Yesterday was interesting. The market sold off quite a bit and on the bounce I sold 3 units of call spreads with the intent to sell the equivalent put spreads on the next leg down. I did this because:
1) the downward strength was strong and selling some call spreads on the bounce even out our deltas a bit.
2) I was hoping to enter the equivalent put spreads on the second leg down at a better price.
The latter didn’t really happen. So I had to sell them a little higher. An ode to the pains of trying to market time. You’ll notice I only do that with super small units 🙂 Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. Of course, it was really minor and I’d only do if it actually benefited the trade as a whole (which it did re #1).
Right now, during my off time, I am backtesting 9 day iron condors (without much success yet) and the Friday butterflies (so far promising). I wish I had more time 🙂 There is so much back testing to do.