 What's up navigation nation? What a crazy week in the markets this week? Welcome to this week's video update today is Friday, August 2nd We're gonna review all the trade alerts and positions For the week exclusively for our pro members before but before we do Let's jump into the community and talk about who got caught being hot this week Each week we like to recognize one member of the community for going above and beyond and helping other traders and Sometimes that comes in the form of asking questions. So one of our newer members who joined about a week ago Prashant He came in on fire came in hot into the community asking a ton of great questions really well thought out I can tell Prashant that you are really focused on learning. I love to see it. We're here to help and Congrats, you got caught being hot Let's go to the alerts for the week And actually before we jump into that Let's go back to Monday, which would be the 20. What is that the 29th? Actually before we jump into the alerts, let's just go to the platform and Take a look and talk about the market. So this is the S&P 500 Obviously on Wednesday the Fed came out and opted to lower interest rates by 25 basis points There are some speculation that it could be 50 basis points And what happened was immediately the the market fell not immediately but later that day the the market fell And then the next day had a huge rebound almost took back all of the all of the losses But then it just rolled over and died and it you know continued lower that day and then down to another You know 20 some points today on the S&P We've got about a little little less than an hour and a half less left in the market on Friday at the time of this recording So what what does this all mean? Well? a couple things and then obviously part of this reversal was was supposedly based on you know Trump's action in issuing additional tariffs on China and so You know, that's that's that's what's causing this volatility that we're seeing so Going forward Obviously this does a couple things we had a decent amount of short delta We're over four to one on a ratio of short delta to theta ratio earlier this week And now with this down slide now we're at a point Where we're basically delta neutral and that's how quickly things can change So, you know I I want to give a little bit of perspective and I don't think I've ever really talked about this in a course or in any of the videos but one of the reasons that trading is so difficult is because What happens is when you see these extended up moves especially especially when you're carrying short delta like we do Or you have these range bound trades, which just automatically give you short delta as price moves into the upper end of the range what happens is you start accumulating the short delta and Then when you get that extension that extended up move that becomes a little bit painful, right? and so What happens is Over the course of let's say 12 months and this doesn't happen all the time but in many cases A lot of your money is made within one or two months out of the year and that's why it's so difficult for people to to become successful trading because a lot of people will Grind it out for six months and think man. I gave this a good shot. I did it for six months I'm down money or basically break even I spent all that time trading And I really have nothing to show for it And and it's really in those two months out of the 12 that you really make all the money And you and when you're grinding sideways or you're up a little bit and then you're down a little bit You're up a little bit. You're down a little bit From an emotional standpoint. That's so difficult as humans to uh To to work with because we're we want to win right naturally we are Competitive we want to win and I'm no different. I mean there's there's times that still today Even after trading as long as I have That you get in these positions and you you almost think is this thing ever going to go down again, right? I mean, is this this is this thing going to just keep grinding higher And you know with short delta that puts, you know pressure on our p&l to the downside You know, is this ever going to stop and then boom in a matter of three days Boom boom boom the market drops and now we're delta neutral and we don't have that short delta We wish we would have had more short delta You know all those hindsight games that that that you play with yourself as a trader So I just talk about that because I want to give you perspective that you know Hey, the I'm trading this stuff with real money And so everything that you all are feeling with the alerts. I'm feeling too And and so it's just something that as a trader there's there's never going to be a time when you don't have a drawdown There's no strategy. There's no system. There's no portfolio management that can withstand periods of not ever having a drawdown And so as a trader, you've got to have the right mindset. You've got to have the right mental Focus and understanding that there are going to be those periods, but things can also change very quickly like we're seeing now I sent out the month end update posted on our blog and in the community That gives an update on all of our closed trades Just to give you all as pro members kind of an update of where we're at with p&l with all open positions and everything else is I mean, we're we're up about three thousand dollars on the year, which You know, I mean that's frustrating, right? We've we've been, you know, almost over halfway through the year And we're up about three thousand. I think we started the year with Don't quote me on this, but I think it was like 84,000. So if we have three thousand dollar profit divided by 84,000, what is that like three and a half percent? Yeah, we're up about three and a half percent, which You know, then you start playing these games with yourself Well, you know, if I just would have put it in an s&p 500 index fund, I'd be up a lot more You know those those kind of things and and you start playing these hindsight games but the reality is You know, there's a lot of years where we're making 30 40 50 percent and the markets