space trip trade ron bertino – Page 4

Jun 26 – Yesterdays Vol Shock and the trades

Yesterday was interesting day, VIX spiked up 40-45% and we had some relative fear in the market.

My fresh HS3 trades all drew down as expected on any initial vol spike of that magnitude. Nothing at all to be concerned about and not all that big. My older HS3s were just fine. After an initial spike (VIX spiked to 19) there’s not all that much relative exposure to Vega left before the BS portions of the trade kick in. I mean there is a bit but relatively small and any more down move would trigger the OTM longs and the trade goes profitable. The trade is almost as perfect as it can get but what it needs is some initial vol spike hedging to keep Drawdowns and psychology clean. We have initial ideas.

The draw down is due to Vega and Vanna as the initial vol spike doesn’t quite affect the far away longs as much as the more upfront part of the trade. The far away longs would trigger in a bigger move down or a continued move down. Works well. The draw downs from an initial shock are moderate but I don’t lose sleep on it, standard (pre-market now, we’re already recovered most of the draw down). Basically, just stating that a 40% initial vol spike will generally cause your HS3s to draw down $500 or more.

Another 3% drop would activate those longs and BS protection kicks in and the trades would crush. This is the nature of the trade and the trade-off of the structure and well, it’s expected with ANY positive theta trade, at least initially. Rui mentions that he noticed in his backtest that the lower long put Vomma, Vanna, and Gamma power kicks in when the SPX gets close to the upper longs and the lower get into the 10 delta range.

Essentially, an initial shock and the time before panic is the temporary dead zone of these trades. Once those lowers have the greeks activated, then the trade profits.

Let’s call it VolFEAR and VolPANIC to distinguish the two types. An STT combo and an HS3 combo will initially draw down when we are in-between VOlFEAR stage and the VolPANIC stage and this is usually a relatively temporary period before either the market moves towards VolPanic or VolNORMAL stages.

Adding in a Krishnan PBR might be the answer to this and I am going to explore adding it in for low vol times for that initial shock (that you’d typically get in a 1.5-2.5% down day). This would cover the initial DD and maybe even profit and taken off while the initial structure would activate on a move further and is safe anyways.

The market is bouncing now and my pre-market balance is relative recovered. In backtesting, this was always the case and often after a larger fall and a few days of rest, the trades hit the profit tent and reach targets. Let’s see if this is the case for my older trades.

I managed to get on about 40 more units yesterday and I got 25 PDS @ 45 DTE to help with hedging on the bounce to 2721 at EOD.

I Like where we are right now.

Jun 23 – In Europe and trading update (HS3/STT)

I just arrived in Europe on the 12th (Hamburg) and made my way to Copenhagen to board a 24 day northern Europe cruise on the 27th. We’re here in Europe till the 31st of Aug and will probably hit up Poland, Southern Germany and Italy again.

There’s been a lot of trade evolution in the PMTT group. We’re moving at an exponential pace in simplification of the HS3 and STT trades via almost synthetically identical structures into a much more manageable and executable way. We’ve also added in methodology for campaign style execution which is relevant for me re size. The new evolution of the STT now includes built in BSH which is necessary while the new HS3 is now executable with ease in SPX. All in all, I think they’ll totally replace the originals. We’re solving for drawdowns, margin issues, risk, and increasing potential returns but first and foremost the key thing everyone seems focused on is how these things will react in a crash and exactly how can we minimise the stress of reacting in that type of environment. Crashes are emotional events and we need trades that react positively and don’t require high stress adjustments.

The last crash had challenged certain assumptions and I think has led to a solving of hopefully every potential issue that could come up with margin, margin expansion, broker calculations of said margin and draw downs. I Learned a lot. It’s changed my goal and mindset. I think it has for other people in the group as well. We’re now naturally and entirely focused on risk managements, draw downs, and ease of execution and management during crashes. The one question I always ask myself w/ a trade is how would this react in a crash, how can I neutralise the risk or lock in profits during said crash and what is the likelihood I’d need to react in such a way that would be stressful or against the market. I want to be happy and relieved during a crash and not stressed. The situation I found myself in Feb — can’t happen again

I feel like the last year or two has been a grand experiment in creating a complex option position that sucks premium out of the market in a fairly riskless way thats both scalable and profitable while maintaining all of the secondary requirements of margin, margin expansion, broker calculations etc. We’re in one of the toughest most complex games in the world and it’s no surprise perhaps that it’s taken this long to develop something. It is what it is. It’s a journey.

