Market Tango

Going back to documenting trades

2010-02-28T10:52:00.000-08:00

A year or so ago I was documenting all my trades in a journal. Noting what the charts looked like, why I got in, reasons to get out.

Then I was doing so well with my trades that I felt I didn’t need to take that time and I got out of the habit of using a trade journal.

Well now I need to go back to thinking about my trades. Just trying a bunch of strategies without thinking them through or following up on rules is not getting me anywhere.

My current strategy is longer term (6-12 months for options) and sitting on my hands during minor fluctuations. But I haven’t really thought through what would be a minor fluctuation and what would be cause to get out.

So I’m going to go through the trades I have open and document why I got in and what should cause me to get out.

I started with my best trade, a penny stock, but will go through them all penny stocks and options.

Here is the journal page for a penny stock, BEE, that has been doing really well for me.

Goldman Sachs (GS) in larger up trend

2009-11-12T17:20:00.000-08:00

I’ve been watching GS lately.
Over the last few months, GS has been in an uptrend.
It looks like GS should be going back up into the channel (shown on Prophet chart below).
But perhaps not until next week as it is hitting up against the Person Weekly Pivot (shown on TOS chart below).

Person's PPS & Pivots

2009-10-14T20:46:00.000-07:00

I've been using Person's Pivots for a while with some success.
I just added Person's Proprietary Study (on ThinkorSwim) which is a combination of moving averages and buy/sell signals. After listening to John Person speak about the two sutdies, I feel that the combination of hsi pivots and PPS is well grounded. I am starting to use this combination to remove some of the emotion from my trading decisions.

QQQQ -nearing strong resistance

2009-03-23T21:01:00.000-07:00

The QQQQ is nearing both a retest of the Fib line and the previous 5-yr low (at ~32).
Although there has been a lot of positive news items fueling this recent rally. I don't believe there is enough strength to push up through both of those resistance lines.

Didn't see that rally coming...

2009-03-23T20:33:00.000-07:00

I bought April QID calls just before this most recent rally. I bought them in the morning and by mid afternoon they had a nice profit. Rather than get out, I held overnight. Then this rally happened.

I didn't get out because I knew it couldn't go up more than one day, okay not more than two days. By day three of my denial, my nice profit turned into a substantial loss. Now those calls are so far out of the money and under water that all I can do is hope.

To counter that, mid-morning today I bought some April QLD calls. Most of the day, they stayed flat. Then in the last 45 minutes it rallied to a nice profit. I was not able to get to the computer to get out so have to hold overnight.

I will put upper and lower sell orders in tomorrow morning to attempt to lock those profits it. I don't want a repeat of last weeks hold-and-hope.

PALM

2009-01-16T16:51:00.000-08:00

In the last 4 weeks Palm has been going up from $2 to $7.91 with most of that in the last week and a half. With this last surge, volume increased exponentially.
The mark is at $7.91 today’s close. The 1-yr high (Aug ’08) is about $8.50, almost where today’s high was.
This looks like a good opportunity to buy some Puts.
I put in an order for Feb09 7.5 Put for $1.05
There is a minor support at 5.25 (down 2.66) and it could also close the recent gap going to 4.45 (down 3.46).
Puts that are 2.50 ITM are $2.75 and those 5.00 ITM are $5.10

Exits:
Sell if Put @ $2.75 or $0.45

QID

2009-01-16T16:49:00.000-08:00

I sold a call spread today on the QID.
Feb09 50/47 Put @ $0.71
It has not closed below 51 in last 3 months. Yesterday was a higher high. Today was an up day on the QQQQ so the QID was down. This is a 3 day weekend for the market with MLK day so 3 day's time decay.

I expect the QQQQ to be up for the next week with the Inauguration then come back down.

Exit:
Buy back @ $0.31

Profit on QID

2009-01-15T19:48:00.001-08:00

The QID call that I bought yesterday for $6.40 hit the limit order 10 minutes into trading this morning. That was pretty much the high of the day. So I made a nice profit of $0.90 on the call.

Directional on QID

2009-01-15T05:57:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I bought a Feb09 60 Call on QID for $6.40
It is currently at $6.75 and I have a sell order in at $7.30
The QQQQ has a bit more to go before hitting a support but the QID is closer to resistance.

Iron condor unfilled

2009-01-15T05:54:00.000-08:00

Still being cautious about doing iron condors, I kept my order in at $0.50
The mark stayed down at $0.41-0.43
I didn't feel comfortable lowering my order to that so it never filled.

