OK, gotcha. So if an IC presented itself where both the put and call sides met your independent entry criteria you'd just go in for the whole thing, but that's unusual.
My trading unit is always the credit spread, even if a companion spread is immediately available. This lets me manage it over time as a spread without any confusion with my own analysis or from the broker if I want to modify either of the wings. I treat the Iron Condor as just an artifact of trading credit spreads that permit me to add the companion spread without additional capital and let me take a more neutral (delta neutral) market bias position.
Howard I think my last post re the PUT spread that might be maxed out, might be wrong. Never thought of these things in this way before. Correct me please if you take a look at that previous comment of mine. Normally in the past when looking at Iron Condors in the weeklies, I treated the combined cash credit as a unit. But in your method you are looking at the credit spread alone and seperate. I´m trying to figure that out. The good credit spread in this IC is currently earning .05 cents to the good. Since there is no margin requirement, do I have to hold it until 55 cents good, to get 85% out of it, when I collected .60 cents on it? Or once I break even costs do I have it maxed out? Not too clear here, even to me as I write this.
Part of the problem of learning a strategy from a journal is that you are jumping in in the middle with lots of questions and no foundation in the principles of the strategy. I do my best to answer the questions in context, but reading a journal and asking questions cannot replace learning the strategy from the beginning with some strong knowledge of options as a prerequisite. So don't beat yourself up if understanding comes slowly.
Iron Condor 38 presented a roll opportunity. Iron Condor 42 is designated as a weekly as it was established in the last week of the FEB 11 series with funds out of quarantine used for weeklies.
Howard Sounds like your getting tired of answering questions? ( grin ) _________________________ NEW BROKERAGE I.D.VERIFICATION QUESTIONS REQUIREMENTS. In the meantime as an addendum of a sort; I tried to open my cash account in Thinkorswim, but they said due to requirements of FINRA and SEC and so forth, they needed all kinds of answers to questions. I had to send my deposit cheque off to some place called Penson Services a place that I never heard of. That kind of flipped a couple of warning signs off to me. But I ignored them. Looked up Penson Services and it was a CLEARING HOUSE, so I thought, it might be legitimate? But it seemed awfully queer that I was trying to deal with Thinkorswim and somebody else, a middleman got in the picture. So far so good. Wrote a cheque for $10,000 starters and started the mailing process, sent it down to my office for re-mailing. Then I get a notice from what seems to be an I.D. Verification department, with more intrusive questions. Made me very nervous. The notice for I.D. Verification seemed more like a Nigerian SCAM LETTER. Caught the office and put a HOLD on the cheque letter for deposit. Especially the questions requested. One of my problems, as retirees, we are only home in the USA about 3 months a year. The warm months, July, August and September. My daughter owns the house so we have no title, or utility bills, or anything like that. Grandkids drive us around when home, so our drivers licenses have long expired. In the UK and France, we use trains, in Central America and Mexico we use buses, or taxis. The rest of the year we are people with NO FIXED ADDRESS. In the sense I have a large extended family, with cousins, Aunts and Uncles still alive, children and grandchildren scattered in five different countries. We have all kinds of guest houses, guest rooms, spare condo´s, apartments around France from life long friends, or family, couple of yachts to live aboard, which we use more often, as I like sleeping in boats on water. They are either at anchor someplace or parked at a marina dock. Guatemala, or Belize normally. Also in Nice, but we find there expensive for our budget. We spend a lot of our time in Central America. There are some favorite places and at these we stay in HOSPEJDAS, which are family owned, usually 3 to 4 rental rooms and we eat in the central markets with the campesinos. Room rents run about $8 usa for a couple like us and big meals run about $2 each. Places like Lake Atitlan,Guatemala ( the most beautiful lake in the world is my favorite ) and we stay here and have for years at the Good Samaratin, Hospedaje. That is a regular spot every year. We also favor a 68 ft yacht in one of the many marinas in the Rio Dulce, Guatemala. Belongs to a USA life long friend, who is also retired and lives aboard. Belize of course is a great favorite and have several places to stay in