 Hey everybody, today is Friday, August 11th. Welcome to this week's video update. Hope everybody had a great week of trading. Let us jump into the alerts for the week. So finally starting to get some volatility in this market, which is great, means more opportunity for positions. And I'll go over kind of my thinking and methodology for going forward for putting on new positions. But first, let's jump into the trades from the week. And the first one we put on was a, we opened a strangle in the Euro currency. So there's Ford slash 6E. In this case, it's the September contract. So it's 6EU7. And what I mentioned is, the current IV is almost up to 50, not quite, but it was kind of the highest on the board as far as putting on new premium selling positions. I also mentioned, if you don't have access to trade futures, or you're in an IRA, or you just prefer to trade the equities, the corresponding ETF is FXE. So you could have put this same position on an FXE. The reason I chose the futures contract is because we already have a position on an FXE, a directional position. So I didn't want to double up in the same symbol. So the corresponding future is 6E and I like trading the futures as you know, because you get a really good bang for your buck as far as margin requirements. So if we go to the platform, let's take a quick look at our analyze tab, still very centered. Nothing much has changed here. So we'll continue to wait and monitor that position there. The next trade we put on was an opening trade in XOP. IV percentile popped back up. It was at 84 when we put this on. So we put a strangle on in XOP. So let's take a look at that. You can see here, we've got some profit, but looking for that 40 to 50% of max profit, if we get a contraction in implied volatility and we get that 40% of max profit fairly quickly in kind of that 10 to 15 day range of being in the trade, we'll go ahead and pull that off. Otherwise, we'll wait for that 50% of max profit like we like to get on our short strangles. So we'll continue to monitor XOP. Next trade was an opening trade in the Q's. So IV percentile popped up to 82. Again, looking to take 30 to 40% of max profit in our iron condors. If you like the undefined risk, you could have alternatively put on a short strangle in the Q's, but in this case, we put on an iron condor. We like to mix up our strategies. We want some undefined risk, some defined risk. Again, this is still very centered with no profit or loss yet in the Q's. So we'll continue to wait and monitor that. Now, obviously on Thursday, we had this huge red day, huge down day in the markets, which created a lot of volatility in a lot of different symbols. And so I did get some questions from members about why are we not putting more positions on? Why are you not sending out more alerts in some of the other equities like IWM and SPY? If we look at IWM, for example, we've got a huge spike in implied volatility there. And we will start to put positions on in those. The reason we don't, we have a lot of, we have several positions on in equities, QQQ's and so forth. And they're all pretty centered. So we don't wanna load the boat centered around one price position. We wanna wait until price moves around some, wait to see what happens with volatility. Are we gonna get some follow through on this down move next week? So you don't wanna just load the boat just because you have that spike in IV. You still wanna stagger those positions and start putting them on around different price levels. So we definitely are gonna put on more positions in the equities with this high IV, but you still gotta be a little bit patient because you don't wanna load the boat all around one area. Remember, we wanna diversify our symbols, but we also wanna diversify our time and price so that we're not loading the boat all around one area. So stay tuned for that next week. Assuming implied volatility stays high and we get some more price movement, we will be continuing to put on new positions. This high implied volatility is great opportunity for us. So make sure you're aware of that. Just don't load the boat, stay small, keep your position size small and spread them out as we see price move over time. Next position was, excuse me, next trade was in wheat, so we closed out our call vertical. So we closed the call side of that because price breached our downside. So we closed out the untested side, staying mechanical like we always do in wheat, and then I'll go to the platform on wheat in here in a second because we made a couple other trades as well. But first let's look at this, the next alert, which was in SPY. Originally we had on an iron condor and we closed out the put side because price breached to the upside. So we had, we had left our call side on and implied volatility was too low at that time to put on another iron condor. So we just kept on our SPY call vertical and after that huge move down, we got into the profit, booked that trade, and made a decent little profit on the trade overall. So that's part of the game, staying mechanical, make sure you're following the rules that we teach. And then the next trade was, and this was the two trades we made in wheat today. So we closed out our September put vertical and then simultaneously the next alert came out was a new iron condor in wheat. So let's go to the platform and take a look at exactly what we have on in wheat now. So we've got two different positions. We've got the full iron condor that I just mentioned we put on, still very centered, we just put that on today. And then we've also got the put vertical. So let's click off the iron condor and just click on the put vertical. Show you what we've got there. So you can see price has moved outside of our range. So we need to move up in wheat to benefit that position. And so we'll just continue to hold that and wait to see what happens there. These grains just continue to be volatile. I mean, we got that huge move up and this big move down. We've continued to stay mechanical, make our adjustments and we'll continue to work our way out of that one. And so we've got to get a move up in wheat to benefit that position. But the whole reason we put on that additional iron condor, like I showed before, is it gives us the ability to collect more credit, give ourselves more time to be right, and continue to work out of those trades. So anytime you have a massive one directional move, like you've seen in wheat here, that's going to hurt our premium selling strategies because we really want these symbols to stay in a specific range. So that's when you got to make the adjustments and continue to add those positions to take in additional credit and give yourselves more time to be right. So don't get spooked out, don't get scared, just stay mechanical, keep your position size small and understand that if we do have these massive one directional moves, that's when you got to start making adjustments. And so that's what we're doing. And we'll continue to monitor those. So don't forget when you're in your platform here, when