A brief history

During the past summer while the market was steadily climbing up, my account gained about 16% (about 60%APR).
Then the market starting stumbling. I lost some of that gain.
I switched from credit spreads to Iron Condors (Bull Put & Bear Call spread combo). At first I was too aggressive with these, not leaving the market enough breathing room. And lost a little more of that gain.
I changed to Iron Condors that were predicted to have 90% chance of expiring worthless. This worked.

Then the market began to swing wildly. I had one Iron Condor that had the upper leg run over so I bought that leg back at a loss to minimize the loss. Then, on the same day, as soon as I took the loss on the upper leg, the market plunged and the lower leg that had been worth $0.02 hours before (and I thought not worth buying back) was then over run! So I lost against both legs of the IC, something that in theory should not happen. Had it not tried to minimize the loss at the upper end or had I bought back the entire IC, I would not have lost nears as much.

Because of the wild market swings in the last month, I have lost all of the remaining gain I made over the summer AND about 20% of my original account balance.

Many of these wild extreme swings up and down (often in the same day) have been news driven and I've found them hard to predict.Things like Fundamentals, Chart Patterns and trends do not apply. I need to find a way to work in this volatile atmosphere.