Earnings season continues; leaving money on the table ... /ES futures update

Earnings season went into overdrive this week ... unfortunately I left money on the table on Monday:

First, one good thing happened early Monday:

I sold 4 Iron Condors on Friday and they were down 50% by Monday and closed out for a $100 profit (on about $900 of risk). I wish I'd sold 40 of them!

I made only one earnings trade: JNJ (a small winner) and then got distracted and left several other possible ones without pulling the trigger.

Two losers on Tuesday, CSX and BK ... both small losses (just under $100 and just over $100), fortunately. The 8 other earnings plays I did this week all won.

This was also the week we get to do the Fabulous NDX trade, which I sold for $559 (a one-lot) ... and on this one you get to keep all of it (minus a smidgen of commissions) when it expires worthless the next morning ... which happened as expected this time on Thursday a.m., since the Friday market was closed for Good Friday.

As far as the /ES, it's been zooming back and forth:

If it will just keep from zooming up I can continue to sell puts ... like the $925 batch (of two) I sold on Wednesday, expiring Friday the 26th ...

More next week ...

I took a week off ... short /ES not working yet; undefined risk vs defined: 2 tests

I didn't post last week as I traded only 1 earnings trade, the ill-fated Walgreens-Boots Alliance (WBA):

There have been only two losing earnings trades the past couple of weeks, WBA and CCL:

Both were short strangles: undefined risk trades. Let's see how they actually performed vs a theoretically defined risk alternative.

First, CCL. This was a textbook case. It just broke barely through the short strike early a.m. after earnings, and I was able to close it at the suggested max loss: 2x the credit received, almost exactly. This is right at $50/contract loss.

WBA was much worse ... I didn't get to this one until it was priced $2.91, way above the same sort of max loss I'd have been shooting for ... I got almost the same credit, 25 cents for this one. So that $241 per contract loss.

Let's see what each of these would have been if traded as defined risk trades.

I've typically been using $5 wide strikes, so max loss would be $500 less the credit received. For a 25 cent credit, that's $475 max loss per contract. That's clearly much worse than either of the undefined risk losses shown here .... I'm not positive that this is representative of the typical, but it's compelling enough that I'm going to stick with this for most low-priced underlying and a few a bit more expensive too.

The not yet working trades I put on this past week: short /ES futures. I thought that when the /ES hit 2880 that wouldn't go much higher ... and then the jobs report came out happy and:

Darn it! But: I am selling puts against the short /ES positions, at the rate of around $375 per week per contract, so: it can't go up too much from here (can it?) and I'll be "reducing basis" every week in pursuit of profitability on this one.

More next week ...