you're in your members area, you can also check the current portfolio and that's going to give you an idea of all the different positions that we have on, including all adjustments. So if we look at wheat, for example, we've had these openings, these adjustments and we continue to adjust and open and close positions. And that's how you have to do it to be consistently successful over time. So let's go to the platform and take a look at some of these other current positions that we do have on. We've got this position on in the ES futures, which is just a purely directional play. Obviously with the big move down yesterday, it helped this position. And remember, we're carrying this one just strictly for that short delta, just for a directional piece. So we need the S&Ps to continue moving down. It'll benefit that position. And again, I know I harp on this, but I'm going to say it every time and that is anytime you're selling premium, anytime you're selling options and you're creating these positions for price to stay in specific ranges, the way that you have to protect yourself is by carrying that short delta in your portfolio. So if we do have a massive move, which it helped us in this case, we had this massive move down on Thursday and holding that short delta helped control that risk that we had in our portfolio. Now, and if it does continue down, we're popping up a little bit today, but if we do get that continuation down move, we're going to continue to benefit because we have this short delta, these short delta positions on in our portfolio. And that's what you've got to continue to keep on. Remember, if the market just keeps grinding higher like it has been in the recent past, then these short delta positions are going to put a drag on your portfolio, but you have to keep them on for that protection in the cases of big down moves. We've got this turmoil going on with North Korea. If you've watched the news at all, there's this risk of now of North Korea with their missiles and so forth. So if something crazy happens, you've got to carry that short delta in your portfolio to protect yourself. Other positions we've got on, we've got a position on in corn, and this is an iron condor, still very centered, got a little bit of profit here, but not enough to take off yet. So we'll continue to monitor that. And then we also got a couple of positions on in soybeans. Along with the other grains, soybeans has made a big move down, so it came out of our break even area there. So we need an up move in soybeans to benefit that, but we had also put on another iron condor in soybeans, which is still well within our range, collected more credit, giving ourselves more time to be right. Next position on that we have is in Amazon. So after they announced their earnings announcement, we put on an iron condor. Prices moved down a bit on us, but still well within our range. So we'll continue to monitor Amazon with this down move implied volatility has continued to stay high. So if we get a little bit of a pop to the upside, which will simultaneously give us a contraction in implied volatility, and that'll benefit our Amazon position. So we'll continue to monitor that. DIA, this was originally an iron condor, and price had moved up out of our break even, so we closed out the untested side. So again, looking for a little bit more of a down move to benefit that position. And again, holding this, because we want that additional short delta, that short side bias in our portfolio for protection. Facebook, we have a butterfly on, and I actually was trying to get filled on this earlier this week. Our total position size here is about $631. So remember with butterflies, we want to take them off with a profit of around 20 to 25% of the debit paid. So we want about 120, 130 bucks. And we were actually almost at that point looking to get filled and get out of this trade, but with the down move and the pop it implied volatility, it brought that profit level down a little bit. Starting to get a little bit of a contraction today, and I'm thinking early next week, if we get a little bit more contraction in IV and it stays in our range here, should be able to book that profit in Facebook. And FXE, this was purely a directional play with this huge move up in FXE. We were looking for a short-term pullback, started to get that, it's popping back up a little bit now. But if we take a look at the graph, you can see prices right here. So we need a little bit of a down move in FXE to benefit that position. That's in the September cycle. So we've got, we've still got 35 days left in that. So we'll continue to monitor FXE. And then GLD, we've got this double calendar. Now price has moved a little bit outside of our break even. So here's the process with this. We don't have enough time left in the options to make another adjustment, okay? Go to the trade tab and take a look. Our front month, we've only got seven days left to expiration. So you need to make a decision here. You can either get out of this position now, take a small loss, pretty small loss here. I mean, we're down 50 bucks on the trade right now. Or what I'm going to do is I'm gonna give it a little bit more time. I'm gonna wait till early next week before I take this off. If we can get a down move, we're gonna bank some profits and then be out of the trade. If it keeps going higher, we're gonna continue to lose a little bit of money. So we're at a decision point here because we can't make any more adjustments. If your assumption is that gold is gonna continue to move higher into early next week, you should take the trade off now. Me personally, I'm looking for a little bit of a pullback. We've had a decent little upswinging gold and if we can just get a little bit of a pullback early next week, we'll be able to get out of this trade for a profit and that is what we're going to do as far as sending the alerts out. In the cues, we've got this iron condor on, still very centered. I mentioned that one. I mentioned SPY. XLK, we've got this Stratalon. So it's still very centered. Let me get this a little bit bigger so you can see it a little bit better. But it's still very centered. Tiny bit of profit. Looking forward to book about a 20 to 25% of max profit in these straddles. So we'll continue to wait on that one. If you look at, excuse me, if we look at a chart of XLK, you can see implied volatility is still very high. Needs some more contraction there and for price to kind of settle down and we'll get out of that one. XOP I mentioned and lastly XRT. So XRT is the retail ETF. Plied volatility has stayed really high in here giving us that opportunity to sell premium but we're waiting now for a contraction in implied volatility and still very centered in our graph here. So we'll continue to wait on XRT. So I hope that was helpful. Everybody have a great weekend. Really excited about next week. Hopefully implied volatility can continue to stay high. We'll put on some new positions and continue to manage and monitor. Have a great weekend. Talk to you next week.