 What's up, Navigation Traders? Hope everybody had a great week of trading. Today's Friday, May 12th. This is the weekly video update. Don't forget to join us Monday morning. We will have our trade of the week. We'll have our weekly trivia contest. We've given away two free courses so far for people who have gave me the right answers on the trivia contest. So make sure you tune in. That's starting to become a lot of fun. So let's jump into the trades for this week. Starting with, first trade was we opened a strangle in oil. And this was in the Oil Futures contract. And so I mentioned here with low IV in most of the symbols across the board, even though it wasn't above our 50 level, it was kind of the highest thing out there. And so I love being involved in oil, it's one of my favorite vehicles to trade. So I wanted to get a position on in oil and implied volatility has just been so low for so long in oil that we really haven't had an opportunity. I mean, look at this, look how just low this was forever, kind of got a little spike and not quite reaching 50, but good enough to get some decent premium to sell. So put on a strangle in oil. So if we take a look here at our graph, so still pretty centered up a little bit, not enough to take off. So we'll continue to monitor that. Next position, our next trade we did was, well on May 9th there was no alerts that day. The next day we did a closing trade and we took off a strangle in FXC. So this was a position that had been adjusted and rolled from the previous May cycle, stayed mechanical and it paid off once again. So we took off, actually I'm going to skip ahead a little bit because we took off another, we did another closing trade on our other strangle in FXC and we made over 45% of max profit in just 10 days in the FXC. Now a lot of that implied volatility contraction in the markets overall and specifically in FXC was of course due to the elections in France and after that news was out, you can see a couple weeks ago we got that downturn and then it's crept down below as that news became more and more certain and that's how that works. So nice trades in FXC, booked some nice profits in there this week. Next trade we did was a closing trade in SPY. So we've been holding this iron condor for several weeks in SPY and it was just hanging out right near our upside break even, you know, had this big move up and then on this day right here we had enough down move to get out of the trade with only eight days to expiration. We were just looking to get out for some profit and looks like that was a good move because it has moved up since then so we would have been kind of right around near our break even had we not taken that off. So didn't get the normal 40% that we're looking for but we still got 35% of max profit on that which is pretty good considering how long we were in it and if price would have moved up it could have very easily turned into a loser. So made out good on that one. And then IWM, so several weeks ago we also had an iron condor in IWM. The put side we already closed a couple weeks ago because the price of IWM moved up as you can see there and so once that broke our break even point we took off the put side because we basically didn't have any premium left in those so we got out of those for basically max profit and we're still holding the tested side or the call side and IWM reversed and moved back down for us which was excellent and so we were actually able to take off the call side and on the entire iron condor as a full trade made over 55% of max profit on the entire spread. So great trade there again staying mechanical and just kind of playing the game letting those probabilities play out it paid off for us again. I already mentioned that one in FXE and then the last trade that we made today was in Apple so we put on an iron condor in Apple. I don't do a ton in stocks I like to stick to the indexes I like to stick to the futures but in this case Apple looks like it's giving us an opportunity and when we put this on implied volatility rank was just above 50 it's right at 49 now hasn't changed much but but that that's you know obviously what we're looking for that IV rank or that IV percentile we get that 50 or above to put these trades on and the fact that they just announced earnings 10 days ago we don't have to worry about earnings announcements they announced their dividend yesterday so we don't have to worry about any short calls and owing on the dividend so so we're in good shape there so so we put on an iron condor in Apple and we'll continue to monitor that now couple couple key things if you look at the trade tab for Apple and we did this with 35 days to expiration which is the right time frame that we want but the one thing and and I wish they had you know single point wide strikes but unfortunately some option chains and some symbols just don't so for example in Apple these strikes are five points wide so you're either going to choose as your short strike the 17 delta or the 33 delta and then on the put side either the 24 or the 45 so on the put side I went with the 24 delta which is pretty close to what we like to sell out which is typically around that 20 delta on the call side I ended up bumping it up to the 33 so this is a bit more of a bit of a tighter tighter iron condor than we traditionally like to put on but if we if we move our dashes to break even and make sure we got that 7617 so you can see that our initial probability