Higher jobless claims than expected only caused a momentary pause in the market this morning. By noon, everything was headed up for the day. The RUT closed at $568.68 and SPX closed at $1007.37. RUT is closing in on its previous high of $575 and SPX is back above the $1000 resistance level. This market continues to show significant underlying strength. On the other hand, the trading volume this week has been somewhat below historic averages, so the big players may be still waiting to make their move.
As I mentioned yesterday, I was planning to close my August $590/$600 calls if RUT moved up much at all. So I entered orders to close those spreads this morning. I entered my order at the ask price of $0.10 and left it out there for about 30 minutes. I have seen this before; when you get down to the last hours before expiration, the market makers don't have any interest in the worthless long options of our far OTM spreads (the $600 calls in this case). So I cancelled my order and bought back the $590 calls for $0.05, effectively closing that side of the condor. I will allow the $480/$490 put spreads to expire worthless. Assuming tomorrow's settlement price for RUT is above $490 (hopefully that is a safe assumption!), my August iron condor ends its life at a net loss of $810, or 5% on the capital at risk in this trade. One of my rules for trading the iron condor is to control my losses in these crazy months to less than the profit of a good month. Since we started this condor with hopes of a $4,000 profit, my $810 loss is very acceptable. This condor was one of the most active positions I have ever managed; note that I started with an adjustment early to protect the downside, and then scrambled for the rest of the time buying hedges and rolling spreads up in front of July's strong rally. It may seem bizarre to some people, but I am very proud of my $810 loss; the last 55 days have been a wild ride. To escape and only give up about 20% of a typical month's gains is a victory.
My Sept RUT iron condor stands at a P/L of +$160, delta = -$47 and a +$194 theta, so it is in an excellent position and no adjustments are necessary.
I opened an October iron condor on RUT today: 15 contracts of the $640/$650 calls for $0.90 and 15 contracts of the $460/$470 puts for $0.70, for a total credit of $2,400. Plus or minus one standard deviation spanned $499 to $630 when I established this position this morning. So the calls are just outside of one standard deviation, but I allowed extra safety margin on the downside. I just can't develop any confidence in this economy with record unemployment, foreclosures, bankruptcy and spiraling government deficits. Hence, I want some extra breathing room on the downside.
A Surprisingly Strong Market
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