Time for iron condors again?

2009-01-11T20:57:00.000-08:00

Lately I have been trying to make bearish trades and the market has been going up in the short-term. I do not feel confident in this trends continuing long enough to even put on a short-term bullish trade.
The RUT & IWM look like they have been going more sideways for the last 3 months. So perhaps Iron Condors will work again.
I am putting in a very small order for the morning for IWM ICs with a $3 spread on each wing for $0.50 credit.
IWM FEB09 56C/59C/37P/34P $0.50 credit

Max Loss Exit if $1.00 to close.

QID call

2008-12-22T19:53:00.000-08:00

Since the QQQQ closed yesterday on the uptrending support and today almost a full point below the line, it's time for me to buy a QID call.
Because of the significant down turn on the Qs this morning, I bought the call when I looked at the market at lunch time.

Jan09 69 Call for $5.80

Just before the end of the day, that Call was up $0.60
Then in the last 30 minutes of the day, it reversed and turned into a $0.20 loss.
However each of the major indices closed below a 4-week uptrending support with the exception of the RUT which closed at its uptrending support.

So I will hold this QID for a while. My exit earlier will be if the QQQQ breaks above the horizontal resistance at 32

Time to get out of QLD

2008-12-22T19:45:00.000-08:00

BlainR thanks for the good wishes. Unfortunately, today the QQQQ definitely met one of my exit criteria, and not the one I'd prefer.

The Qs closed below the uptrending support so I'm putting in an order to get out in the morning. Hopefully I won't loose too much more before the order fills.

Still holding QLD call

2008-12-21T21:04:00.000-08:00

My exits on the QLD call were if QQQQ gets near 32 resistance (which hasn't happened yet) or QQQQ breaks below up-trendings support. Friday's close was pretty much right on that support line so for Monday I'll hold the call.
When the Qs meets one of the above critera, it will be time for me to sell my QLD calls and buy QID calls. For the moment, I wait to see where Monday's close will be.
Waiting is one of the hardest things for me to do with a trade!

Near-term upswing

2008-12-18T05:42:00.000-08:00

So the market seems to have confirmed the QQQQ break through of resistance and futures are up this morning.
I've put in an order for a Jan 25 QLD call.
Exits: if Qs goes below the uptrending support or if it gets near the horizontal resistance at 32

Didn't follow my own advice

2008-12-18T05:39:00.000-08:00

Yesterday after saying I would sit the day out, I got in and should not have.
On a slight rollover of a large mid-day market spike I bought a call on the QID. It went up slightly, down slightly and ended up being neutral. I'm putting in an order this morning to close at a few cents profit, enough to cover the trade.

Was today's breakout real or artificial?

2008-12-16T20:40:00.000-08:00

The QQQQ broke through downtrending resistance today that it has been bouncing off since 12/8.
However...

Although volume was higher than yesterday, it was not up to the 30 day moving average let alone breaking resistance with high volume.

Today the Fed dropped the interest rate to a new low. Did that cause the up swing in the market? Very possible.

An uptrending resistance line can be draw from 11/20 through today's low. Until today, that could have been a mini-trend within the larger channel down trend.

But was today's breakout real or artificial? I'm not sure. We are also close to hitting the horizontal resistance of the prior 5-yr low. I'm still undecided if I want to wait to see what it does against that or look to place bearish trades as it nears it. So while I think about this, I have no trades entered for tomorrow.

Keeping a journal

2008-12-15T18:58:00.000-08:00

I’ve restarted keeping a journal of my trades. I need to get back to being more disciplined when getting in and out of trades. Forcing me to write down my reasoning helps.

With the previous post, I have also begun posting some of that journal information this blog. Again it causes me to think through what I’m doing.

I’m hoping that forcing myself to write my trades and reasoning down will allow me to see what works and what doesn’t.

How else can I learn from my sucesses and failures if I don't know which is which?

QID -Locked in today's profit

2008-12-15T18:32:00.000-08:00

Reason for entering trade:

QID has been bouncing off the up-trending support line while its underlying (QQQQ) has been bouncing off down-trending resistance line on lower volume.

I entered the trade order for a Jan09 67 Call last night for fill this morning. I had originally intended to stay in the trade longer...

