mav, thats not what you said in your initial reply to cache or i wouldnt have addressed it. Anyway, now that you have qualified your statement it's all good. No beef here.
The market seems to be returning to normalcy. I'm thinking of putting on some Put spreads. whaddya think? another massive drop before 15th?
As long as we stay below 1400, normal as been defined by the past few months does not exist for me yet
yeah, I hear ya coach. But with VIX being higher than it has been for months and us being 2 weeks away from exp. and this being a friday, the finger is itching to pull the trigger and put something on the other side of the RUT 830/850. Dont know if I'm gonna sit this one out or jump back in. I'll decide at 12:30PST
MT, I am very pleased that you made money getting out on a rough day. The thing is, those profits were either luck (not predictable) or your skill (not replicable by others). My concern (and possibly Rally's, but he can speak for himself) is that there is a major flaw in the low vol condor strategy. Condors are always a bet that realized vols will be lower than implied. Does this make sense in a historically low vol environment? Couple that with the fact that you will get screwed on the exit cost when the market crashes, and I think that this becomes a catastrophe in waiting. Your profit reflected good luck and good skills, not good positions, if I may be so bold. Today would be a more reasonable time to sell condors/verticals in my (probably useless) opinion.
LOL. I am discovering the deeper zen of "normalcy" as I watched the market drift down into one of my BULL PUT SPREADS on light volume. It was an unexpected and subtle joy to watch the market finally produce normal b/a spreads to offer me a partial loss exit over the full enchilada. Tempting it was... Right now what I want to know is when the corporate treasurers are going to step in with their mega-billions as the Calvary to buy back these great deals. That would be better than normal right about now to see the bears get caught shorting... TS