Trading was choppy and generally negative today; late trading this afternoon erased much of the losses. RUT closed essentially unchanged at $623 and the SPX edged up to $1097. Today was the last day to trade the Oct RUT index options, but my Oct condor spreads remain > 2 standard deviations OTM so I allowed those positions to remain open into expiration. The Oct iron condor position will close at a $715 gain or a 6% gain on capital at risk. My Aug and Oct condors are excellent examples of the feasibility of using iron condors for monthly income generation. My Aug position lost $810 and the Oct position gained only $715 but the lesson is risk management. If you can salvage a small loss or even a small gain in the months where the market trends strongly against you, then this trading strategy can work for you.

My Nov iron condor stands at a P/L of +$1,700, position delta = -$29, and position theta = +$81.

I dabbled in a couple of speculative earnings announcement trades today - I normally emphasize conservative options trading strategies, but a little bit of speculation is OK (typically 5-10% or less of your portfolio). AAPL's earnings will be announced Monday and I established a Nov/Jan 180/200 double calendar today for $8,750 (10 contracts). Due to the earnings announcement, IV of the Nov AAPL options is elevated. I am predicting that IV of the Nov options will decrease rapidly early next week while the IV of the Jan options should remain about the same. This should give this position a nice head start. Of course, I also need AAPL to not trade up or down too far. The breakevens of this trade are at $174 and $209.

The other speculative trade was on GOOG's earnings announcement after the market closed today. I put on 10 contracts of an ATM Oct/Nov $530 calendar for $10,010 with breakevens of $504 and $560. GOOG is currently trading in after hours markets at about $540 so this trade appears to be working out just fine. Similar to the AAPL trade, this position benefits from the collapsing IV in the Oct call after the announcement. However, it is also predicated on GOOG staying within $504 and $560.