 Happy Friday Navigation Traders, today is Friday, May 19th. Hope everybody had a great week. Don't forget to join us Monday morning for our trade of the week, Navigation Trading Live. We've given out a couple courses for our trivia contest. I think you guys are having some fun with that, so we'll keep that going, so make sure you tune in at 8.25 a.m. central right before the market's open. So let's jump into the trades that we did this week. We were a little bit more active, and obviously the reason being we've got a little spike in implied volatility, and that always makes trading more fun. So let's jump in. On Monday, the first trade we made, and this was our trade of the week that we did live in our broadcast, is we opened a new iron condor in soybeans. So at that point on Monday, remember IVU is still low, and so there's really not a lot to do as far as premium selling goes. So that's one of the times that I like to turn to these grains, which is the soybeans, corn, wheat, because you still get pretty good premium, a good risk reward in those trades. So if we take a look at soybeans, see we had a big move down earlier this week after we put it on, but we're still in good shape, still well within our range, so we'll continue to monitor soybeans. Next trade was in wheat, so we closed out the call side. So wheat moved down, it breached our downside break even, and we took off the call side, and then right after that our next alert went out and where we put on another iron condor in wheat to collect some more credit, widen those break evens, and so if we take a look at wheat, we've got these two positions. So this is our put side and it's since then moved back up, so we could take this trade off now for a little bit of a profit on the overall trade. I'd like to see it move up a little bit more and then we could collect a decent profit on the overall iron condor. And then the second alert that went out on wheat was the new iron condor, and so you can kind of see it's still in our range here, just waiting for some more time and some more theta to decay on that one. Next trade was in the cues, so we had taken off one side of our cues. We took off the put side after price breached our upside break even, and then so we were just holding the call side and it was getting close to expiration, so we rolled that to June and we did that for a couple reasons. I don't roll a lot of credit spreads or iron condors, a lot of times I'll just close them out when it's time to close out, but in this case I still wanted to carry that short delta in our portfolio. I like to, the ratio I like to use is depending on the amount of theta, so in other words the amount of premium we have out there short, I like to have a certain ratio of beta weighted spy delta to that theta. And so anywhere from kind of one to one to four to one, I like to have one, two, three or four times the amount of short delta that I have theta and that just helps protect us from the downside. And I mean that really helped our portfolio when we had that huge down day earlier this week, so that's the reason that you got to keep that short delta. I got some questions from members saying, oh my gosh, how do I protect myself in the case of the market crash? It's amazing when we have a big down day like that, everybody gets really nervous and the way that you do that is by carrying that short delta in your portfolio so that if the market does make a big move down, you're going to benefit from that. Now that does cause a little bit of a drag as we've seen over the last couple of months really since the election, how having short delta in your portfolio is going to reduce your returns, right? Because if the market's just grinding higher, you're making money on the premium you've sold typically, but you're also, you've got a little drag from short delta, but you have to do that. If you're a premium seller, you've got to carry short delta in case of those big moves like we saw earlier this week, so worked out just like we needed it to. So we've got that, we've still got that rolled position on and we're up really good obviously after the big down move. Now price has come back up and we're just up a little bit on the trade, but I wanted to keep that on. In other words, we had a 300 some dollar profit on this trade, price was up in this range here, but I didn't take it off because we still needed that short delta in our portfolio. So you've got to look at each individual trade, but you've also got to look how it will affect your overall portfolio. And that's why I continue to keep this on to look for some, you know, potentially a little bit more down move. You know, maybe we get it next week, maybe we don't, but having this short delta on is crucial. So keep that in mind as you're managing your portfolio. And remember, maybe it doesn't fit for your portfolio. Maybe you already have short positions on. So, you know, make the goal of these alerts is not for you to follow every single alert exactly the way that I do it. The value of this is I'm showing you what I'm doing and then you need to decide how it fits in your portfolio. You need to decide how many contracts to trade based on your account size. You need to, you need to determine how much short delta that you're comfortable with and so forth. So, so keep that in mind as you're managing your portfolio. Next trade was a closing trade in GLD. So that was a, an iron condor and it ran, ran down on us and we only had four days to expiration on there. So we, we closed that out, took a couple hundred dollar loss, not, not a big loss, wasn't a max loss by any means, but it was, it was just outside of our range. So we took a loss on that one and moved on. Next trade was a closing trade in corn. So that was an iron condor, took that off, made about 40% of max profit. So that was a nice trade. We scroll on to the next trades. You can see we have a lot more trades than we typically do because that implied volatility before that Ivy spiked, we put on this implied volatility was very low. Ivy percentile was four in SPY. So we put on a calendar spread and that big move down. I mean, just within a day or two, I mean, price is already touching, almost touching our break even. So it was almost time to adjust, but not yet. And, and as