Well now that I loaded up more of my 1340/1360 ES diagonal and the ES is pushing 1325 today, I also have to balance rooting for it to run to my short strike and root for it to take a chill and not run too far to fast lol...
What the heck is going on? SPX up 14pts! Anyone think we'll retest the 1yr 1326 high ? If so that would suck since I have a short at 1330. grrr....
Sailing, This looks like the makings of 2 months in a row of vix getting crushed right at expiration. Time to look for Oct diagonal plays. I've got one in mind, I'll post it later once I play with it more.
ryan, its no coincidence IMO. If you look at the calendar, the expiration week is usually very heavy on key reports. Once they are released and things are not too bad, bids on puts are pulled and vix collapses. It's like clock work. From my experience, expiration week stat volty usually doesnt correlate well with the vix. Of course there are exceptions. Just something to think about with regards to the prospects of adjusting spx vega plays.
Rally.. Ratioed Call diagonals can be played pretty well using your CTM method. When you select strikes CTM at an overbought or market top, the credit is pretty large and when the market pulls back you can take a quick profit or let the short call expire worthless and keep the long for more money potentially down the road. If the market moves higher to and through your short strike, it is pretty easy to roll the strikes higher or out to the long month and maintain a credit or tiny debit. Over the long run the credits and profits might be large. Gonna study this....
Forgot to check the market before closing yesterday and close out the Sept. 1330/1345 call spread....grrrr
You might want to consider short strike that is ATM or even ITM. Then again, if you can nail market tops I can think of a few strategies that would make money... Good luck. MoMoney.