Winning streak comes to an end, but changes to plan show their worth

Here's what happened to the winning streak this week:

Once again, the idea is that the trade pays off if it stays within a wide range for 4 or 5 days. But not this past week:

However, the last 2 changes I made to the plan paid off handsomely. First, "widening the strikes" ...

The short strike for Wednesday was at 2685, but the close was at 2697.79. That would have been a total loss for a 5-wide wing, but since the wings in this case were 30 wide, it was only a 37% loss.

Friday was similarly illustrative. I was short the 2725 call and was watching toward 1pm PDT for the closing price as it was just dancing around 2725. There was one final blip to 2724.whatever, where the whole trade would have finished worthless as desired (thereby letting us keep the full credit). But in the final few minutes is blipped up to close at 2727.72.

Since we got $2.35 for this one were only $2.72 inside the short strike, that's only 37 cents ... of a possible $27.65 loss: 1.34% of what it could have been.

And the other change, moving to the .08 delta: whew. If I'd stayed with the .10 delta for the call side, I've been clobbered on both of these.

All that being said: the Monday expiration is in danger of losing also, its short strike being at 2720. So I need a down day on Monday to get that back in the black.

I'm going to stick with this setup through May despite this episode, but two adjustments that I may want to do in June:

• Go even further out on the call side: .06 delta?
• Watch for the same short strike stacking up (like 2725 today and 2720 Monday) and adjust the later one out 20 points just in that case?

I hope that this week will prove wildly anomalous and we'll go back to 10 or 20 winners in a row ...

We'll see! More next week ...