flat or down I mean last year's a good example. We made it almost 30 percent where the market was Was down so you can't play those hindsight games The the the reality is is we have a strategic edge with the way that we trade And it's not always going to be the greatest But when you have these one directional extended moves But you've got to stick with the program and you have to stay small enough. This is the key I know I beat this dead horse all the time But you've got to keep your position size small enough so that those periods when it's going against you You can stay in the game. You have that cash ready to pounce in periods like we're seeing right here That is the key and so Um, you know, hopefully you guys had some of that short delta on like we did Hopefully you've got some cash ready to add positions Like we've been doing here the last couple days and uh, and and you know, this is when it's really fun This is when trading is fun. We'll get this volatility when we get this two-sided action when you have these one directional extended moves That's uh, that's not very fun a applied volatility is contracting. There's not a ton to do Now is when the funds start so hopefully this keeps up and and we start getting some two-sided action We don't want the market to crash. We don't want the market just to go straight down But we do want two-sided action. So hopefully that's what we're going to start seeing All right, hopefully that was helpful. Um, let's jump into the alerts starting with monday We did a rolling adjusting trade in smh Uh, another another etf another symbol that I you know, just felt like it was continuing to go up forever And it was never going to stop We have two different pieces on here in this one We just rolled one set of our short strangles That was in august had 18 days to expiration rolled that out to september Remember when we have uncovered option positions like short strangles straddles We like to roll those once we get down under that 21 days to expiration Uh, and so that's what we did here and then we just adjusted our puts up from 105 to 116 So we rolled those puts up left our calls at 108 And here's where we're at on smh So if we go to the analyze tab, you can see with this down move now prices come all the way back into center After that, so we've already made up over $500 back On that piece of the trade and then we've got another piece as well another adjusted strangle And this one is fairly centered as well. So now if we can just get some, you know bouncing around ping pong action in this in this area will be in great shape in smh Next trade was an opening adjusting trade in iyr So we already had one iron condor in iyr and we went ahead and added another one out in the september cycle with 52 days to expiration So we've now we've got two different iron condors Iyr is the real estate etf and you can see when the market has been tanking over the last few days Uh, real estate has held pretty steady obviously with lower interest rates that benefits the real estate market So it doesn't have that correlation to stocks Like some of these other indices that we have on which is great We want to have these uncorrelated symbols that don't necessarily all move together So we've got these two different pieces one is still in august This is the one we just added from the alert still pretty centered We're down a tiny bit because the implied volatility expanding And then we've got our other one that's still in august which is kind of hanging out in the upper end of the range Uh, you can see right here near the break even so you could use a little bit of downside on that piece and then the other one You know, it's pretty dead centered. So we'll continue to manage those as needed Next trade was a closing adjusting trade in wheat. So we closed one set of our iron condors in wheat With just 24 days to expiration booked almost 40 of max profit on that piece of the trade And then we're still holding our short put vertical side in september We added another piece in wheat. So I'll go to the platform when we get to that one Next trade was a closing trade in spx. So we had a weekly double calendar on in spx This one came back right dead centered on the last day of trading, which is awesome Booked a nice profit over 1,300 bucks in seven days on that trade And then here's our other wheat trade. So what we did here is we just added another iron condor out in the october cycle Which at that time had 50 days to expiration And uh, and so that's where we're at here. We've got two pieces in wheat. We've got the short call vertical spread Which is uh in this cycle with 21 days to expiration and remember when we when we have defined risk We don't mind holding that closer to expiration So we don't necessarily roll that once we get down to 21 days We're going to hold that You know, we've got a decent probability this this thing will come back into range So we want to play those probabilities And and let that potentially happen And then the other piece that we've got on is this centered iron condor pretty close to right where we put it on No profit or loss at this point dead centered just waiting for some more time to pass in that one Next trade closing adjusting trade in zb. So we had two different uh short strangles on in zb This is one that we put on didn't make any adjustments to Booked over 30 of max profit in just 11 days on that piece And then we've got our uh, our other adjusted strangle, which we had an alert on this morning So i'll go i'll go to the platform when we get to that alert on zb Next trade was an opening trade in spx. And so we Added a new weekly double calendar in spx We did this one with eight days to expiration on the front week and then 22 days in the back week So let's go ahead and take a look at that now This one has already That's our iron condor that we put on this morning, but let's go to the double calendar So this one we just put on yesterday But with a significant price uh down move today, we're already out of range here And so remember when we put this on we put it on for Let's take a look here 2495 okay So just to refresh on how we manage these if it