 Hey everyone welcome to this week's video update. Hope everybody had a great week of trading today is Friday, August 4th Before we jump into the alerts Just wanted to make you aware of something that we are starting to roll out if you go to your if you're in your members area here Or it's on the front page of our website as well if you scroll down, but in the VIP premium upgrades One thing we just added was this options strategy back tester So I'll be talking more about this But if you want to check it out and kind of get an idea of what it is and how it works It is it's gonna be a game changer for a lot of reasons where you're able to back test different strategies so if you wanted to back test iron condors in Facebook or iron condors in Apple or put credit spreads in Google, you know, you can you can basically back test anything that you can think of any strategy and It's done all within seconds on this option strategy back tester So if you're interested check that out I'll be doing more videos and talking about that in the coming weeks, but let's let's jump into the alerts and Go over what we did this week. So starting with Monday our first trade Was I was an opening trade that we did in Amazon So we we sold an iron condor in Amazon if we go to the platform and take a look Amazon announced earnings on on 727 so one of the things that we've really been testing in part of this goes back to the options back tester with the help that it's providing is Looking at entering premium selling strategies right after the earnings are announced Okay, so we wait for the stock to do its little big move It's gymnastics flip dip skip around and then a lot of times what happens is this stock kind of settles into a range Now we do get the implied volatility crush after earnings But based on just the fact that a implied volatility at that point then just kind of stays low And you typically don't get a big spike And the stock stays in a specific range Bodes well for premium selling strategies. So we're gonna be doing more about that. I did send out this the alert alert For that type of strategy, but in this case implied volatility was over 50 as well So we're getting some really rich premium in those options good time to sell so it made sense But in times even when volatility gets crushed really low, we will be looking to put on some of these post earnings premium selling strategies so post earnings iron condor strangles Butterflies and I'm gonna be doing more more videos and we're actually coming out with a course all around earnings announcements with stocks It's I don't I almost I want to I don't want to I don't want to preface it too big But I wanted to tell you I think it's gonna be our best course yet So look for that in the next few weeks But that's what this was all around was a post earnings iron condor and Amazon Still very centered here nothing to do you a little bit move up and a little bit more contraction or time to pass and contraction in IV or time to pass and And we'll look to get out of that one Next trade we made was a closing adjusting trade in wheat. So we closed out the call side So the grains continue to move down so it breached our downside break even so we closed out the call side and then Simultaneously entered a new iron condor out in the October cycle So now we've got the put side of our iron condor in September in wheat and we've got a full iron condor in October so let's go to the platform and take a look at wheat So here's our September one it just continues to move down But remember all we need here is a move back up to about four seventy five Four eighty and we'll get out of this and end up having a profit on that trade So we've still got a decent amount of time left still got 21 days to expiration I think the tendency especially for newer traders is to panic when it breaches like this and and and you Don't want to get out and you end up taking the loss But a lot of times it comes back into our range and we can get out for a profit in the overall trade And then the other reason that we and then the other thing that we do is we add another iron condor So we're collecting more credit. We're widening our break evens. This one's out in October So we're extending our duration. We're giving ourselves more time to be right So be patient let these probabilities play out if if wheat does continue to move lower We'll make the necessary adjustments and continue to work our way through that trade But you got to stay mechanical stick with the program. It works Next trade was a opening trade in XLK so IV spiked up in XLK and we put on a short straddle So you can see we're very still very centered here got a little bit of profit not enough to take off yet If we look at the chart of XLK and that's basically the technology ETF you can see implied volatility is starting to come down now from where we got in so we got in at a good point and so now we need a little bit more time to pass and For XLK to stay a little bit range bound for a for a little while Next trade was very similar to wheat basically the same thing soybeans. It was coming down so it breached our downside break even so we took off the untested side we took off the call side and Then we simultaneously entered a new full iron condor in soybeans to collect more credit Again going out to October extending that duration and So if you take a look at soybeans kind of the same story as we saw in wheat, we've got price that moved down out of our Put side vertical here, so we need to move up to benefit there And then we have the full iron condor that we put on to Widen our break evens and extend that duration. So just be patient in that and see what happens Next trade was a closing trade in RUT, which is the Russell 2000 index booked a booked a nice profit in RUT and You remember a calendar spreads we put those on when implied volatility is low