T&T – Page 26 – Travels and Trades

Trade Plan – Sep 28 (October Trades)

The RUT is at the August 24 lows (1098-1100) and SPX is at 1894 right now. That was a nice 9% drop from its Friday high. The OCT trades are still profitable though despite the drop. However, at this moment, they aren’t as profitable as they were and our catch-up from the Aug 24 fall is now stunted a bit. I mean, the volatility is packed in there thus reducing the price of the BFs and we’ve had to make several adjustments. Some of which were on the upside early last week and of course, I’ve obviously had to adjust on the way down towards the end of the week. Likewise, today I had to adjust pre 2:30pm because all of our delta limits were exceeded by a large amount. I did most of the adjusting on a little bounce to 1106/1107 where I sold a bunch of 1150 BFs and added in place a bunch of 1080 BFs. That should hold until we get to the planned adjustment point at 2:30. Looks like we’ll have to move around a lot of things. I don’t love the positions right now while we sit on a major area for RUT (previous lows) and having the volatility be so high. Who knows, if things go our way, they can still do good for a close probably sometime next week.

It looks like ES (SPX futures) will test the 1875 double bottom. We’re extremely oversold on most indicators so it should test and bounce but who knows.

The November trades are all doing great. They’re all up $.

As I get out of Oct trades and as things stabilize, I am looking to do more long term capital efficient M3 (double sized with same risk potential) but starting them 65 days out and closing before 21 days to expiration. The double sized aspect will offset the closing of the trades before 21 DTE where you’d expect a lower profit potential. A few guys I’ve seen, trade the M3s further out and close them before 21 DTE but they accept a lower profit target. They have very little stress as gamma is quite tame and it requires a lot less adjustments that far from expiration. My thoughts is to make up for the profit potential by doing a capital efficient double sized M3. Again. the double sized M3 still has the same total risk level as a normal

The protector alpha is not doing great right now. It’s had some correlation issues these past few weeks but that should fix itself over time. The stocks have still done better overall than RSP.

Sep 24 -October trades

Did my adjustments at 2:30pm-3pm and felt good going into the weekend until into the close and after hours where the RUT is taking a nose dive dip. It’s down about 20 points on the day. We’ve got another 25-30 points of downside room on the October trades before we have bigger issues and I am concerned with this right now.

The RUT has been erratic today and that’s causing me issues. Hoping for a somewhat tame or up open for Monday. The Rut was at 1195 a week ago and now it’s in the 1110’s and though I’ve adjusted appropriately and according to plan. I still can have some gamma issues on Monday if it’s a big gap down.

The November trade has not changed and is sitting perfectly for any pull back.

Sep 25- M3 Trade

No adjustments needed today. We’re slightly delta negative which is where I’d like to be as it gives cushion in a market fall re increased volatility. Since we’re a vega negative trade, any increased volatility hurts the trade. We’ll adjust on the upside once delta reaches -500 within the tent and -350 or so outside of the tent. As the market goes up, volatility tends to drop, and this will cause a sag in the T+0 line on the right hand side of the graph. We want to monitor this and usually we’ll add put credit spreads ATM to address and eventually, if it sits for a few days outside of the tent to the upside, we’ll roll the butterflies forward.

Sep 24 -Trades

On Thursday, the RUT touched 1194 and then proceeded to fall to 1125 within 4 trading days. What’s 70 points between friends. I am starting to get used to this volatility. It’s a lot easier to handle with these M3 trades. However, some of the October trades I had on had to be adjusted today because of the big drop. 70 points is a lot and our gamma trend on the downside was getting a tad uncomfortable and some of the trades had hit delta limits. With one trade, I went well past the limits in the AM so I adjusted early (I am trying to adjust once a day at 2:30pm) but I felt I had to do it on this one. No biggie but a bit of an annoyance. I adjusted in the AM once and again around 2:30. I had some gamma trend issues on the downside and corrected these. Apparently my timing was not impeccable as the market rose after I did the adjustments. That’s part of the game. These occurred while RUT was around 1128-1132 today. It’s now at something like 1138.

I’ve now entered an M3 trade for November which I’ll post here and can be followed on a day to day basis. Here it is:

It’s an M3 with a mix of 1110s and 1100 Butterflies. Each day I’ll post the current P/L and adjustments. It’s a 5 lot with planned capital of 250k trade with a profit target of 25k and a max loss of 25k. The actual at risk amount is significantly less than 250k but that’s our planned capital amount and what we base the returns off of. Standard M3 stuff. You may end up using all 50k but most of the time its not. You have to plan for it though. Adjustments etc cost.

