 Hey, everyone. Welcome to this week's video update. Today is Friday, April 21st. Hope everybody had a great week of trading, looking forward to an excellent weekend as well. So let's jump into the trades. Had not too many trades this week. Actually, implied volatility has continued to stay bid, and price hasn't moved around much. So we haven't been able to take off a lot of positions. We've already got positions in a lot of underlines that have high implied volatility. And I've had some questions about why is implied volatility rising? Why is it all of a sudden going up when price hasn't moved much? And a lot of it is due to some geopolitical global uncertainty. In Europe, there's some different QE, potential QE propositions going on. But mainly, the main focus and the main reason for the high implied volatility, specifically in the international indices and the currencies, is due to the French election coming up. So if you just Google the 2017 French election, you can read more about it. But basically, the way that it works there, unlike the US, where the candidates campaign for months and months before the actual election in France, it only lasts two weeks. And so the first round of the elections actually starts on Sunday, April 23rd, and it goes through May 7th. So there'll be different head to head standoffs between different candidates, as well as voting takes place starting on Sunday, April 23rd. So look for some potential volatility and some potential decline in actual IV, where a lot of this theta, I would think will probably start coming out next week as they start to get a better idea of who's going to take this election. So there's a little bit of interesting things going on, some really different candidates. And they keep talking about with a surprise vote that happened in Britain for the Brexit, and obviously with the Trump administration being elected here in the US, which was another big surprise to most people. They're looking at this as a potentially interesting election based on a lot of the changes that people are voting for around the world and other markets. So it'll be interesting to see. I'll be watching closely. But just Google French election 2017 and you'll be able to read up a little bit more on what's going on there. All it really means for us, though, is implied volatility is high, which is opportunity, allows us to get on more trade. So let's jump into the trades. The first trade that we made for the week was in GLD, which is the gold ETF. IV percentile when we put this on was at 59. So let's take a look at GLD. You can see it was up in this range when we put it on. The implied volatility has since contracted. And if we look at our Analyze tab to see where we're at, we're in the profit, not enough to take off yet. So waiting for a little bit more of that Theta to K to come out before we pull that off as a profitable trade. So assuming it stays in our range, excuse me, we will continue to monitor GLD. Next trade was we sold a strangle in EWZ IV percentile at that time was at 54. So if we take a look at EWZ, which is the Brazilian ETF, it's still pretty centered, not enough profit to take off there. EWZ implied volatility is still right around the same range as when we put it on. So nothing to do in EWZ at this point. Another opening trade we put on in soybeans. One note that I made on the trade is we made the wings 20 points wide. Typically, I do 10 points wide, but the risk reward and the credit received just wasn't what I liked. And so I actually went out 20 points because I liked the credit received and the risk reward a little bit better. So if we take a look at our soybean trade, which had that huge move down, now it's just meandering around here. But remember, don't pay attention to the IV percentile indicator on the grains because it's not accurate. Really, I just manually monitor the prices of these options and put on trades from time to time because they are really good trading vehicles. Soybeans, corn, and wheat, they're all good trading vehicles. You've got to stay really small and just put on trades from time to time. But here's what we're looking at. With just one contract, we've got a credit of $262.50, max risk of $7.37. So that's a good risk to reward. Remember, our total risk, I don't want to be any more than three times the credit received. So I don't want a risk to be more than three times our max potential profit. And so this fits that criteria. And I just, I always wanted to try to have a position on in at least one of the grains. So got that in soybeans, no profit or loss yet. Just waiting on that one. Next trade, I just sent out a commentary on the IBM call vertical. So I mentioned we'll be holding this through expiration. So what happened in IBM, for those of you who had on this trade, we had this trade on for a couple reasons. We were trying to add some long delta to the portfolio because we're getting a little bit too biased to the short side. And so we put on a call vertical to go along. Now, IBM had