The recovery since Feb has been nothing short of breathless which is nice.

I’ve got about 180 units of HS3 @ EDF&man, 100 units of SPX HS3, 20 units of campaign style STT, 30 or so units of X4V14, 20 units or so of the new style STT. Ready to rock.

Current Hodge Podge of Remaining Positions

Here’s my remaining positions from Feb. IT’s a hodge podge of 4 different expirations and is more like an ATM trade than the previous OTM trades. This Risk profile represents an “initiation” of 15 days ago (I re-entered my positions on my laptop 15 days ago). Decent recovery in those 15 days. I keep removing trades every day as I go, lessening risk and on other days, I am slowly raising the UEL. I also have some BSH hedges to protect this thing as I go forward. I will probably half the risk in another 10 days and so on. I do have some short puts in there that are around the 1700,1800 and 1900 strikes which I am getting off as well. They were for the BSH factory start and I sold them on super high vol days. Hence why the -10% time slice looks pretty gross. They’re nearly ready to take off. I nearly took half off yesterday on the bounce. I’ll slowly get those off next week as well.

Here is the risk profile 10 days forward

STT initial draw downs

Thought I’d share some of the nuance of STT draw-downs during the past several days which I found interesting but expected after back-testing it to death. Always different live though isn’t it? In the last 18 months we haven’t really had large VIX spikes or bearish moves so it’s a nice refresher on how things actually work in real life re trading.

I had entered several June 29 STTs last week when VOL spiked quite high despite the move upward. VIX was telling us that demand for protection was increasing as the market moved up. Traders were protecting themselves. The STTs were a decent price given the pricing of OTM options so I used that to compliment the entries I had the weeks prior in the June 29 expiration. On Monday, the market fell and we had a spike to 15.3 VIX area. So we went from a 9 VIX environment a week prior to a 15 VIX environment. The move was relatively small in the SPX but the VIX move was quite large. That day, the market was hovering around SPY 281.5 with a touch of 281.22. About the same place it was the week before. However, the STTs I entered drew down about $550-$600 a unit which closed in on a 100k total draw down. Of course, these types of VOL based draw downs are temporary and they follow the VIX spikes you see in the charts. If you see a large spike, expect a temporary draw down, likewise, even if the market continues down, if the spike subsides, expect your STTs to regain in value. This type of thing is most pronounced with a move from a low vol environment to a higher vol environment and it will affect newer STTs more than developed STTs. Likewise, If we start entering STTs in this higher vol environment, they’ll be less prone to vol shifts. Anyways, it’s Thursday, and pre-market is down to about 280.6 area and my STTs are only drawn down about $250 a unit yet the market is lower than it was on Monday. Totally normal and give another 10 days, we’ll likely be green pending no disaster in the market. All the while, I’ll be entering more and more STT and setting the next several months up as a success. As time goes buy, the profit tent will build up and even with the market moving lower, the STTs will regain value and eventually, probably in the next 30 days, we’ll be reaching profit targets. If we have another shock event or a shock VIX spike, we’ll have draw down but it’ll likely be less than the initial one as time has gone buy and time builds resilience in the STT. Yesterday they were only down about 200 a unit. Totally normal following a large spike with brand new STTs. Again, time kinda cures all of this. Given another 10 days, it’ll be very hard for the STT to draw down this amount again unless we have an actual larger bear move that requires adjustments etc. The STT likes grind down markets and can handle a sudden move and it’ll often do really good if we can get a bit closer to that tent. Give it 30 days and we and very likely we’ll be green and in a sweet zone for further profit expansion.

This is a great environment to get into STTs and if we can keep this going, we’ll be laughing.

Those vix spikes are great times to enter more. I did. Now we let this move play out and adjust as we need (I usually add condors weight to the direction I need to hedge). I will at times add debit spreads as well.

I’ve converted old STTs (March) to hedge structures by selling some of the longs of the PDS and buying back twice as many of the shorts of the PCS as well I’ll buy back the PCS at cheap prices and sometimes sell a bit more of the front long to compensate etc etc. Credit to Rui @ the PMTT Group for the idea.