gets uh gets to a losing position Is 24 95 Times 0.25 so 25 percent of the debit paid That's call it 623 dollars. So if we get down on this trade about over 600 dollars about 623 dollars We would look to exit that's kind of our theoretical stop loss. Well, look what we're down right now We're down about 437 bucks as we as we stand at the time of this recording So here's a couple things one This is the risk of this trade right if we open up sunday night or monday morning And the s and p gaps down significantly lower Well, guess what we're probably not going to get out at a loss of 600 bucks We might lose a lot more than that. Okay, so that's the risk of this trade You need to understand that you need to position size Accordingly to accommodate that you don't want to be blowing out your account Now obviously if price comes back in range, we're being in good shape But I just I like to reiterate the risk Because a lot of people just like to look at the upside and then when when Things go crazy, you know, they kind of they kind of freak out. So understand that The other thing is, you know, we've had a couple people in the community trading sp y for this trade So sp x is 10 times the size of sp y we like to do sp x just because a our account can sustain it but b Um, you know sp y does have that potential Risk of assignment now. Is it really a huge risk? No, it's just more of a pain in the butt But you you know as you get closer to To expiration if you do have in the money options, you do have the potential to get assigned in sp y Whereas sp x you can't get assigned and it settles to cash at expiration So anyway, just kind of a refresher on that but that's where we're at on the double calendar Now, uh with price moving out of range, we went ahead and added another spx weekly trade And this one we didn't with an iron condor. Remember if implied volatility is spiking Which market going down like it is we've got implied volatility expanding then we want to sell an iron condor Uh to to uh take advantage of that. We just put this on this morning on friday. We're already up 350 bucks Um And the one thing that we did on this one that's a little bit different out of You know kind of what we talked about in the course is we already had the double calendar We put on yesterday. It had eight days to expiration when we put it on today one day later Obviously it only has seven days So I didn't want to put the iron condor on in the same cycle As the seven days and so what I opted to do is go down to the five day Now I typically don't go that short of duration. I like to stay in that six to eight days But with the heightened implied volatility It allowed us to get a really good credit in that short duration time of just five days So remember the theta is going to decay quicker With the shorter duration and um, and so that's why I chose the five days and obviously you can see I mean we already got theta decay of almost 350 bucks Just since we put this on this morning So that is the deal in our spx weekly trades Let's go back to the alerts Next trade was an opening trade in IWM. So after we saw that decent drop Implied volatility was popping. So we wanted to sell some premium did not have a position on an IWM So that's what we put on Get rid of this theoretical one. So this is what we have on you can see price is still dead centered here A tiny bit since we put that on but just waiting for some more time to pass on that one Next trade closing trade in Baidu. Wow, what a move in Baidu. I thought we were dead in this one To be honest We uh, I mean we we put this on Baidu came out unexpectedly and changed their earnings date, which Implied volatility then immediately crushed. We were fairly centered in our long straddle. And so we are down a bunch, but Thank you, mr. Trump for your tariff tweet But Baidu, you know kind of Tanks along with a lot of stocks. So if we take a look at Baidu Uh, you can see it it it dropped a decent amount enough anyway and with implied volatility expanding Gave us the chance to get out of this trade and we took just a tiny winner I think we made like 64 bucks or something like that on the trade, but we were down about 500 so Good to get out of that one with a squeaky little profit. I'll take that every day of the week Uh next trade rolling adjusting trade in di a so we had two sets of short call verticals One of them was in august One's already out in september We took the one in august that had 14 days to expiration rolled that out to september with 49 Adjusted the strikes down to accommodate for the down movement in price And this role just extends that duration in that trade keeps that short delta in our portfolio, which we need And uh, you know, we're we're above 50 percent of max profit on that piece And so that's why we wanted to roll and then we just went ahead and rolled out to september Because there's only 14 days left in august So we've still got both of those pieces on If we take a look, uh, here is the one that we just rolled you can see prices right here Basically right where we rolled it to so just looking for some more downside to benefit that and then Our other piece that was already in september. You can see we're we're over 50 percent of max profit on this piece as well Already out in september. So what we'll do next week if price continues lower Is we will roll this roll these strikes closer to price kind of lock that in and continue to hold that for that short delta exposure Um, so that's the plan there in di a remember I like to spread out these rolls. So just because it gets to 50 percent of max profit You know, i'm not in a huge hurry. I mean, we've got a ton of time left in september 49 days Uh, but you know, if this price continues lower, we will go ahead and roll that out and the reason we do that is If you can see what happens to the the p&l line, you know, still got a decent trajectory trajectory If I can say that word As price moves lower, but then it starts to flatten out So we don't want to get to the point where you know, if it continues lower It's not really benefiting us much and if we'll we'll roll the strikes closer and then have a little bit, you