earnings and they missed. So we're at a full loser on this trade. And so there's nothing to do here. I mean, I'm not going to roll this trade. It's way deep in the money. But the comments that I sent out was I said, Okay, there's a chance that we could get a signed stock here. There's there's no reason to take this trade off. Okay, right? We're at max, we're at max loss. The only thing that could happen is if, you know, some far chance out that IBM comes out with some crazy good news and, and spikes back up and we can get that profitable. But there's no reason to take it off because we're always we're already at full loss, right? So what happens then is if we get assigned that stock. So in this case, in this example, we did one contract. So we might potentially get assigned 100 shares of stock or we will simply just on Monday morning, when the market opens, just exit the stock. Okay, it's not a big deal. Your broker always gives you plenty of time, you know, one or two days to exit that stock. So all you got to do is once you get assigned the stock, exit it on Monday morning. Next trade was in and the last trade was in Apple. So we had that on and we actually had that on for purposes of short delta. And apples just continue to stay strong. We did not roll this to May. So this was in the April expiration cycle. We didn't roll this to May because Apple's got some upcoming earnings and I really didn't want to hold Apple through earnings. Their earnings continue to be strong. Now, you know, we could have rolled it and Apple could miss and we could have got, you know, all that all that loss back. And if that's, if that's your assumption, and you want to do that, go ahead. But, but for this case, I did not want to do that. So we had Apple on for the case of that short delta and because we wanted it in our portfolio at the time we put it on, then we rolled one more time and it just, it's continued to stay strong. So we never were able to get back down. And that's just part of trading, you know, it's really, I can't emphasize this enough. I know I kind of beat the dead horse on this topic, but you've got to keep your position size small. And remember on our, on our income trades like iron condors and strangles, those are really high probability trades, but these directional trades, they're not high probability. So, so you need to make sure that you're keeping your position size really small, especially on these directional trades. And as you do them over and over and you keep your portfolio delta correct by adding some of these directional positions in and you're putting on and you're taking off your income trades, your profit is going to, I mean, you know, for me, it's always, it's always been positive, you know, over, over the long run, but you're going to have short periods of time like this when you're going to take a loss, it's going to be frustrating, but you know, it's just, it's part of trading. You can't, you can't not have losers. So just keep, keep that in mind, keep your position size small. So those were the only trades that we made for the week. Like I said, pretty quiet because we have a lot of positions on and our theta just really hasn't come out because that upcoming French election volatility has stayed bid, but let's go over our other positions. So I mentioned soybeans, apple, okay, so EFA, which is the international index, kind of like the Dow for the international stocks. You can see, you know, based on the French election again, this is an international index. So a lot of these stocks are are in Europe and Asia and other countries. And so applied volatility extremely high. If we take a look at that, still very centered, not enough profit to take off yet. EWW, which is the Mexico ETF. These are, we've got a couple of strangles on that we had adjusted and we're, we're still just kind of continue to wait, let that theta decay. I'd like to get a move down to under 50. If I get about $400 or so in profit on, on this strangle, this is an inverted strangle that we rolled from April to April to May. Once I get up about 400 bucks, I'll look to take that one off. And on the other position, which is a, ended up being a straddle, which we had rolled the puts up and then roll that to May, both to the 52 strikes. So it ended up being a straddle. Looking for a little bit more profit here. I'm not going for the full 25% of max profit. This is really just kind of in defense mode from our original position. So once I get up a couple hundred dollars on this one, we'll, we'll go ahead and take that off and end up being profitable on that trade after adjusting and rolling. EWZ, that is the Brazilian ETF, another international index. You can see implied volatility percentile still at around 58, still very centered. FXE, which is the Euro. This, this one, if you look at the implied volatility, this thing's been pinned at a hundred for the last week or so. And again, this, this is in relation to the upcoming election and the uncertainty surrounding that. So again, you