Friday, March 2, 2018

SPX trade: a little too exciting but it won!

I didn't get a backtest done on SPX, but since "fear is overpriced" I assumed that a 1 standard-deviation (68%) iron condor should win 88% of the time or thereabouts. And volatility was high enough that the return on risk on Wednesday for the options that expired Friday was around 20%.

This made the Kelly Criterion amount of suggested risk around 28% of the account; I used 20% of the $10000 in this particular account.

I sold the 2680 put and the 2785 call (and bought wings to limit the risk).

Then this happened:

I'm going to raise interest rates until my hands bleed!
 And this happened:

Let's put tariffs on steel and aluminum! Surprise!
Which led to this:


The market hit its trough at around 2650 early Friday before recovering sharply to close right in the sweet spot: 2691.

This is another example of the value of letting things play out. If you limit risk on the way in and just go with it, sometimes the right thing happens ... and boy, would I have been second-guessing myself if I'd tried to get out of this early (for a loss).

I don't get to do the fabulous NDX trade until next week so I'll try another one of these next week.

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