you can see, prices moved all the way back up, almost centered in our calendar. So continue to monitor and manage that. Next trade was in EFA. This was an adjusting trade. So we rolled the puts up. There was very little, little extrinsic value left in those puts. So we just rolled those up closer to price still in the June cycle. So if we take a look, we've got a little bit more of a narrow strangle now in EFA as you can see there. So we'll just, we just need a little bit of a down move and probably late next week or early following week, if we don't just close, if it doesn't come back in center, we don't just close it out. We will most likely roll this to July. Remember, I talked about, I've talked about it in a couple of videos recently based on just experience trading and some of the new back tests, studies that we've been doing and seeing is it really doesn't make sense to hold these trades past that 21 days to expiration. And so once we kind of get to that point about a week from now, we're going to roll out to July, which at that point we'll have about somewhere around 50 days to expiration. And that's where we want to stay kind of in that 21 to 60 days to expiration. The closer you get, the more gamma you have, which, which means that basically the more risk you're taking on. And when you get under that 21 days to expiration, the amount of risk you're taking versus the reward you get is a little bit out of whack. So we want to, we want the highest probability of success. And so just keep in mind on these, especially on these naked positions as we get closer to that 21 days to expiration, we're going to be starting to close or roll those depending on where the position is at that time. Next trade XRT. So we had a Stradolin XRT. This is a, this is a really cool. I'm actually going to be doing a, another video on this just to show you the kind of from start to finish on this trade. So this is a trade that we actually put on back in February. And it was a strangle and we, we had to adjust four different times, but we came out with a nice profit over $450 or something like that on just five lots, five, five contracts on XRT. So very nice trade, just staying mechanical, sticking with the adjustments. Paid off nicely again. Uh, and so this shows a really good example of that. So I'm going to be doing a separate video that I will post on that here probably next week or so. Next trade was in EWW closing trade. I bought that back for about a 55% of max profit. So sometimes you get those, that overnight theta decay that really sucks that premium out. So we're able to make even more than the 50%. I've got about 55% in EWW opening trade in EWZ. Uh, IV percentile at that time was at 52. So we put on a strangle and, uh, and well, once we get to the adjustment, I'll, I'll go through EWZ. If you had this position on you and, you know, what happened at EWZ. Uh, the president of Brazil, uh, got, got himself in a little hot water. There's some kind of collusion going on. So, um, so there's a huge move in EWZ since then. The last couple of days, it's already moved a significant amount back. So, uh, I'll talk about that here on the, on the next adjustment trade. Next one though was, uh, iron condor and IWM. So IV percentile jumped up to 54 when we put this on. If we take a look at IWM, you can see still very centered, got a little bit of profit, not enough to take off yet. So we'll continue to monitor that. If you look at the chart, I mean, look at, look at this implied volatility. I mean it shot way up and then it's already all the way back down to the 21st percentile. So, uh, we'll continue to monitor IWM. And then, and then the next day, uh, we, we, uh, we had to adjust our EWZs. Okay. So this is the, this is the one I was talking about. So what happened was after that news about the Brazilian president came out, if we take a look at EWZ, we put this on right here. Okay. Implied volatility was up over 50, you know, good time to be selling premium. And then boom, the very next day it dropped at one point. It was down 20%. Okay. That's a, that's a huge, huge move. Right. So what happened? Well, it, it blew through our downside break even. So did we panic? Did we, did we get out of the trade and say, oh my gosh, I got, I got to get out. Uh, you know, Brazil's going away. No, we didn't. We stayed mechanical. We rolled our calls down. We actually went inverted, which is very rare to do that on your first adjustment, but we went inverted and so this is, this is what it now looks like. And look at this, prices come all the way back, almost up into our range. Okay. So now we're just continuing to let this theta decay and, and we're going to be mechanical. And as we get closer to that 21 days to expiration, we'll roll this out to July. So this is going to take us maybe a month or two to get back, uh, you know, to profitable on this trade, but that's, that's part of trading. I mean, that was a massive move. And so for those of you who are really scared about trading naked positions, I mean, that's, that's one of the biggest moves that you'll see. And, and of course price has kind of helped accommodate by, by coming back the way it has, but you know, that just shows you the power of the mechanical strategy that we use, even on a massive move like that. We're still not, we're still not that bad. I mean, we're down on the trade. We're not down 1300 up like this graph shows because we, we, uh, bought back the, uh, the calls and readjusted those. So it doesn't take that into account. We're still down on the trade, but, uh, very, very manageable. And the, and you know, that's one of the other keys is you've got to stay small. And so assuming you stayed small enough for your account size, this shouldn't be any issue. This shouldn't be, this is just one little piece of your portfolio. And, uh, and, and that's how you got to treat it. So when that happened simultaneously, we also put on another strangle and we went out to July, okay, about 64 days to expiration. So a little bit further out, then we typically go above that 60 days, but, but based on that huge spike in implied volatility, I mean, when we put this on IV rank, IV percentile, we're both pinned at a hundred. And so we, we wanted to collect some more credit, take advantage of