But with the White House making comments about a possible deal for the automakers and possible interest rate change tomorrow, I didn’t want to loose my profits overnight. I've seen that happen to my trades too many times.

So I sold a call 1 strike price away to turn it into a debit spread to lock in today's profit.

QID Buy signal

2008-07-16T21:08:00.000-07:00

A system I've been using for th last month uses the Market Forcast and the 8/21/30 SMA.
Entry is when the Momentum line is below 10 at close. Today it closed at 5.
So I put in an order to buy Aug 45 Call.
Although today's candle along with the last 2 day's candle form an evening star reversal pattern, I believe that is a longer term signal than the Momentum line and continue to follow this system for a short-term trade.

For some reason, the graph is showing today's candle again for tomorrow. Ignore the last candle.

Aug & Sep Iron Condors

2008-07-16T20:42:00.001-07:00

The chart below shows the Russell in about 15-month down channel.
I've placed several August & September Iron Condors around this. The light green boxes represent the IC locations.
Rather than doing more at the same positions, I spread them out as we've gotten the recent swings in the close.
At least, that's the plan. I have some of these already in place and have orders in for tomorrow for the others.

Edit: photo too wide. had to make smaller.

Whiplash undermining Technicals

2008-07-14T19:42:00.000-07:00

About 2 months ago, I had finally dug out of the hole I found my balance in after last Falls losses.
Then the most recent market whiplashes started and my balance has started to slide down again. Luckily not with the loud sonic boom of the last balance drop.

Every time I see what appears to be a solid technical setup, the market seems to do just the opposite.

So this month I'm trying not to look much at technicals and putting more of my available amount into high probability RUT iron condors.

With the Russell at 664, I am placing an order for

Sep08 750C/760C/560P/550P for $2.50

IWM -buying Put

2008-04-06T10:41:00.000-07:00

I have been doing a lot of credit spreads to minimize my losses. However, they have been minimizing my gains. And my losses have still been more than I would like to see.
So I want to do something different. I am exploring low cost ways of doing purely directional trades.

Looking at the Russell 2000 (RUT) over the last few months, it has often moved through the 670-690 range. Looking at the related IWM with it's lower cost options, it too has gone through the same 67-69 range. There is a well defined down trend line that the IWM is over right now. This trendline has been over-run several times already and the stock has gone back under it. Since I feel that the pop over the trendline has been due to news driven events, I am making the guess that it will drop again below the trendline.
So with that logic, I placed an order to buy OTM May08 69Put for $1.79
Put options ITM start at $2.99 so if my option goes ITM, I expect at least $1.00 in profit.
I am buying the May option to give it time to drop.
When I put in the buy order, I also put in a dependant sell order at $3.85
This limits my gain. But it is a good amount of gain and having the order in there will allow me to catch any intraday drops. Also, percentage-wise, this is a larger gain than I've been getting on spreads.
I did not put in a Stop Loss order. For now, since this is a low cost option, I am willing to let the option go to zero rather than be kicked out early.

Analyzing what I've been doing

2008-03-15T17:13:00.000-07:00

I decided to look at what trades actually work for me.
Since September last year, I’ve traded options on about 20 stocks and 4 indices.

The blue line, on the graph above, is the profit & loss I got on each trade.

While I’ve had about a 50% win to loss on all my trades, my losses have usually been bigger than my wins. And you can see by the pink line, on the graph above, that my balance is just starting to recover from all those losses.

However, if I look at the trades I did on the Russell 2000 (RUT), I did much better. See graph below.

This is an index I feel very comfortable with. I have a better idea of how it moves.
On the RUT, I have about a 70% win to loss and my wins have been much bigger than my losses.

I had not suspected this. As I slowly get out of the various trades that I’m in, I think I will concentrate more on the RUT for a while.

Multi-Fineline Electronx (MFLX) update

2008-03-15T17:11:00.000-07:00

This stock did exactly the opposite of what I projected. It continues to stay about the short leg of my spread. Making this a loosing trade.
I should not have done such a guess when placing this trade.

Multi-Fineline Electronx (MFLX)

2008-02-20T18:39:00.000-08:00

I did a search on Investools for stocks with High Shorting Interest. MFLX is one of the stocks that came up.

It has bad fundementals in an industry that is currently bad.

It is on a long-term down trend since mid-2006.

Last earnings, it gapped up then went down on low volume.

Earnings a few days ago appears to be doing the same. And high from this earnings was lower than last high.

