A "new" trade: Dynamic Covered Strangle

First, this isn't new; I thought of a version of this a couple of years ago and it may well be standard practice by organizations who aren't publishing their trade ideas.

But it looks good enough to me that it reminded me of this guy:

This is Pele, the Brazilian soccer star, who came out of retirement in 1974 to play for the New York Cosmos for an amount of money that he described as "The Sun, The Moon and The Stars."

Now for the trade ... it requires these brokerages attributes:

• SPAN margining ... one could theoretically do it with equity options, but the margin requirements are so much greater it probably doesn't make sense in most cases
• trading of futures and futures options

This makes it challenging to work inside IRAs in many brokerages; some don't allow futures trading or futures options trading, inside IRAs. Make sure you know your brokerage's rules before getting excited about doing with your IRA.

Step 1: sell N contracts of any futures options strangle, 30-50 DTE. So far I've backtested this only with /CL (West Texas Intermediate), the only dataset I have, but I don't see a reason that it shouldn't work with any futures product that supports options.

Step 2: set a contingent order with a tight stop to buy N of the underlying futures only when reaching the short call strike. (If your brokerage doesn't support contingent orders you'll have to do this with alerts.)

Step 3: set a similar contingent order and stop to sell N contracts when reaching the short put strike.

Wait and watch ... 80% of the time (on a one-standard-deviation strangle, with strikes at the 16 delta), nothing will happen and you can just close the trade for a profit of 50% or 80% or even 100% of the credit received.

Another advantage: you are not worried about a huge move in either direction! I'd be fine doing any /CL trade with this setup with the war drums beating last week ...

Backtesting results!

Setup details:

• January 1 2016 to Dec 23 2019, /CL (West Texas Intermediate crude oil)
• Futures options prices, including 'delta' and underlying price
• End of day prices only
• Tests were run with just a 1-lot strangle (i.e. selling 1 call and 1 put)
• I used 30 to 50 days until expiration
• I set to take 85% of the credit we got on opening of the trade

I varied the delta of the options I sold:

.16 delta            + $28577               13 whipsaws

.30 delta             +$52997               15 whipsaws

.40 delta             +$70907               28 whipsaws

The "whipsaw" count is the number of times that the underlying price went through the strike price once and then came back once ... Clearly making sure that these whipsaws are handled optimally is key, and they will be a small drag on earnings nonetheless ... but selling the options closer to the money (.40 delta) pays enough extra to compensate you for this extra attention.

Also, you need to watch the extrinsic value left in your options to decide when to get out ... if you're getting whipsawed around a strike early on you need to hang in there as the option price will still be too high for you to close for a profit. Later on with the extrinsic value down to 50% or less of the opening credit, you can certainly get out and move on if getting whipsawed at that point.

Note that the option price will collapse to the amount it's in the money; for example, if you sell the 65 /CL call and /CL closes at 67 at the time your option expires, you are down $2000 on that option ... But: (1) you got credit when opening the position and (2) you bought the the /CL option contract at 65 that covers your option loss ... so you are just left with that opening credit!

Note also: there's no reason this couldn't work with shorter timeframes like those available in /ES and /GC ...

I'd suggest to start:

• Take 1/2 of your account's buying power and set up a variety of futures options trades as described above ... /CL, /GC, /NG are three you should definitely consider.
• Try the .30 delta to start and make sure you stay on top of the strike breaches going back and forth
• After you work with this for a couple of months, you can try the .40 delta ...

Have fun! More next week ...

Surprising backtest results now available; geopolitics intervenes in the oil market

I got a response from iVolatility; their data includes futures options out through 2021, and I had missed that. Screening those out and just focusing on the current futures contract gave me the results I was expecting (i.e. all the same futures closing prices on the same day.)

I tried various parameters (delta of the short strikes, mainly) and was only able to show a small profit at best ($2200 over the 4 years 2016-2019) ... I did notice fairly extreme volatility especially in 2016 so decided to try adding a "swing trade" component.