Belize. France also, in Bairitz, Paris, Nice and Montpelier. UK is too cold most of the time. I like Chamonix also but only in the warmest weather. Haven´t visited my 34 year old granddaughter in Melbourne, Australia yet, but one of these years. To cut to the chase, trading options is touted as the perfect entertainment and private business, because you can travel any where in the world and trade at home in Chicago. So in trying to satisfy the questions by Thinkorswim, alleged I.D. Verification department, they already have our SSB numbers, our birth dates, home address, telephone number, and other pertinent information. Enough to establish Identity Fraud and take out credit cards and run up big bills. I couldn´t make up my mind about the I.D. Verification website, that wanted my Miami Credit Union Statements, it looked exactly like one of those Nigerian fraud websites you get about 4 times a week. I started with them and it got really intrusive for personal things. So I cut it out. Wasn´t going anywhere and I wasnt going to give any more personal information. None of their damned business I thought. With all that stuff they could clean out our total savings, which event you hear so much about on the internet. Went to OPTION HOUSE but they never answered at all. So went to OPTIONSXPRESS and opened a Virtual account, talked about I.D. verification with them and they were satisfied with our passports and the photo I.D. part and the regular documents you sign for trading a CASH only option account. They then sent me a nice follow up letter confirming I was welcome there at OptionsXpress. So now I´m learning the platform for Options Express and after probably a month´s delay, shall duly mail them a cheque for a cash account. I was really sorry to lose THINKORSWIM as in paper money I had become very familiar with their platform and liked it a lot. My whole trading system was built around their platform and my experience with it. However, I have no idea what the deal is with answering strange websites like Penson Services, or I.D.Verification web pages, when all this time for the past year I have been dealing with ThinkorSwim brokerage. Lest you think I am filled with paranoia, about a decade or more ago in Florida I was the subject of identity theft. Somebody issued credit cards in my name and all kinds of charges and bills started coming down to me. I wrote the Florida State Attorney and answer all the dunning letters asking for my signed consent application and eventually it died off. There were bills coming from different states. At any rate, to my regret I have switched from Thinkorswim to OptionsXpress for my cash account trading. Their intrusiveness if it really was genuinely them, was the reason why.
If I have left some of your questions unanswered, try me again. It was not intentional. Address verification in the US is mostly a consequence of Homeland Security rules for tracing terrorist funds. Also, the IRS likes to have eyes on every dollar you make. Tax dollars at work to make us all miserable.
Howard ( repeat question ) Let me see, the margin on one side in an Iron Condor has me confused. The question is, if I have one side winning, about 5 cents right now and that side would be margin free. At what point would it be worth my while to cash it in? You have said at 85% in the past. Maybe I can figure this out myself and you confirm? If I have .60 cents credit, then when the spread reaches +.55 cents thereabouts, I can close it. And just forget the part about it being margin free? Thats a plus just in using money, or not using money for the trade and simply raises the 3% normal return to 6% or something? ________________________________ So far I´m up 74% in my trading account, just buying and selling since Dec 1st. The trick is not to trade until you have a sure thing. Which means about 17 days a month are idle days and you get irritable and itchy to trade something, even corn flakes box tops. There usually isn´t enough movement in a Bull trend to find many trades. The ATR is too small to make money. What I´m hoping is that I can turn my paper money experience on TOS, into profits on OptionsXpress. Will try it for a month and see. ____________________________ I´m following your method closely as you can tell. Want to see what happens? I probably will wait until I have too much money to trade straight buying and keep the method in reserve if it is continuously profitable. For when I have a million or so to spare!
Howard I think you said you were about 7 months or so into CASH trading now. What percent return on your account do you have. Considering there is so much lag time in this system, with 2 month options. That should give you a running return total % wise, for 5 months at least. I´m talking total account not individual trades. Just curious as it should compound more and more as a year passes.