know More a little bit more sharp. I guess you could say a little bit more Sharp p&l line Not sure if that's the best word to use, but that's what I came up with Anyway, so that's where we're at in di a The next trade opening trade in vxx. So if you go back to our vix course Uh, this we haven't done this in a while because implied volatility has been pretty muted pretty low pretty Continuing to contract but with this spike in implied volatility We went ahead and added on a short call vertical spread in vxx just like we teach in the course And so let's take a look at that Here's that we like to put this on with Browns 65 plus. I think it had right at close to 65 percent Probability of profit Even though we actually profit on these Um, you know closer to 90 of the time remember vxx It has that built-in drag to the downside it because it uses futures that continue to roll and it goes into Periods of contango and backwardation if those words don't mean anything to you don't worry It's all explained in the course bottom line is this thing will continue to Drag to the downside now obviously uh With the spike in implied volatility this thing's really popping higher So the goal is to sell that short call vertical Let things settle down price will contract and that's how we'll make money on this trade Now you might look at this and say, you know, what a terrible risk to reward ratio, right? 1941 is what it took us in capital to get in the trade. That's also our max risk But we're not going to let this thing go all the way To max risk. I mean the goal is you know, I mean if this thing The if the market continued to tumble next week and this thing spiked up Meaning, you know the overall vix got up into the 30s 40s You know, we would probably exit this one Usually it's right when we get to that bend of where our long long strike is so if this shot up to 34 We'd probably just close this out take the loss and then we'd also be putting on other other pieces to this to You know to benefit it get it out at a higher price we always do these with defined risk because you know Things you know things really got crazy and this market just really plummeted We do want to have that as kind of a catastrophic loss But I've never taken a full loss on on one of these trades All right next trade rolling adjusting trade in zb. So this is the bond of futures. So we've got This is our adjusted one. I already mentioned in an earlier alert We took off one booked a profit on that piece And then we've got this one where after the announcement bonds continued higher Bonds have an inverse relationship to interest rates. So the feds lowered interest rates. Therefore Bonds are supposed to go higher now that doesn't always happen So it's you can't just bank on that if you knew that the fed was going to decrease Funds by the federal fund rate by 25 basis points. There's no guarantee. This is going to go up but it did in fact increase after the announcement And so we went ahead and rolled this we rolled our puts up closer to price and we rolled this out To the next cycle so you can see prices hanging out right here We need some downside movement to get back into center of this range Now what we what we will do is we'll look to add potentially another centered iron condo Excuse me a short strangle next week assuming implied volatility stays nice and high Obviously if we get a significant drop over the weekend or opens up down and we're back to center We're not going to add another one But if price kind of stays around this area or moves higher We will add to this if we look at tlt the corresponding etf. You can see implied volatility Just like a lot of things right now nice and high. So a good time to sell premium in that So that's that's the plan in zb and and this you know, this is similar to stocks I mean, you know, there were some comments in the community about You know about this, you know and this extended move and and I got the feeling that a couple things one They had the feeling that man is this thing's gonna go up forever. Well, it's not, you know I mean you get these huge moves up and there's nothing to say that next week this thing can't collapse and be down below the the recent lows But we're just going to be mechanical. We're going to stick to the script We're going to roll up the untested side We're going to roll out in time continue to collect those credits Continue to play the cyclicality of the market the beauty of the Of the adjustment method that we use is that you're rolling up the untested size So in this case you're rolling up the puts and you're kind of and you're collecting a credit And then and you're playing that cyclicality So when this thing does roll over or starts to get steady and just kind of bounces around for a while like we saw here Then we'll benefit from that and and get back to Get back to profit. So that is the plan in zb Uh, yeah, it's been super strong, but it can't go up forever and we're just going to stay mechanical Uh and and and again, you know earlier this week we booked a profit So we we had the one that we're kind of rolling and adjusting that we put on another one We had that sideways action booked a nice profit. So that kind of adds to the Adds to the you know taken away from the losses that we have in the one trade You know, I know it's painful when when this is you know When you see these huge moves and it's already and it's has already gone against you But you just got to stay mechanical the other thing that I got the feeling of a couple people is You know, if if you're stressed out about one trade if you're stressed out about one trade moving against you Then you're probably trading too big for your account size And zb is a decent size product If you you know, if that's the case, then maybe you want to take a look at z in it's half the size So keep that in mind make sure your position sizing accordingly or do you define risk or you can trade tlt as the etf You know, so those those are all those all kind of move together So if you're selling premium in zb, you could also do it in z in you could also do it in tlt Those all move very highly correlated together All right