S&P 500 down 3.1% ... our system down 0.17% ... and better poised for next week

This was a crazy week in the market ... First, The Federal Reserve cut interest rates:

But not enough, according to the markets, which went DOWN:

I was congratulating myself as I had entered a "put debit spread" on SPX just before the fed announcement: long the 3015 put and short the 3010 put, risking $200 to make $300 in the best case ... on the "buy the rumor, sell the news" theory ...

But then Thursday early the market regained all it had lost on Wednesday until:

... Trump announced a bunch more tariffs:

... making my SPX debit spread happy again, and getting all the other trades I have going in the right spot to be profitable again next week. (Not last week, as volatility increased ... and our trades profit by volatility going down ("short vega") ... or time going by with nothing happening ("positive theta") ...

As for the debit spread in SPX, risking 2 to make 3 ... I'd love to have more of these but I doubt they're really even a 50-50 shot ... so I won't make these part of the plan yet, just will do a bit more experimenting here and there.

Careful readers will recall I put on a debit spread in NFLX the other way last week ... but I closed it out even before all the excitement from Wednesday onward for just a small loss.

More next week!

Quiet week as market reaches new highs .... more on your $150000 account

The market went up to record highs again this week, but slowly enough in most cases to not mess up the neutral trades I have on.

The one exception is Netflix, which bounced back too strongly from its earnings miss:

My short call strike for NFLX is 335, so I also put on a debit call spread this a.m.:

Long the 330 call and short the 335, for $265 ... meaning that if NFLX is at or above $335 on August 2 when this expires, I make $235.

This covers most of what I can lose on the NFLX Iron Condor I have going, and I can actually do this again the following week if conditions seem favorable (i.e. if NFLX continues up ...)

Now, back your $150000 retirement account ... since you didn't pull the trigger on this immediately you didn't suffer the $5000 (for you $50000!) loss from last week ... instead you'd have had a much smaller loss, as I would have taken 1/2 the risk and diversified over 3 trades:

• NDX would lose 100% of what was risked, as last week's trade lost about 80% because of its very wide strikes
• SPX would break even or lose small, maybe 15% of the amount at risk at most
• RUT does what it's supposed to do: expires worthless for full profit, probably 10% or so

So your loss would have been maybe $7000 .. probably just $6000 for the week because of other profitable trades that week. So you'd have gone from $158000 to $152000.

Once again, this offer is just for one lucky individual willing to try this ... let me know if you're interested and we can get going this week ... or you can wait and watch for a few more weeks, understandably ... More next week!