Intuition solves the NDX trade; "trade small, trade often" for real this time

As I mentioned last month, it wasn't clear to me when I should put on the once-a-month NDX trade ... so on Thursday I was waiting and watching and it just struck me just before 11am PDT that it should work at that point. So I pulled the trigger, selling an iron condor (7770 short calls, 7650 short puts, 50-point-wide wings) for $6.11 credit.

It expired worthless the next a.m. as I'd intended ... so instead of being mechanical on this one I think I'm just going to let my intuitive impression pick the time ... and possibly stay out completely if it doesn't smell right.

But that next trial isn't for another month ...

So in the interim to keep the Trump/Powell circus from having such an effect on results, I'm diversifying into a wide list of underlyings from the Tastytrade list ... I put on a bunch of these Friday near the close and am going to add to about 50% of the account on Monday.

More next week!

No mistakes this week but annoying market continues; hope in Fed meeting?

I didn't make any goofs like last week, but the market continued Way Too Up for my short SPX call spread and SPY butterfly.

The short call strike on my SPX iron condor is at 2870 ...

This all started when the market interpreted remarks by Jerome Powell and other Fed Governors that they were ready to cut rates.

But there are plenty of dissenters with this view ... I mean, rates are still at rock bottom in historical terms ... And in any event the market has been very poor at predicting interest rates.

So: hope springs eternal for the S&P 500 trades. Otherwise I have on: TSLA, LYFT, QQQ and IWM ... all of which are showing profits but TSLA, and it's still $10+ below the short strike at $225. So I have expectation that all of these will come in for full profit (25% of butterfly credits, 50% of Iron Condors) over the next week or so.

I'll send another update then ...

A deeply annoying week made worse by a couple of mistakes I made

The only good thing I can say about this past week is that I wasn't short S&P futures:

Although this move wasn't kind to my neutral trades, of course ... I am short the 2870 SPX call expiring July 3, so I have hope of that trade coming back into profitability and bringing my butterflies (in SPY and QQQ -- IWM is OK) back with it ..

The two mistakes I made this week to exacerbate things were both earnings-related. First:

I meant to trade Salesforce (CRM) for its earnings after the Tuesday close, but instead I traded Chipotle (CMG) ... expiring today, June 7.

I noticed this the next morning, of course, and figured: what the heck, even though I gave up 4-day trades it should still work, right? Wrong:

Finally, Beyond Meat had earnings and I made two mistakes on this one. I forgot again that anything can happen any time and made the mistake I've been most prone to "it couldn't go up from here, right?" In this case, the money-losing stock market darling of late.

It turns out nothing I did would have worked, but I didn't even sell both sides ... just the short call spread, just outside the $12 expected move. Instead it went up $20 and then $30 ... And I was taking too much risk, almost $900 ... actually got out for about a $730 loss on this one:

Anyway, Trump announced late today what the market already figured out: no extra Mexican tariffs on Monday. But I hope that's a "sell the news" indicator:

More next week ...

I gave up on being short too early!

I have been trading "neutral" trades that pay off when the market stays within a certain range for the selected period:

But Mr. Anti-Neutral came back with his latest wacky tariff proposal this week:

And the market responded as though it wasn't thrilled:

I've been using about 30 days for these neutral trades and that will be about 1/2 over tomorrow.
Tastytrade research has been promoting the idea of "rolling" (closing and reopening further out in time) these trades, profit or loss after half the time is gone. Right now (based on the futures prices Sunday evening PDT as I'm writing this that I will be showing losses in all of my neutral trades as of tomorrow a.m. ... but I'm going to close them and reestablish in either event.

Also this past week: 3 winning earnings trades (all "defined risk" Iron Condors):

Good news in an otherwise annoying week.

More next week!