I placed an order to sell a 20C/22.5C vertical spread for $0.75 credit. Bid/Ask spread was 0.55-0.85

RUT vs. IWM

2008-02-10T20:54:00.000-08:00

Looking at the numbers for RUT & IWM.

I need to do 10 times more contracts on the IWM than the RUT for the same dollar amounts.

Even if I go 0.30 off the Mark on the RUT, I still end up with more in my account on the RUT.

I think for now I will stick with the RUT.

I cancelled my IWM order I placed earlier this evening and changed it to a RUT iron condor.

iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM)

2008-02-10T17:33:00.000-08:00

I just found out that the IWM is fully electronic where the RUT is still partly open outcry.

The partial open outcry is why I've often had to go quite a ways off of the Mark to buy or sell an option.

Although I have to pay more in fees because the number of contracts is larger for the same amount in a trade, I've been told that I won't have to move much off of the Mark and therefore the added fees are not a big concern.

I'm going to try this out and see if the IWM fills near the mark.

IWM Mar08 Iron Condor 76/77/60/59 Call/Put @ 0.28 (mark = 0.29)

Russell 2000 (RUT)

2008-02-10T17:28:00.000-08:00

I have a vertical with a short Feb 690 Put. I don't feel comfortable that the stock will stay above that at expiration this week. And as we get further into the week it will be even harder to get out of it.
So I am buying back the spread at a loss.
Order to buy at 3.20
Orig credit on the iron condor was 2.35
So total loss of 1.15

Update:
Order actually filled at 2.90
So total loss of 0.55

Apple (AAPL)

2008-02-06T20:23:00.000-08:00

Looking again to do a longer term option trade. And again looking at one of the present day “blue chip” stocks, Apple.

Above chart shows AAPL on a 5 year up trend. Up and down short-term trends are marked by green & red blocks.
It looks like each time the stock has bounced off the 5 yr trendline, it has made substantial gains in 6 months or less. When it had strong down trend, it made up the loss in less than a year.
However, in recent weeks, the stock has fallen thru the 5-year trendline.

I see support at 120 & 117.

Although none of the recently announced new products, have the impact of the iPhone, I cannot see where this company would go into a long term down trend.

I am going to look into buying some long–term (Jan09 calls)
Jan09 150 Call, Mark=14.67
Will hold off on this a bit longer.

And some short-term (bull put spreads)
Feb08 115/110 Put spread @ 0.86 credit
~75% probablity, ~17% ROI
Below both support lines

Feb08 110/105 Put spread @ 0.41 credit
~85% probablity, ~8% ROI
Lower ROI but less than 2 weeks AND lower risk.

I’m going to go with the lower risk / lower ROI one this time.
Put order in for Feb08 110/105 Put spread @ 0.45 credit

Yahoo for YHOO!!!!!!

2008-02-06T09:56:00.000-08:00

For once, I was on the good side of a surprise news event.

On Jan 31st, I decided to buy 2 Jan09 17.5 (at-the-money) Call options @ 4.45 on Yahoo (YHOO).
I had read that Yahoo was not projecting good earnings in 2008 because they were putting the money back into long-term improvements for profits in 2009. The stock was at about 1/2 the price it was in late October 2007. I thought this would be a good stock to try some long-term options on for those reasons and that it is one of today’s “blue chip” equivalents.

If I bought Jan09, then that gives the stock time to slowly increase in price.

The next day, Microsoft announced that they wanted to buy YHOO. The option shot up to 11.00
At that point I put a 0.50 trail stop on it.
The options sold the next day for 11.45, a net profit of 7.00

Yahoo for YHOO!!!!!!

It was a big profit on a small trade. But it was a positive trade and a big plug in the leak in the account balance lately.

Kohls (KSS) Waiting for 3rd Arrow

2008-01-28T18:49:00.000-08:00

On Friday, KSS had 2 red arrows and looked like the 3rd arrow was poised to turn red.
Price - red
STO - green
MACD – red

Today did not do what I expected; one of the red’s turned green.
Price - green
STO - green
MACD – red

I’m still expecting this to continue its downward trend but for now I’ll wait.

Potash Corp (POT)

2008-01-28T18:34:00.001-08:00

2 green arrows and a ghost green.
In a good industry with good fundamentals.

This has been in an up channel for 11 months with only a few quick excursions below the channel.