Here's what I added:

• buy 1 /CL futures contract when the price goes below $40;
• sell 1 /CL futures contract when the price goes above $60;
• in either case, close the trade when $10000 profit target is reached

Running this 2016 to 2019 gives these results:

• $2270 profit on options trades
• $31470 profit on futures swing trades
• max drawdown was around $11000

I didn't exceptionally "curve fit" ... I could have shown better results and less of a drawdown choosing $35 or $30 as the point to go long ....

Now for the geopolitical component:

Iranian General killed by U.S. drone strike Friday

The /CL (West Texas Intermediate) went only to $63.04 on Friday ... the plan above would have it going short. I'd certainly have to watch it closely if I were to do this, or else wait and just use a limited-risk call spread until the situation is resolved. /CL is $1000 per point, so one can't let it get too far out without managing it!

I need one of these to be able to glance at overnight:

Ambient orb displays market data at a glance

More next week!

Market retreats slightly from record high; oil trade behaves beautifully

The global market declined a bit from the record highs of recent days. We'll see if it amounts to this:

So far, not much: just down 0.4% on Friday.

In the meantime for those of you who took my advice to sell 2 of the 63 calls and 1 of the 49.5 put in the crude oil futures options market (/CL):

Specifically, /CL just kept bumping through 57 and 58 ... and eased back all the way to 55.42 at the close Friday ...

I should have the NFA approval this week and I have one subscriber (I think!) ready to sign up. So you folks who are waiting and want to take the plunge I do have a promotion on right now to save you some fees if you act immediately!

More next week ...

Oil trade closed out: +39.5% since October 1; one more step for NFA registration; promotion for new subcribers

The oil futures trade I had on finally cooperated a bit on Tuesday, getting down around $56, and I closed it out when the short call was finally showing a profit.

It bounced up to almost $59 after that but then dropped right back to the top of its previous range, closing at $57.93 on Friday afternoon.

So: sell 2 /CL $63 calls and 1 /CL $52 put, credit just over $1100, expiring January 15 (51 days, if you do this Monday).  Thank me later!

Navigation Trading continued to "outperform", booking almost all of the profit available on an AMZN trade:

He was short the 1717.5 put and the 1750 call, and closed midmorning today with only $25 of the $273 potential profit still on the table. Wahoo!

I was mistaken about having fulfilled the last requirement for NFA Commodity Trading Advisor ... there was one more:

Yes, I had to send a copy of my fingerprints to NFA so they can make sure I haven't been previously busted for financial crimes under another name, I guess ...

There is a  local fingerprinting business (who knew?) that apparently does enough of these to make a living ...

I sent in my copy via certified mail so I should have final approval by next week, I think!

Finally ... I'm offering a promotional incentive for anybody who signs up by December 1 (2019) ... Details here ...

More next week ...

I passed the "series 3" exam; ready for subscribers! (Oil market is still sort of behaving ...)

As regular readers know, I've been talking about a subscription service I am starting. I should have one or two subscribers signed up this coming week. (Don't be left out!)

The good news is that I just passed the FINRA Series 3 exam, which is the final requirement I had to satisfy to qualify for the NFA Commodity Trading Advisor designation.

As for my short oil strategy, it's hanging in there  ... the technical analysts talk about resistance, which certainly looks like what's happening around $57.80 ... fine if it would stay there or bounce down a bit. I am still not showing a profit on the short $60 call but the short $49.50 put is making up the difference and more.

My plan is to sell 2 calls to 1 put when I have a larger account to work with, and this experience certainly tells me I need to go out a bid wider on the call side!

The rest of the market continued what it's been doing: going pretty much straight up. This works fine for Navigation Trading's Iron Duck ... but not for anything with risk on the upside.

More next week ...

Market zooms, at least for the moment; oil propped up temporarily ...

The broad stock market continued zooming up after noises of the trade war being eased:

SPX the last 2 weeks

And oil went up with it, partly, but some of the push up was dented due to a report that the top producers aren't pushing for supply cuts, and Brazil's attempt to lease oil deposits flopped [source: Bloomberg].

I'm only a week into the trade, now 37 days to expiration, showing a profit due to the short 49.5 put. The short 60 call is still underwater ... I'll roll the whole thing to the next expiration when this one has 21 days left ... or sooner if it gets much closer to my 60 strike!