of profit for expiration is almost 52% we like to see that closer to around 60% but the benefit that you do get on the flip side you know there's always a risk and reward or you know give and a take to every every scenario the benefit is we got more credit so we collected more credit but our short strikes are just a little bit tighter a little bit closer to price than we normally put them on but that's okay looking for just apple to stay in a range it's obviously been on just an explosive move way back here back in November it's really when it started and and it's already is it almost $156 so hopefully we can kind of settle down stay range bound a little bit and we'll collect that theta in apple so let's take a look at some of the other positions we've got a iron condor on in corn and I actually tried to get filled on this actually I still have a working order but I wouldn't mind you know holding it over the weekend hopefully there's not any type of explosion one way or another in corn and if so collect some more theta and probably get out of that first thing Monday morning unless I get filled here in the next couple hours and if I do all send that alert out in wheat we've got an iron condor as well so we put this on when wheat was up here and it's had a pretty significant move down nothing to do no no reason to adjust yet let's just hold tight if we get a move back up into this range we'll be able to bank that profit if it keeps going down we'll make the necessary adjustment but but nothing to do in wheat yet EFA we've still got this adjusted strangle just looking for a little bit of a down move and some more time to pass to get out of our EFA position EWW we're close to getting out of this one not quite enough I want I want 50% of max profit on this one so look to probably close that early Monday as well so when we get some decent theta decay over the weekend and GLD so this is GLD has just been a little bit of a thorn it just it won't move back up it just continues to stay down and we've got only what do we have here just six or seven days to expiration I believe yes seven days to expiration so I couldn't get filled on I sent out an alert last week on this I couldn't get filled on the call spread to take that off we like we like to so I wasn't gonna chase price I wasn't gonna pay up to do so so I just so we're leaving the whole thing on if we do get a move back down I'm just gonna take the whole thing off and either way even even if we if we get a down move or not move first thing Monday I'll be taking this off so hopefully hopefully gold goes up a little bit over the weekend but if you're nervous about it going down more just take it off you know no need to stress out of over the weekend or anything I'm gonna I'm going to I like to hold these until you know the last week of expiration so I'll take it off Monday and hopefully we get a move in our direction but we could definitely move down and and that'll that'll cost us a little bit so you need to make make sure you take ownership of your positions I'm showing you what I do and that's kind of the value of these alerts but but make sure you're doing what's comfortable for you IWM I mentioned Lulu so Lulu lemon still pretty centered implied volatility has jumped up on us since then and previously I thought we were going to be within the cycle before they announced earnings and so some of these some of these companies will change that around but it looks like they're announcing earnings on June 7th now so we've got a little bit less than a month we will be getting out of this before the earnings announcement unfortunately that theta decays and is probably not gonna help us as much because of the implied volatility getting bit up before earnings but still you know still plenty of time to to bank a profit on this one so we'll stick with it and hopefully it stays in a range leading up to earnings announcement but just again be aware we will get out before the earnings QQQ so this is one that moved up on us we took off the put side and looking for a little bit of a move down I'll look to get out of this one on Monday or early next week as well obviously gonna take a loss on this tray now it's not the full $600 loss that we're at right now because it's remember it's not including the the profit that we made on the put side that we took off so it will be a loser unless we have a big move down but that's that's part of the game you gotta take you gotta take the losers we've taken a lot of winners off every one of them can't be a winner but but this one looks like it will be XOP so XOP jumped up above the 50 percent level on the IV percentile so we put on a strangle in XOP still very centered nothing to do there yet and lastly XRT so this was an adjusted position it has come back down and centered very nicely for us I'd like to get a little bit more decay a little bit more profit in there before we take that trade off in XRT and the implied volatility is hanging out right around this 50 level so we may look to take that off sometime next week and maybe put on a new centered position to kind of widen out those break evens but I want to get a little bit more out of this before we do so so I hope that was helpful don't forget to join us Monday morning 8 25 a.m. central right before the markets open for our trade of the week our trivia contest and just a brief overview of the market for the trading week ahead have a great weekend everybody talk to you later