and Then when implied volatility spikes that helps our position So we put it down when implied volatility is up down here got a nice little move down and implied volatility popped up and so we were able to get out of that for for a nice profit the Other the next trade and another closing trade in QQQ, so we had a strangle on in the cues We're only in this trade for 12 days booked a profit of over 35 percent of max profit now implied volatility in the cues is Yeah, you still got the well, it's not it's not over 50, but it's still around that level So next week if we get it if we get a little bit of a pop-up and implied volatility Which would mean a down move in the actual index Then we'll look to re-enter either either an iron condor or a strangle depending on the risk reward that we that we have at the time We'll look to re-enter another trade there XOP we had a closing trade So this was a trade that we originally had a strangle on in we had to make a couple adjustments and We've got a nice move down nice contraction in implied volatility and gave us a chance to get out of that Really just for a small profit after you make a couple adjustments You're really just trying to kind of get back to break even or eke out a small profit We made a little bit of a profit on that and got out of the trade if we take a look at a chart of XOP The implied volatility is still decent in there. Well, it was just man We've got a little bit of a decent contraction here just in the last hour So so we would need implied volatility to pop back up to you to re-enter a position in XOP So we'll look for that as well And lastly we did an opening trade in corn so these grains continue to have Nice risk reward because of the high Pricing of the options. There's been a lot of build volatility which creates opportunity for us so this one is still very centered we just put this one on today and And so if we take a look at the graph you can see still very centered no profit or loss yet So continue to wait on that if we take a look at some of the other well actually let me go back first Let's go to the positions that we closed So we had these three closing trades booked a profit in the rut for 195 bucks in the queues for 159 and this was the XOP strangle that we had adjusted and just eked out a Small profit booked that and we'll look to redeploy or reposition in that if implied volatility pops back up And then our current portfolio is always shown here as well I like to just for this video. I'll just go to go to the platform To to go over these so we have the we have the ES which is the E-mini S&P futures And we have a put spread in there and really this is this is there Specifically for as a directional position to give us short Delta in our portfolio I know I harp on this all the time But when you're selling premium the way that you protect yourself is to keep on short Delta So if we have a sharp move down, we're going to get some benefit from this now as the market continues to Grind higher these short Delta positions are going to create a little bit of a drag on our Performance, but you have to have it there for protection. So that's that's what that's there for mentioned corn mentioned soybeans we Amazon DIA kind of the same thing We're holding this for that short Delta that we have This was actually or this was originally part of an iron condor that moved up and we took off the the untested side And a lot of times we'll we'll take off the whole thing But in this case we rolled just the call side to continue to keep that short Delta in our portfolio So we'll continue to hold that and that's in the August cycle. So we still have 14 days left on that. We'll look to get out of that You know in the last week before expiration Facebook we've got a we've got a position on in Facebook. So They had announced their earnings back on July 26th and After the had a little bit of a jump up and then settle down We put on a butterfly looking for Facebook to still stay in a range and for that implied volatility to continue to contract We we look for about 20 to 25 percent of our debit paid on these So as you can see here total risk or amount paid for this was $631 so we want at least 120 bucks a profit. We're at about a hundred dollars right now So we'll continue to monitor that and and wait for some more profit before we exit FXC this is a this was purely a directional play the euro has just been on an absolute tear to the upside and Just looking at that from a from an overbought situation Looking for a short-term pullback. We got in back about right here And then it continued to climb. We're starting to see that pullback now if we can get a little bit of continuation more down to the downside That'll benefit this position and we'll want to we'll want to book this profit when we get to Between 25 and 50 percent of max profit on that trade GLD gold we've got this double calendar still here still within our range the implied volatility in gold You know it went back down again today We really need a pop in IV and in gold to kind of stay in this range right in here And and we'll get out of that with a profit the front month in that GLD has 14 days So we'll be looking to exit this next week Maybe early the next week at the latest, but we're continuing to wait for profits in that one SPY we had an iron condor in and we took off the Contested side when it breached here now. We just need a little bit more of a down move in SPY to benefit that XL K. I mentioned that we have the straddle and then lastly XRT, which is the retail ETF We've got a strangle on here implied volatility continues to stay high which is so great vehicle to sell premium in and We'll just wait we're waiting for some theta to decay and some time to pass to book a profit in XRT So that's all the trades for the week. Hope everybody has a great weekend and we'll talk to you next week