime this year. I didn't catch that one in it. That's funny. What were they protesting? From to stop. Stop increasing rates. Environmentalist protesting to Jerome. I didn't know Jerome was a anti environmentalist. Oh yeah, that's going to send it down. All right. So I need a quick move to like 4863 or up to above 4900. The longer it takes, the wider it has to go. I mean, if a purple-haired woman barges into my office, I'd probably say the same thing as Jerome. Right back to where we started before the data release. Yep. Seeing that VIX go down, unfortunately. All time highs coming. Yeah, let's not take back all the downside we saw. I need about 4903, 4904 to hit my profit target, but I need it quickly. Up to 4900. Spreads trading at 1120. I need 1460. There's quick six points. Down you man. All time highs coming. For this day is over probably. It's unreal. Russell and the Dow are both green. S&P still down 26. NASDAQ still down 140. So Steve, again, tomorrow, what's the day after look like? Usually you mentioned a little bit about it earlier. Yeah, kind of my experience of trading it. And again, this is more anecdotal, but it's more trendy. So things kind of get digested and the market just kind of moves in one direction. Just like a slow grind one way or the other. Yeah, I like to kind of try to figure out which direction is going and trade futures in that direction. I had a lot of success doing that. It didn't give you full profits unless you held it, Chris. All right, five more points. Quick little five point push up. Trading at 13. Nice Murph dog. Fees, yours hit two. You must have got a little bit lower strikes. I need one more little push. Trying. Trading at 13.50. I need 14.60. It's going to keep going. It's going to keep going. I just need less pauses before it gets there. It's not quite getting there. Every time it does a little pause and pullback, then it has to go a little bit higher. So power hour times in about seven minutes, $4 strikes are 10, 20, 30, 35 wide. We're not doing any other trades after FOMC. And it's hoping to get out of this one before we signed off. And they need another quick push up though. Is Apple today? Tomorrow after the bell. Coming back down. Options still showing a 20 point move remaining. And we're going to come down. Let's get down to like 48.50. I mean, come on. Let's go. That's what I'm saying. Just blast through loads of day. Just there makes trying to creep back up towards 14. It's pal into the questions yet. Oh yeah. He's been in the questions for a while. He's really, they're staying on the business channel here. He's really trying to say the right thing. He's trying to step on toes lightly. Like he's, yeah, he's being very soft. Google stayed still down 6%. Microsoft still about the same and about one and a half. All right, my friends, I'm going to sign off here. I need a, I need price to get back up to towards closer to 4910 or. Drop into the 60s. 50s or 60s. All right, also, as far as live stream tomorrow tomorrow is the first day of February. So Chad will be streaming live in the morning. And then we will be back for power hour. All right, all have a good rest of your day. Take care.