know, I, I did have a couple of questions for members saying, man, it, you know, this, uh, you know, the IV and, in, uh, FXE is maxed out, the IV percentile is maxed out. And that, that's not true. You can't think of it like this because this can be pinned at a hundred for an extended period of time. And as we're seeing here, the options continue to expand in price because we're, we're showing a little bit of a loss here, you know, it's very centered. Our profit lines move down because the price of the options has continued to expand, uh, going in, going into the election, uh, going into the election. So just keep that in mind. You still got to keep your position size small, even when implied volatility, even when the indicator is showing, uh, levels of above 90 and a hundred do, do not load the boat on the position. Okay. You've got to stay small and continue to stay mechanical and, and trade, trade the positions, uh, relative to your account size. So we've got, we've got two strangles on here. Uh, this is the first one, the next one is right here. So, so also very centered and you know, the whole thing with that is as implied volatility continue to increase, we want to scale our positions into that high IV. Uh, and now we've, you know, we could actually, uh, put on another strangle, but I think a lot of this data might come out next week. We'll see. Uh, next trade, we went over GLD, IBM, IWM, we've got this iron condor on kind of hanging out up here, need a little bit of a move down to take that one off for a profit. Same with the cues, got an iron condor in there and then snap. This was one of our trades of the week that we did live. By the way, don't forget Monday morning, 8 25 central before the markets open. We'll do our live trade of the week, uh, which is broadcast and streamed live from our Facebook page and our YouTube channel. So this is one, one that we put on about 75 bucks in profit. Our max profit on this is about 440. So we want about 25% of that. So we want a little over $100, 125 bucks in profit before we look to take that off and snap has, uh, has an earnings announcement, earnings announcement on 510. So remember this is, this is an IPO that just came out a couple months ago. Okay. So it's never had an earnings announcement. So this is the company's very first earnings. We will absolutely be taking this trade off before the earnings announcement. So if even if we're not at 25% of max profit, wherever we're at in the trade, winner or loser or break even whatever it is, we're going to take this off before May 10th. So stay tuned for that. SPY, we've got an iron condor just kind of hanging out right here. Not enough profit to take off yet. TLT, we've got a strangle on here. Just kind of stay in centered. If you take a look at the IV and TLT, it's up to 73. So again, continuing to stay high. We'll see if that election has any effect on TLT and the bonds as far as theta coming out. We'll see. I'm assuming theta is going to come out across the board, but, but we'll see. I mean, if you look at SPY, which is the S&P 500, right? The largest 500 stocks in the US, you know, does the French election really have much of an effect on those companies? Well, yes, some because US companies are, you know, most of them are now global, global companies and have exposure in Europe. So, you know, you may be asking, well, why, why do we have high implied volatility on stocks over here? If it's a French election, well, we live in a global economy. And so I really think, you know, that's going to affect the implied volatility across the board once we, once we have a better idea of what's going to happen in that election. But again, it's over a two-week period. So we may not, it may not happen till, you know, after the, after the May 7th final part of the election. But we will see XLF, which is the Financial Sector ETF, implied volatility right at about 58 at this point. We have a Stratalon in XLF looking for about 25% of max profit to take that off. So, you know, we want one over a hundred bucks. So not quite there yet. We're at about 80. And then XRT, which is the Retail ETF. This is a, an adjusted strangle that we had rolled, still hanging out kind of up, up here down a little bit. I need a, need a contraction in IV and a little bit of a move down in XRT to take that off. If we look at the implied volatility in XRT right around 79 at this point. So still continuing to stay high for us. So we've got that strangle. And then we've got one other position on in here as well, which is an unjust, unadjusted strangle that we, that we put on. Got a little bit of profit there. Not enough to take off, need a little bit of a move down. So we'll continue to wait on XRT. So hope that was helpful. Everybody have a great weekend. Watch the futures on Sunday evening when they open up at five o'clock. I think we'll probably see a little bit of volatility because that's when the, that election starts. So we will see, should be interesting. Have a great weekend. Talk to you next week.