I added 1110s a day or two ago and I filled it out today with some 1100s. The price of the BFs were quite low and less calls were needed to hedge. We’ll have to keep an eye on the upside trends. This will be a first official trade for this blog and I’ll be posting all adjustments and results day to day.

Trade Plan – Sep 24

The market is going to open down slightly today at some major ES supports (1910-1915) with more support at 1898/1900. If we have a close below 1898, then we can expect a retest of the lows at 1880. If it can get above 1915, then I expect a retest of the 1940/1950 level. Yellen speaks today at 5pm EST and likely the market is going to putter around until then. I’ve got some adjustments to do today on the M3s for October and I’ll be looking to enter November trades.

The protector is down about 1.9% now vs SPY down about 6.2%. The protector lost a lot of value from Sep 8 till present due to the volatility collapse coming out of the long puts. The hedge part of the trade was what caused this loss. During the week of the correction, the protector was actually up about 1% due to the volatility in the longs. It did what it was supposed to do but the weeks following, as the fear leaves, the hedge starts to normalize and we experience some of that initial hedge gain dissipate. This is what is happening now.

The options trades have gained well during the past two weeks and we’re starting to go risk on today and tomorrow which might be good timing with this increased volatility.

Protector Portfolio Correlation Issues

We’ve had some correlation issues the past few days with the Protector portfolio. It’s still outperforming the indexes overall but it’s been a big drag the past 3-4 days. As of yesterday it was down about 1% overall vs SPY -4.5%. Today I expect it to close the gap a bit more and probably sits at about -2% vs SPY -5%. Still, not bad for a completely hedged portfolio of stocks but, of course, disappointing short term.

The reason for the correlation issues? One is Hilary Clinton released a tweet targeting Biotech companies with astronomical medication costs and the mechanical picks I had included some of those. So the market did about what -1.2% at around 3pm and my stocks were down a combined 1.8%. Yesterday was worse, we had MNK lose 10% on the day and the stocks lost about 0.7% on a day the spy lost 0%.

I am starting to go more risk on with the options trades (which all handled the 4% fall from 203 to 194 quite well). I’ll probably enter more tomorrow.

The market is in indecision right now. I can’t help but think it’ll test the Aug lows but who knows. The market opened and closed within cents the last few days forming very tight dojis. The market opened at 196.44 and closed at 196.46 yesterday and opened at 193.88 and closed at 193.88 today. This suggests that bulls are defending and that if the bears were going to score, they’d have done so with those gap downs and relatively strong downward pressure overnight. If it were to collapse short term, you’d think it would have happened yesterday or today. Though, all it takes is some more bad news out of China or anywhere (i.e. China PMI before tomorrows open I am told). It seems like they are pushing the market around during the overnight hours…running stops etc. That’s where the market is moving.

NO HIKE

There’s no hike. Market relatively unchanged 5 min in. Let’s see how it reacts into close.

My gut says this rally won’t last as there is still a chance of hike in the next few months. Markets hate unknowns AND we still have pretty major world economical problems.

Sep 17 – Fed Day

Today’s the big day. I am positioned with very little upside risk and about 5% room on the downside via a series of M3s. Though, one of the 1120 M3s are now vega positive and if volatility decreases it’ll sag the T+0 line a bit which will cause me some issues. Nothing too risky at all. I plan to up my risk going into October and have been waiting for the market to settle down. I added a few 1150 M3s today since the volatility is still high and we can get them at a nice cheap price given the time till expiry. Again it’ll handle all upside moves well and has a good 5% to the downside before any issues.

The RUT has moved up quite substantially in the last few days (up nearly 50 points! which is near 4%-5%).

5 min to go. Can’t wait for this meeting to be over with and for some normalcy to return to the markets.

The alpha protector is down on the recent rise as volatility flew out of the long puts. I was somewhat expecting that. As it gets passed 204-205 we’ll see profits return. I rolled up the shorts today from 201 to 203 to give more upside room.

Sep 14 -Trade Plan

I removed most of the September trades today. I have a little left but not much. Somewhat a small recovery these past few weeks enough to get back some confidence. The losses now are more stomach-able. Having realized how drastic the moves where and how little they occur in history has relieved me. I’ve lost a summers worth of profits on an event about as rare as 1 in 10 years. Not bad. Soon come, I am ready to get back on the horse. I have a renewed focus on proper risk management and diligence in preplanning and back-testing. I’ve been spending most of my free time doing due diligence and backtests galore.

I’ve got just a little risk on for October trades as I await the Fed meeting on Thursday. I want things to kind of settle down (which it is starting to!) before going back full risk-on. I needed a small break from the stress of it all as well.