2018 Plan

Wow. What a run in the markets. Historic on all levels. We’ve now gone the longest time without a 5% pull back. The RSI is at historic levels. The thing just won’t die. I am just glad I never got caught in the run with a neutral or negative UEL (upper expiration line) this time around. A lesson learned from the last 18 months.

I think the biggest mistakes I’ve made as a trader in the last 24 months have been approaching or erring my adjustment and entry decision making based on a positive EV (expected value) basis. I used to be a professional gambler (finding exploits in casino games both online and to a lesser degree off) and was v. successful at it (go figure, you actually can do something like that for a living). My mindset in exploiting edges carried over to the markets and it never paid off. Probably more of a function of timing and extremes in market conditions than it was on poor analysis. For the last 18 months, records and extremes have been a normality. Using previous market mechanics to game that system would be impossible. I’d use lots of technicals and market bias where the EV seemed well positive to shape my trades to err one way or the other or to time adjustments. I don’t think I was ever right. Now don’t get me wrong, only a few times did it really hurt but the other times just affected my planned bias just a bit. Nothing major. It was just an “err” to slightly positive or slightly negative deltas. A bias.

For example, we’d reach a yearly pivot point and major resistance w/ VIX at lowest in history, I’d remove the credit spread and wait for a small pull back or a cessation in the up move to take off the debit spread. That happened in October and did affect my December trade, the market screamed through and went up enormous amounts. I managed to get my PDS off but at a pretty shitty price. That was the big one. My big mistake of the year. Cost some of the profits. What are the others? Well after a big run, I’d setup the STT in a more standard format where I’d have a neutral UEL or slightly negative with some negative deltas. The market kept going up and the STT would struggle to reach target. What else? I’d try to wait for a red day to get on a PCS for upside adjustments. They mostly never came. Obviously the market is in extremes and all of these are reasonable bias and they’re only erring bias but it never worked out.

I learned from that, and now follow a no-bias approach. I set my UEL positive and I adjust based on price action and risk profile. Now I have no stress or worry about a never ending bull market. I’ll reach targets on the trades and I won’t have much to do. Like now.

I’ve gone back to basics as my mastermind group starts to go further down the rabbit hole re skew calculations (horizontal and vertical) and trying to find edges there-in. The last month or so they’ve gone so far in that they’ve lost me even 🙂 I think they’re exploring areas that are relatively untouched and I have no doubt that it will result in some quantifiable and actionable edges but a lot of it seems to be an exercise in complex analysis. But they will need to really simplify what they’re doing and it’d be for entries and adjustments. I am letting them run with this while I go back to the basics. My account size just can’t be put to use in anything but the simplest most predictable trades. The group is so invaluable and its the main reason I’ve been able to find myself in trading.

Right now, I’ve been setting up STTs much further out, a bit wider where I’d shrink the width as it ages and with the final intent to eventually convert all the STTs to a hedge structure as they approach the final 3 months. I’ve got my BSH factory running and I have other types of hedges. I’ve managed to get them to cost NIL while utilizing the STTs as a profit structure. Simple and easy. I haven’t messed about with exotic structures but eventually will on a very small non-concentrated amount.

I finally have moved into my new house and have an awesome office to work out of. It’s all coming together re trading.

My plan going forward.. (HS3, BSH Factory, TTTBSH)

Finally finished up a deep backtest run of the newest trade setups and am finalizing my plan for 2018 which I am confident will be a break out year re profits. The trade plans setup are so robust.

Since Jun I’ve just been testing and testing and testing all the various concepts trying to cohesively setup a plan for end of 2017 and 2018. Majority of my free time has gone into this testing and I think I am finally in the homestretch. I have a plan and I have extensive testing completed for the majority of that plan. Testing was completed for the HS3 from Jan 2014 to present and here are the compounded results:

I’ve been waiting for a high vol red day since Sep 5th, and one has just not really come. I need vol to enter this trade. I’ve tested that there are about 20-24 entries per year but some years can be as low as 12-15. Good enough as the trade will return 10-15% on margin. So not only has the trading from Jan to Aug sucked, but I can’t get a damn entry for these new trades 🙂 Frustrating. I guess a year end is just a date, so patience is what I’ll exercise.

