Generally, I don't leg in either. I place my shorts about 1 standard deviation away. 100% in good and -100% in bad years sounds like your position size is too large relative to the total account.
I mean 100% of my IC margin not of my total account. I guess you mean the same thing: 15-20% of IC margin, right?
There's a huge difference b/t "timing the market" and riding some intraday momentum to nab a better fill. Though I may be uneven intraday depending on my bias, particularly with my pairs trading (stock), I never go overnight with any consequential imbalance.
I see, my figures are based on the total account return. My average monthly exposure is around 10%. That is, if the underlying expires outside the long strikes then my loss for the month is 10% of the total account.
It would be the max loss in an IC, which is the difference between the short and the long strike less premium received. For example, say I got a $100K account. I sell a 10-point (10 points is the distance between the long and the short) IC on the SPX at 3 points. Since I'm willing to risk 10% of my account, I can sell 14 spreads (10% of 100K is 10K and my risk per spread is 700).
When you buy an iron condor (sell put and call spreads) and the strikes are 10 points apart, the margin is $1000. That $1000 margin requirement - minus the cash you collected - represents the max loss. Mark