that extreme high IV and, uh, and so this is the other position. So we're already, already profitable on that one and it's helping us gain back some of that money that we, that we're, we're down on that paper loss from the, from the initial strangle. So that's how you want to manage these. Don't get scared. Don't get nervous. The only time you're going to get blown out or nervous is if you're trading too big for your account. So I know I, I say this all the time, but keep your position size small and nothing's going to hurt you. Okay. Um, okay. So EWZ, I mentioned that one had another opening trade. We put on an iron condor in DIA IV percentile jumped up to 78 at that time. So we threw sold, sold some more premium and DIA. And you can see this is still well within our range. Price has since moved up. So we're down a little bit, no big deal there. Continue to monitor that. We take a look at DIA. I mean, we got in when IV was way up here and it's been slammed down with the, with a couple of little up moves today. So the one thing, you know, the other thing to do, you might, the other thing to consider is when Ivy jumps up like that, you want to put on positions. You absolutely need to be putting on positions, but don't go crazy. In other words, don't load the boat because, uh, A, there's, there's no telling that, you know, the market could have continued to move down and Ivy could continue to spike up. So you want to just stay small, put a couple on today and then look at, look at what happens the next day and the next day and the next day and maybe add on a little bit here and different underlines, spread that time out, spread your risk out between underlines, spread your risk out between days. So you got to, you got to diversify not only your symbols, but also the, you know, the time that you put those on. So don't, don't ever try to load the boat in one day, even if we get a big spike like that. Now in hindsight, obviously with, with implied volatility getting crushed back down, yeah, should we have put on more? Well, no, we shouldn't have, but in hindsight, you could have said, wow, I wish I would have. And that's just, that's the life of a trader though. Don't, don't play the hindsight game. Just stay mechanical, do what you know you need to do. And you're going to come out great over time. And then lastly, the last trade we put on today was in oil. So we added another strangle in oil. So let's take a look at the charts of oil. And so we've got two different contracts here. The first one that we had on is the July contract. And as you can see, price has, has moved up significantly. It's, it's on the upper, upper end of our range. And so what I like to do is I like to put on another centered strangle around that to widen our break evens and, and also, you know, collect more credit on that, on that trade. Now, oil selling premium in oil is one of my favorite, favorite symbols to trade. And so, you know, if you, if you look at the implied volatility of oil, it's still not, it's not quite over that 50 level. Let me get to the, let me get to the chart here. It's not quite over that 50 level. We put this on, it's about 42, you know, right in that range. So, you know, the difference between 42 and 50, not a, not a huge deal. But I like putting these positions on because you get such a good bang for your buck in oil. Now that, that has to do with the amount of leverage that oil has. So if you are trading a small account, if you're trading a $5,000 account, let's say, you may not want to be putting these on, okay, in oil because it's a big contract where, where, you know, oil is currently trading about 50 bucks. So you, the multiplier on this is a thousand. So every one contract is controlling, uh, you got to multiply that times a thousand, price times a thousand. So you're controlling $50,000 worth of notional value in oil for every one contract, okay? So it's, it's a big contract. So just keep that in mind. It, it's a great product. It's, it's great. It has good leverage, uh, but the multiplier is a thousand, not 100. As opposed to SPY, for example, it's, uh, 238. So you multiply that times, times 100. So that's, uh, that's 23, uh, 23,800. So for one contract of SPY, you're controlling 20, let's say 24,000, whereas with, uh, with oil, you're controlling a lot more notional value. So you've got to, you got to stay small, keep your position size small. I know I keep beating a dead horse here, but, but that's the key, uh, to this type of trading. So, so we've got this one. So I wanted to put on another one and, and in doing that, I moved out to the next expiration cycle, uh, because if you look at the different, uh, option chains here, the one that we currently have on, it's got 27 days left ex ex expiration. So I didn't want to put on another one with, with that many days. It's not over 30. So I went out to the August with 59 days to expiration to put that on. So if we take a look at that, you obviously just put it on. So it's very centered sitting right here in the middle, waiting for some theta to decay. So a couple of other positions we have on here. We've got an iron condor in apple. So you can see we're a little bit in the profit there. Not enough to take off yet. I've been over a DIA, EFA, EWZ, IWM. I mentioned that one. Lulu still got this iron condor in Lulu. Unfortunately implied volatility. It's just kind of been creeping up in, uh, in anticipation of earnings. So we're probably, we're going to take this off next week, looking for potentially a little bit of a dip before it turns back up. If we do get a dip and we get out of this trade, we'll definitely be out of this by before earnings. So we're going to be out of this next week. So just, uh, just look for that, whether we have a little bit of a loss, even if it's right in our range, we, uh, we won't hold this one through earnings. Whenever cues, SPY, got a calendar. I mentioned that an XOP got a strangle on an XOP up a little bit of money. And that one, uh, but need a little bit of a move down and some more theta decay to take that one off. So that's it for this week. Hope everybody has a great weekend and we'll see you next week. Don't forget to join us on Monday morning for the navigation trading live broadcast on Facebook and YouTube. See you then.