It has just gotten past its earnings and has gotten back into the channel.
Yesterday’s close was at a support of 132.5
Today it opened at the support and closed higher.

Now the question is… Do I buy a Vertical Call Spread or sell a Vertical Put Spread?

Vertical Call Spread (Bullish)
Buy Mar 140 Call @ 12.45
Sell Mar 145 Call @ 10.15
Debit=2.30

Vertical Put Spread (Bullish)
Sell Feb 130 Put @ 4.30
Buy Feb 125 Put @ 3.15
Credit=1.15

In both, I’m bullish since it is a long up-trending stock even with the way the market has been swinging bearish lately.
Since both are assuming a similar movement, I am going to place an order for the debit spread. There is more potential profit (2.70 vs. 1.15) for less money at risk (2.30 vs. 3.85)

Status of existing trades

2008-01-28T18:32:00.000-08:00

Feb RUT IC 860C/850C/690P/680P originally sold for 2.35
RUT has finally gone above lower leg and closed at 702.4
To close the IC would cost 3.20, a loss of 0.85
I have a buy order on it for 1.50, think I’ll wait a little longer before revising that upward.

Feb PLCE 17.5/20 Vertical Call Spread originally sold for 0.35
PLCE is at 17.54 but there does seem to be resistance at 17.5
The stocks fundamentals are not good and it is not in a good industry (retail apparel).
I will wait a while longer on this one also.

Mar IWM 68 Straddle
Bought 68 Call @ 3.82, currently @ 4.55, have a sell order @ 4.70
Bought 68 Put @ 3.08 currently @ 2.46, have a sell order @ 4.00
I’d thought about raising the sell order on the call. But in the past when I’ve done that, the stock has stopped short of the new sell price and I lost more profit than I gained. So I will let the sell order stand as is. Then I still have time for the Put to make a profit.

Watching Kohls (KSS)

2008-01-26T09:43:00.001-08:00

Reading Friday’s post at www.optionaddict.net , Jeff Kohler said that he was looking at going short on several stocks. One of those was Kohls Corp (KSS).

Sticking to my current strategy of using 3 green or 3 red arrow, I looked at KSS.
It has 2 red arrows and looks poised for the 3rd red on the MACD.
Earnings is 2/28/08 so not a factor in selling a Feb spread.

I will check this Monday night to see if the 3rd red arrows developed.

Other stocks on his list of possible shorts had 2 green arrows or the one green arrow did not look poised to turn red (at least not to me). So they did not fit my criteria.

A straddle

2008-01-25T20:56:00.000-08:00

After a lot of down trending, two strong up day swings on 1/22 & 1/23 .
On morning of 1/24/08 I bought March IWM 70 Call @ 2.95
Then it turned into a possible reversal back down. So I caught near the high of the day and sold that 70 call for 0.35 more than I bought it.

Since the market is so news/event driven lately and doing big swings (even within a day), I thought rather than keep fighting the market in trying to figure out a direction or a range as in the case of iron condors, why not assume it will make some more big swings.

1/25/08 I bought March IWM straddle 68 call/put @6.90 (call 3.82, put 3.08)
Thanks for the idea Bruce!

When that order filled, I put limit orders in to sell them separately when they are 0.90 more than each was bought at. That is a swing of about 2 points in each direction. Looking at a recent chart, that seems probable.

I’m expecting the market to go back down. But I bought the straddle for March to give time for it to bounce up if it does swing as wildly as it has been.

Children’s Place (PLCE) & 3 Red Arrows

2008-01-22T19:31:00.001-08:00

Again doing a search for 3 red arrows.
Used
Investools Strategy Searches / Momentum Searches Archives / Stocks Trending Down

I found Children’s Place (PLCE).
Above is a 5-year chart. Below is a 3-month chart.

Out of the Money Vertical Credit (Bear Call Spread)
Sell FEB 17.50 Call
Buy FEB 20 Call

Credit is between $0.30-$0.40

If I place an order for $0.35 credit,
Amount at risk is $2.15

I am putting in a very small order. I’m still trying out this 3 Red Arrows method.

Right Logic...Wrong Execution

2008-01-22T17:34:00.000-08:00

Well, I had the right idea about the markets opening down today. Except I expected them to gap down only slightly then go down the rest of the morning. What they did was gap down at open big time! The IWM gapped down at open almost 3 points!

