One of those trader profiles in Futures magazine this month profiles some guy who does condors but with the long part of the wing a month further out than the short part of the wing. Thoughts on this strategy? I can't see how it is any better than an iron condor. He uses SP futures options, incidentally.
The back month options would be more sensitive to volatility and less sensitive to the passage of time. I suspect he would want to have the back month options long and the front month's short so his position has a more favorable theta profile.
Didn't the author present some sort of case for diagonalizing the position? The only advantage that I can think of is that if the underlying stays within the long strike range, you end up owning the strangle at a lower cost. If the underlying moves outside the long strikes before near term expiration, the profit is cut into because the long option on the opposite end is getting crushed and can actually turn into a loss. This isn't the case with a same month condor outside the short strikes, it attains its maximum profit.
It's a double diagonal, as it has been mentioned, and it is also a play on the volatility skew between the two months.