As for live trading, basically up to August, trading has been not going my way. I was live trading the STT and BSH w/ financing and just had a terrible time paying off the BSH structures (as I mentioned several times). I underperformed relative to my goals. Couple that with the legacy Rhinos from the beginning of the year that did AWFUL, it’s just been such a “meh” crappy year. I mean, this year has broke records in all metrics for volatility and down day magnitudes and frequency, it went as badly as it could for these types of trades. Coupled that with the fact that I am waiting to enter large trades, and time is ticking, I doubt I’ll have much chance for even a modest year.

When we do get that down day, I am using the trade desk to put on a 100 unit trade and I am not messing about with filling it myself. If we get another few down days after that, I’ll put on another couple of 100 unit sets on. Fun.

Yeah, so when I look back at the year, it sucked for trading live and results therein but it was the biggest learning and trading maturity step I’ve taken. It feels good. The entire year was probably 500+ hours of testing and analysis. Lots of dead ends, but lots of discoveries Jeez, the latter half of the year was so much back testing that I was dreaming about it. When I was on my trip, I’d use the 3 hour nap (my newborn baby) period during the day to backtest and test concepts and lately, it’s been testing in day and at night when the wife and kids go to bed. Since June, I think there have been 15 or so concepts introduced and I think we’re nearing the end of the runway of what’s possible re overall conceptual structures in the equities options market. Anything from here on in will likely be plays off what we’ve already tested. You can see this manifest as the group naturally is moving towards the next level of complexity—>VIX trading.

I’ve been liking the idea of a TTTBSH protecting the initial setup of a BSH factory and have done some extensive testing on that. Even if you do it in low vol, it seems to work out just fine as the TTT will protect until its adequately setup (the factory).

Yep, it’s a game changer. Horny Communist!?

Spent most of the day backtesting and working with the group on slight tweaks to the new trade as well I looked at parameters for adjusting, profit taking, margin expansion and so on. (Some tweaks are basically using different synthetics to better the greeks and so on IE you can short the market directly or you can create the same thing with a short call and long put at the money. But you then have some benefits re VEGA (vol) if the market falls re the long put) So you play with that stuff to get a better reacting trade while keeping the profiles relatively the same..long story short—>Buh-Bye STT and BSH. This thing is it. I’m saying hi to an old friend named optimism. I was down in trading mood this week and It think it showed. I guess at the same time, I mean, I didn’t have my combos on yet (PC2) and I was still struggling with the financing and so on which there was a light at the end of the tunnel. I just wasn’t feeling it. Now I am.

Like I said in the previous posts and above which might not have been obvious, the bulk of my current trading portfolio was still in individual BSHs, STTs and financing there in, NOT combos. A true struggle it was for me. I had not gone live with combos yet (not with any large amount). Had I, it would be just fine (not close to as good as the new stuff, but good). So I’m still old school and am suffering with poor profits from being unable to finance the BSHs in this environment. My reverse calendar financing DID not do well, my NPs were barely existent in some of my BSH financing and my STTs are suffering from bizarre option skews (OTM puts holding value). This whole thing was kinda a mess and resulted from a lot of things not going my way. Still, I am profitable, I just sucked.

So right now, I mostly kept backtesting the new parameters (when do we take profit, what if we move an option here or there and so on and playing with all sorts of dates to see how to setup the profit taking in the trades and to get a feel for draw-downs and so-on. I couldn’t keep up with the developments in the group and in the trade itself re parameters. So I probably backtested this thing in various small forms across every date possible 🙂 It’s using very familiar parts that I’ve traded a millions times before, so it’s not as if its going to do something unexpected but still diligence is required. I think we’ve nailed it now.

I’ll have a solid basket of 5-6 trades all working together and I am going to go live this upcoming few weeks. I’ll be going from the cumbersome financing BSHs, STT mess skipping over the combos and into the efficient versions of said combos that have accomplish the same things with elegance and ease w/ better profiles and greeks. The key thing is these things will be a blessing to manage. Looking forward!

The title had Horny Communist in it. That might be the name of the trade variant as a member noted that the Leftie tent was so big, he kept thinking of lefties/commies and we added a small tiny horn at the front (stolen from the Rhino trade) hence the name Horny Communist :). I kinda like it. This trade mixes ATM style properties but with built in black swan protection.

Game changer?