So although I put a few cents extra on my order to buy puts, I totally missed out as the options opened more than $2 higher. When I saw that, I cancelled my orders not wanting to catch the wrong side of it if it was going up.

Then I did what I knew I shouldn’t, I tried to catch the trade. I put in an order for an IWM Put where the market price was. Then the market spent the rest of the morning going up.
I saw within 30 minutes of placing my catch-up trade that things were not reversing to go down quickly so I go out with only $0.60 loss.
The market peaked around 10a and went sideways from there.
So my instinct was right to have orders in to buy puts this morning, but I didn’t expect the quick down and quick reversal.

Trades placed for a Bearish open tomorrow

2008-01-21T20:52:00.001-08:00

Market was closed for Holiday today. Markets open around the world were all down 3-7% today. Analysts are saying it’s a reaction to the US market being so down on Friday.
I’m expecting that the Market will open down tomorrow. So I want to find a position to play the slide down.
I looked at the stocks within the Dow for one that had 3 red arrows.

Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) has 3 red arrows. When I overlay the Dow (blue candles) on it, it follows fairly well. (There is an earnings report due 2/19/08 so will need to get out before then.)

Just looked at the available options on HPQ. Although there is a lot of open interest, there are only options available for 3 months in 2008, FEB, MAY & AUG. Don’t understand that. Not sure I want to get into this stock without knowing about why the limited options.

American Express (AXP) was the only other DOW component I could find with 3 red arrows.

Looking at the gap down on 1/11, I saw this news:

NEW YORK, Jan 12, 2008 (AP via COMTEX News Network) --Shares of credit card lenders closed lower Friday for asecond straight day after American Express Co. cautioned that the housing slumphas taken its toll on the American consumer.Late Thursday, American Express said spending on its more than 80 millioncards began to tail off in December. The company set aside $440 millionpreparing for more missed payments on credit card bills and expects a weakereconomy in 2008.

Maybe it has something to do with the market having been closed today. AXP only has options for FEB, APR & JUL.
I checked several stocks, and none have MAR options. Something must be off.

So, I am going to look at buying a FEB Put for both of these stocks.

HPQ is at 43.58
FEB 45 Put is 2.15
Expecting the market to open down, I will place an order at 2.25

AXP is at 43.05
FEB 45 Put is 3.10
I will place an order at 3.20

Since I have lost so much over the last month, I scaled back the amount of money I have at risk on each trade. Both of these trades together equal the amount at risk that I had been putting into one trade. I need to build up a strategy that works in this market before I go back to higher risk amounts. I’ve had one good trade with the 3 red arrows. Let’s see if I can have more.

Minor Victory

2008-01-19T13:53:00.000-08:00

I bought Feb IWM 73 Put at 5.55 based on 3 red arrows.
Watching yesterday, I put a $0.35 trail stop on when it went $1.00 above the bought price.
It sold at 6.35
Made $0.80
Yeah, a minor victory!

It was interesting that I bought short at 3 red arrows and when I sold a green arrow appeared.

Guess these arrows are not lagging as much as I expected.

1/17/08

2008-01-17T11:37:00.000-08:00

I am going back to the Investools "3 green arrow" method of choosing trades.
IWM is at 67.98
It has 3 red arrow indicating Sell.
So I have bought contracts of Feb 73 Puts.

Last January Option

2008-01-15T18:53:00.000-08:00

This is a graph of today’s Russell 2000.
It opened down from yesterday’s close.
At 10a, I sold a JAN 720/710 Call spread for $1.60 (expiring tomorrow).
Since there is talk of the Fed doing an emergency rate cut at any time, I bracketed it with sell orders. It would sell if the cost to buy back hit $0.60 or $2.50
At noon it bought back at $2.55 for a $0.95 loss.
In that time period the stock went from 695.5 to 700.3, a difference of 4.8
Even if I had put the stop further away, by 12:15p, the stock had gone up 6.4 before it went back down.
The only time it went below where I bought it was at 10:52 @ 694.2 which would have been a profit of $1.30
Instead I had a loss of $0.95
Yet again, another loss. And it didn’t go anywhere near the option. Yet when I've let options go without a protective stop, it keeps going and increasing the loss.

Okay, time to analyze this.
I sold an option with only 2 days to expire. Safer to sell with shorter time exposed to risk.

But….
It had no component of time decay to dampen price fluctuations and that's what got me.

A brief history

2008-01-15T11:06:00.000-08:00

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.