Otherwise, Navigation Trading's Iron Duck trades continued to pay off. The best example of these was an earnings trade in ROKU:

The Roku price was around $140 when the Navigation guy sold 2 of:

• 135/137 call spread
• 121/113 put spread

... for $2.31 credit. This would give just a tiny profit on the upside ($62) ... but instead this happened:

So instead it was closed for nearly the full profit, $440 or so ... or $4400 if you were doing 10x his trade size!

For those of you looking ... what are you waiting for? Opportunity calls!

Oil market calms down; ready to automate Navigation Trading ...

The oil market calmed down quickly after last week's spike:

And otherwise the market stayed pretty calm except for a down move late Friday ... Chinese officials cancelled a visit to U.S. farm country:

A trade update on the small account I'm trading: It's now up 15% or so since its trough about a month ago ... still much too far down overall, but moving in the right direction.

But the big news is on Navigation Trading and the new service I'm rolling out to automate these trades. I made a breakthrough earlier today on a key piece of the automation software and I should have this ready within a month or six weeks.

But don't wait! I can set you up with an account matched to my master account at Interactive Brokers and do the trades for you "by hand" until the automation piece is fully tested and ready.

Details here ... more next week!

Craziness continues; A.M. Triumvirate debuts; equities + futures = profit!

The market craziness continued this week, with equity prices whipsawing crazily all month so far:

S&P 500's wild August 2019

As I mentioned last month, I demoted the "fabulous NDX trade" and moved to use each of the three a.m. settled indices: SPX, NDX and RUT.

I am just trading small accounts right now (mea culpa) so can't do wider "wings" on the iron condors, and this week once again showed why that's a problem ...

The NDX trade was short the 7530 and long the 7540 call, and the a.m. settlement price was all the way up to 7564. That's 100% loss in the case: $737 per 1-lot ... if one had been doing 50-point-wide wings, that reduces the loss to about 65% ...

The other two trades worked ... and didn't. RUT was OK, being the least volatile of the three lately.
SPX closed at 2870, great for the account where I had the short strike at 2875 ... but I put one on later in the a.m. that had the short strike at 2865, long at 2870, so: 100% loss ($390 per one-lot) .... but less than 10% if doing 50-point-wide strikes.

So I think I'll mostly stop doing this trade in accounts that aren't big enough to widen the strikes ...

The two accounts I'm trading right now are both small enough that they can't handle futures trades, and that makes all the difference right now. While the equity positions I've been trading have held up better than I would have thought, they're just down slightly (about 8%) where futures positions would have taken up the slack.

I mentioned the 'short oil' trade last time. Natural gas is similar. But opposite these two is gold, which has been going up:

The thing is, selling calls against a long commodity position is very rich; volatility goes up (and prices go up) the higher you go. For example, the latest gold futures (/GCV9) price is 1517 ... and you can sell the 1525 call option expiring September 25 for $27.30 ... i.e. $2730 credit. This brings your breakeven price to the downside all the way to $1490 ... 

That together with your short oil and gas positions can keep your account humming while equities are going nowhere.

More next week!

Crazy week (it could have been worse) new trade implied by solar energy price crash

"Better positioned for next week?" Silly me:

That's a 100-point range in the S&P 500, and the futures markets in S&P were 50 points wider at least ...

This guy was at it again:

The market recovered most of what it lost and got back into the range where the neutral trades I have on have a chance to make a profit, finally, by the end of the week.

But the big news is the documentary I saw last week ... if oil and gas are now more expensive than solar, that implies that one could go "short" these two ... forever.

The two futures tickers involved are first, crude oil: /CL

And natural gas, /NG

These last two charts show the last 2 years of each commodity price ... had I seen the documentary shortly after it came out I could have been profiting all along!

Two possible trades:

1.  short futures contract and sell 1 put against each contract
2. short futures call option

These are equivalent, risk-wise (according to Tastytrade), but for /CL the short call takes less margin ($2800 versus $4000+ for the combination one above) ... 

More next week ...