The last few days it appears we have found a ‘game changer’ that accomplishes what the STT+BSH trade does but without all of the issues that come with financing BSHs and relying on timing requirements for said financing and BSH initiation :). Basically, the entire thing I failed at doing properly this year due to how crazy the market’s been with both OTM puts holding value in the STT. The BSH financing wasn’t working across expirations via the reverse calendars and I was not getting any significant down days to get on naked puts to finance the opportunistic BSHs I put on. I heard this year was the historically worst year for 0.3% or more down days. There was barely any. Like the environment was with Rhinos, the worst possible, this environment was with this STT+BSH trade. Apparently I have the worst timing. I’ve been checking across option disciplines, it seems any delta neutral strategy has been failing since May due to the OTM puts holding value due to binary event type environment (War w/ NK can start, missiles can be launched on weekends, debt ceiling, Trump idiocy, and so on). This includes M3, Rhino, STTs themselves, combos, time trades etc.

There’s a few groups of trades we work on, one set is based upon cross expiration skew reversions and we call these time trades (TTT, T5 etc) which are usually not model-able in the sense that we can rely on any option software modelling to produce a risk profile of any real value. From backtesting, we know that they have probably the most EV of any trade we’ve done but they also lose on unpredictable internal market events (not market movement) but rather skew changes across expirations. This can cause draw downs of 100-300% though rarely. On the opposite end, they produce 100% returns regularly on an average of 10-12 days in the trade. The group was putting so much time into these trades (no pun intended) but we could only ever use 1-3% of our accounts. These types of trades take a lot of time to get comfortable with and it requires a lot of backtesting various conditions.

Thankfully, the focus of the group shifted to risk profile versions of our base trade…namely the STT and BSH and combos therein. The start of the movement away from relying on BSH financing and timing came with the advent of the PC2 which does really well but requires 45-60 Days in trade,is very cumbersome and requires 2 BSHs, a financing put and a PCS and PDS (STT). That’s a LOT of contracts/commissions, a lot of opportunity for slippage all while the p/L target for the combo itself is quite low. IF there was no alternative, this would be the trade. For me!, I haven’t even started THIS trade live with size yet, I am still trading BSH+STT and financing methods therein. These trade profiles are fairly similar to each other across their iterations. the STT, STT+BSH or the combos that we’ve set forth, usually these are kinda known in how they’ll react and where they’ll have weakness. Then Ben G came up with a similar risk profile of these combos but with far less contracts, no requirement for BSH (it’s built in) and a much better greek profile. Essentially, a slap on trade with like 3 contracts (replacing 7) that is easier to initiate and has a better behavior. He called this the Sail trade (though it has similar profile to a combo, it looks more like a sail). He’s honed this over the last 4 months and realized its weakness is that it needed to rely on specific entries (be it high vol or be it using a trend system where delta is erred). If put on in High vol, it basically doesn’t lose and produces 10% on margin. The trend following one is similar. Ron then produced a trade that again, mimics the profiles of a combo trade but with a MUCH MUCH simpler setup, better greeks, better everything at least compared to the PC2. It’s temporarily called the Fulcrum trade. Basically the last 3-4 days we’ve had people from all over the world back-testing it and Ron’s mentioned it will be the replacer of his entire base trade, namely the STT combos 🙂 I would agree. It’s solid. Though it appears we have a game-changer, it requires very onerous testing to ensure and hone how adjustments are made and where to setup profit taking etc. Now I need to test every single possible date even though I know a trade with this type of profile is docile and has already really been tested in various forms before. I’ve done about 25 different trades and so far the only time its break-even to slight loser is during the last 2 months re binary events and out of the money (OTM) options just not losing much value.

The trade does 5% on margin if its outside tent and 10-20% if it’s inside tent. It will do better if we err starting deltas using a trend system and the average DIT is around 30 from what I’ve seen in my backtesting.

This new trade replaces the STT+BSH combo with a much simpler more powerful setup, it’s a lot less contracts, it can be put on in ANY market condition, it’s an “always-on” type trade. The greek profile is fantastic, it does well through Aug 24 (max profit!), it crushes the Jan 2016 market and it does well in low vol. What more can you ask for! We can do it in futures and we can do it in SPX and possibly RUT. We’ve got scaleability and we’ve got low variance. Can’t wait to test this thing more. I do have 9 units on right now LIVE via ES on Friday. Wanted to test out execution.

