It didn't take a meteor strike ... the next 100 trades from here

I had a less than perfect week trading ...

I had previously posted that I shouldn't lose 30% for anything but a meteor strike or terrorist attack.
But a couple of cascading errors had the same effect.

First of all I have to remind myself:

ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN AT ANY TIME!

I started last Sunday thinking for sure the market would be down with the latest trade war stuff going on ... I shorted the S&P futures at the open last Sunday afternoon and it went straight up from there.

I finally closed it Monday a.m. for a $1000 loss, bringing my scalping results just below even (-$40) for the year so far.

I compounded the problem early Monday a.m. by selling too-close call spreads, which went 'in the money' almost immediately.

Finally, I was thinking that I could move my short strikes closer (1 standard deviation instead of the .10 delta) and just roll my way out of any problem, based on my experience rolling 'straight across' last month.

Not so this one either ... then I made one final error ... I was hearing from all quarters about the technical indicators pointing straight up at least until Friday the 13th. So instead of holding on for a down move (which finally came Wednesday) I sold at a loss on Tuesday ...

So adjustments from here:

• I'm moving back out to at least the .10 delta, except in cases where we're right at record highs (like now). In that case I'm willing to sell the call short strike just above the record high, if at least 20 points away from the money currently.
• I'm making the 'wings' of the iron condors I'm selling even wider, going from 30 points to 50 points for SPX, with proportionally as wide wings for other trading vehicles like AMZN and TSLA.
• I'm mostly going to give up rolling. The success I had before this incident was an unusual situation, I reckon, so I am going back to 'set it and forget it'.
• I'm ignoring technical analysis ... except, as mentioned above, I expect 'resistance' at record highs

How this works in practice .... I have two trades (plus a scalp) on currently:

Expiring Monday the 16th:

          1 SPX 2680 put

         -1 SPX 2730 put

         -1 SPX 2810 call

          1 SPX 2860 call

Expiring Wednesday the 18th:

          1 SPX 2700 put

         -1 SPX 2750 put

         -1 SPX 2820 call

          1 SPX 2870 call

I expect both of these to win ... credit was $3.60 for the first and $3.95 for the second,  7.7% and 8.6% return, respectively.

My next 100 trades will be based on these parameters, and I'll track the statistics carefully as always.

(And the scalp: 1 short /ES future from 2806 on Friday ... I'll take this off on Sunday afternoon or Monday, a.m. for at least a small profit, I think.)

I expect the main SPX trade to work 90% or more of the time, but even when it doesn't the wide wings should make the losses generally much less than 50%. For example, even if the market zooms up past 2810 for Monday's close, how far will it go? 2820? Breakeven is actually 2813.60, so that's only a 15.9% loss ... versus 100% if we used 5-point wings.

More next week ...