next trade is an opening trade a lot of trades today on friday So hopefully I didn't overwhelm everyone, but we had to we had to sell some premium We had to get into some trades. We had to make some adjustments So it ended up being a lot of trades more trades in one day than we typically have But that's just part of the deal you don't get to choose when trades you got to you got to react to what's going on I already mentioned this one. This is the spx iron condor that we just put on this morning And the next trade was a rolling adjusting trade in gs our friend goldman sacks Uh, we had a long put vertical on that we initially put on for some short delta It went against us we extended duration on it and then with this down move it uh, it moved back in our favor And so we went ahead and rolled this out to the next expiration cycle locked in what we had And uh, so now we're just looking for a little bit more downside to benefit this piece And lastly we had a closing trade in walmart So we had a uh, a pre earnings long strangle on in walmart in anticipation of implied volatility Increasing leading up to earnings and looking for a decent price move We got both of those obviously with everything going on booked over 25 profit on that trade So we are out of walmart So those are all the alerts. Let's take a look at some of the other trades oil And oil has been moving around it was down almost 7 percent yesterday. Now it's back up 3 percent today back in the center Um, so we're just kind of sitting here waiting for some more time to pass waiting for some implied volatility to contract Uh, so that's where we're at there Yes, we've got a long put vertical here. This is another one that we could have rolled today But you know, we just wanted to give over the weekend and we kind of want to spread out these roles So we're not doing it all around the same price level in the markets But we are definitely well over 50 of max profit on this piece of the trade We've just been holding this and rolling it for that short delta exposure and we'll continue to do so Um And this one's got you know, still a lot of time 49 days to expiration So if price continues lower, we will just look to roll these strikes closer to price kind of lock that in And continue to hold that short delta. By the way, I've got a another a new strategy course coming out soon I'm working on it right now. It's probably still going to be a couple months away but You know, it's going to be a strategy that I think you guys are really going to love that I just kind of I used to trade and I kind of forgot about it And not forgot about it, but I just kind of got away from it and I think It's going to really help with You know giving you short delta in your portfolio, but also not getting killed on the way up when prices Do you have that upside? Movement so super excited about that can't wait to share that with you guys So that's es gold. We've got an iron condor and gold prices pretty dead centered there Got a tiny bit of profit waiting for some more before we do anything there Natty gas will not quit to the downside. This is one of our Down red P&Ls today You can see prices out of range You can see we got a tiny bit of profit still left In those calls, but any more down movement into next week at a natty gas We will roll down those calls and we've got only 25 days to expiration with both of those pieces So early next week, we'll be looking to roll those out to the next cycle anyway Hopefully we can get a little bit of a pop higher Before that happens Let's see next trade bonds already went over that wheat Yeah, I went over that one apple So in apple we've got this Long put position long put vertical in apple Still in the august cycle. So if we get some more down movement We'll look to lock that in and roll the strikes closer and out to september No, hurry Because we've we've still got a decent amount of time 14 days left in august So we can do that next week or the week after But if we get a sharp move lower, we will definitely roll that next week DE John Deere finally coming back in our favor Just same thing as apple. We're just kind of holding on to this A gives us some short delta exposure and b will just continue to manage this as needed sharp move lower We'll look to roll this out to september So that's a plan in de DIA already mentioned that one golden sacks intel So we've got this adjusted short strangle here price came nicely back into center for us We're up a few hundred dollars since we did that roll Still I'll have to look I think we're still down slightly on the trade overall after adjustments But definitely coming back in the right direction there And this one is in september. So we still got a decent amount of time 49 days So nothing to do there as far as from a timing standpoint. I mentioned IWM IWR QQQ We've got these two sets of short call verticals, which are pretty close together Again kind of one of those situations where we are at over Uh, we are at over 50 of max profit, but I just want to spread out these rolls spread out these adjustments So if price continues lower into next week, we'll definitely be doing some adjusting and rolling in QQQ We'll roll at least one of these out to september because they're both in august Uh, and we'll continue to manage those SMH I mentioned that one spx. I mentioned spy We've got a short call vertical spread that was originally part of an iron condor kind of same situation We got over 50 of max profit We will either you know, we might just add another centered iron condor. We need to get some more short premium on Uh, and then we could close this one out or we'll keep it on and add the iron condor We'll we'll see what's going on next week, but look for either and or both of those options next week The xx I mentioned and lastly xlk This is another one. We've been kind of rolling for that short delta exposure And we've come back into the range here and just continuing to hold this for some more short bias exposure So those are all the alerts. Those are all the positions Everybody have a great weekend Look forward to some more two-sided action in the markets next week. Talk to you then