I have a feeling the STT+BSH (using financing methods) and the PC2 might have just become an antiquity right now.

Sep 13 Update

Not a whole lot going on,

On the super low vol pump up during the last 13 days, I did enter a bunch of BSHs and set and enter much of the Jan STT at a higher UEL on the one down day we had. So the higher UEL is helping financing some of the BShs but not completely and I wait for ANY return of vol to get them paid off. When will this period end? This is the last time I work BSHs like this. I will enter a BSH factory and do opportunistic STTs, Sails and T5s. I just suck at financing these things.

My year is pretty crappy, I’m positive but it must be around 10% or so max thus far. I guess I can’t complain but I feel like I am just waiting for some sort of vol to happen so I can get out of my Dec STTs and start entering all the new setups I have (which all require some volatility to enter). The whole year went to shit re returns from the original Rhinos I had on in Jan-Mar and my poor payoff of BSH financing (RC’s didn’t work well enough and my over-patience for high vol entries of NPs didn’t go as planned). All of the poor performance is to do with my poor financing and using archaic strategies that we no longer use (it was all we had at the time). I attribute this year as a final year to my on-going learning and setup of the dream trading portfolio 🙂 If I can’t break 50% next year, I will question everything. I know that sounds crazy.

I did put on a small Rhino the other day but the up move has it in negative currently. I am still trying to get out of my T5 which I am seeing some value come back in.

As I mentioned, I am convinced that a BSH factory is a great core trade and pairing it with some opportunistic STTs, some Sail trades (High Vol entries and trend following entries with bias) will be the move going forward. I’ve been backtesting it like mad and I am getting crazy returns on any date I enter for the BSH factory, within 6 months or so. It’s a great income trade, but I can only use a fraction of the account on it re initial risks at the beginning. We have exposure for like 10-20 days. I will likely try to tool old structures I have on to compensate this risk so I can put on more and more.

I am back in Cayman now, boredom is starting to set in more regularly but I am getting a lot more work done 🙂

PC2 – This week

I’m in London making my way back home to Cayman. I don’t think I’ll be traveling for at least a year in any major way (more than a week). During the travels, I had a lot of downtime due to newborn naps etc and during that time I’ve been backtesting PC2 and other things like the variants of T5. Probably put in 200-300 hours total of backtesting. Lots of dead-ends but came up with a solid plan for the rest of the year. It was kind of a necessary evil.

Going to start full deployment into the PC2 this week for all my accounts. I am content with the backtesting, the risks and well the no, literally 0, recorded losses 🙂 I’ll be adding one long put at 12% to help with margin and act as a real hedge on a down move. I’ll sell enough NPs to cover that and the black swan hedges. I have to add in another portion of backtesting as I want to switch how I manage it on the downside (might do bearish STTs). But I’ll do that next week and switch when satisfied.

Slow ass year but I hope the next 3-4 months with the combo boost up the returns and gives me a good end to the year and a 2018 that does 5% a month plus. I’ll be doing opportunistic T5s at a very small amount to boost some of the PC2 returns. As I get further down the rabbit hole, the amount of return I reasonably think I can return on large accounts goes further down, there’s just no free-lunch w/out risk and I don’t really like risk anymore 🙂 Non-compounded I am guessing it’s closer to 45-50% a year for the core PC2 trade after slippage and all that. Compound that and it’s eventually going to crush anyways. Three years at 45-50% and you’re at 225% or 75% annually ish. The T5 should add in a lot of boost and maybe we can get up to 75% non-compounded, who knows. We’ll see!

Had a really rough mid-Aug with starting the T5 trade at the worst possible time (before the NK issues) and back month vol sky rocketed. I had a max draw down of 3k a unit (and I had lots of units on) but I’ve recovered nearly all of it since. Back to all time highs but that’s been stagnant for the last 6 months.

I played in the Barcelona tournament, I did get to add a Spanish flag to my Hendonmob profile by getting 102nd out of 782 in the 2k NL tournament. I exited that one with AK vs 66 and the board was AK6xx. Too bad, had I got that one, I’d have had a shot at the final 20 and a much bigger cash. In Bahamas last year I had AA vs AK and the guy flopped KKT. That was a big one, the hand itself was worth 40k in cash no doubts re payout ladder. Ah Poker…