Obviously the recent events were somewhat traumatic. The drop of 10% in four trading days is quite rare. It’s only occurred 9 times since the Great Depression. The other times it occurred was of course Aug 2011, Oct 2008 (Financial Crisis), Aug 1998 (Long term capital hedge fund explodes), Oct 1987 (Black Monday!), 1962 (Kennedy intro’s steel tariffs), 1940 (WW2), 1938 (Fed policy error). Source: Doug Kass

The neat thing is that every single one of those had a retest of the lows within a few months. Only two of the above occurred in bull markets (which we are pretty much in now). They eventually went on to new highs (one took 5 months and the other took four months). Again, source: Doug Kass

If we retest the lows at 1875, I’ll be putting some risk on. In the meantime, I’ll be adding M3s and Bearish butterflies periodically and ramping things up. The high volatility environment should be quite lucrative in the months to come. We’re finally getting paid for our risk!

The protector is just about break-even (maybe slightly profitable). Pretty damn good since we put the thing on at SPY 205 and SPY is at 195 (5% down ish). But I am worried that the next few years, the environment may not be good for a long based portfolio even when hedged. I don’t know what to do. I think its probably prudent to just keep it on and let it run its course over the next few years. The mechanical stock picking should keep things profitable as it has to date. Eventually, it’ll do quite well. It’s a long term portfolio.

Sep 12 – Trade Plan

This month has been the third most volatile month for the markets in history only being beat out by the 2008 financial crisis and the 1929 great depression. The overnight moves were extreme and made for the toughest markets for market neutral trading. Overnight gaps in each direction in the 1-4% range were regular and intense and quick reversals came at the drop of a dime. Going from an extreme low volatility environment to an incredibly high one is always going to be very challenging period for market neutral traders. Once in a high volatility period, it’ll be much easier to manage and probably a lot more profitable but the transition can permanently take out a lot of traders 🙂

I struggled immensely the past few weeks but finally had a decent week with some recovery. The MICs do not trade well in this environment and can be devastating in unexpected overnight crashes. The RUT moved from all time highs to about 17% down in the period of a few weeks. Crashes like what happened on Aug 24 will wipe out most iron condor traders. Luckily, those events are quite rare. If it happened during trading hours, it’d be a lot easier to manage. A study was done and it was found that 50% of the markets movement occurs in the futures between 3-4am during the past 7 years I believe. The market is more efficient and swift than in the past and I believe that it’ll make MIC trading a lot more difficult to manage than back-testing would suggest. In contrast, all the M3 traders I know are mostly positive (one is up 7%) and, remember, it’s still a market neutral trade that really doesn’t like movement. Yet it survived one of the most volatile months on record. That’s incredible. I’ve had a bunch of M3s on but not enough to even make a dent in the MIC losses. It’s a very resilient trade as you can see with the below risk profile.

M3’s can handle market movements a lot better. Here is an example of an M3 risk profile:

The beauty of an M3 is how it compliments human factors. When I say human factors, I mean psychology and the things that challenge us within when trading. Things like taking losses with adjustments, or the opposite, adjusting to quickly out of fear etc etc. If you notice, you have no real upside risk and on the downside, you’re falling into profit being under the tent. So when you make an adjustment on the downside, you’re up money AND you’re usually taking money off the table. That’s a very nice adjustment in terms of human factors. As well, look at the room you have before you start losing money (almost what 5%?). Again, the beauty of managing this trade is its conservative risk profile, the fact that adjustments are mostly welcomed, and that a trader who’s keeping their T+0 line balanced will usually never have a problem with deviating from the plans so greatly that it affects the trade overtime.

Here is an MIC risk profile.

You can see that on a quick fall (overnight) without the ability to protect yourself, you can have extremely large draw downs. This is especially pronounced as you get closer into expiry. Plus, this risk profile is taken in a high volatility environment, having put this on during Aug before the correction, it’d be even worse. That said, if you had the ability to adjust (moves happen DURING the day instead of overnight), then this trade is easy to manage. Overall, I mean, I loved the MIC trade until this month. I had a really rough month in the melt up in October of last year and I had a real rough month this month with the extreme overnight movements. For me, I just don’t know if its a trade that I can justify having seen how the M3, Rock and Bearish butterflies react. I mean, the MIC is a great trade for the most part, as you have quite a high theta and being in the green each month had a 93% success rate. It’s the extreme moves that occur overnight that really hurt and excessive whip saw. Both of those causes are what hurt me in the MIC trades recently. In hindsight, I should have closed the MIC straight away instead of trying to manage it through the week after crash. Hindsight is 20/20.