Somehow, I have ended up with a wierd trade, trying to learn more about Iron C's. If I post it here, would anyone and everyone please help me to understand what it is or what I did; where it presently stands; and how to/what to adjust to learn as much as I can. Thanks so very much for your help! (see below)
sooo it looks like it needs to stay between 35 and 39 to see max profit? Why are you trading such small size? Will your maximum profit even offset the cost to deploy all these trades?
EWZ currently at $32.46 Bought 1 Sep 21, 2018 EWZ 30 put at $0.10 Bought 1 Sep 21, 2018 EWZ 31 put at $0.61 Sold 1 Sep 21, 2018 EWZ 33 put at -$1.21 Sold 1 Sep 21, 2018 EWZ 35 put at -$0.80 Credit $1.30 Sold 1 Sep 21, 2018 EWZ 39 call at -$0.23 Sold 1 Sep 21, 2018 EWZ 40 call at -$0.80 Bought 1 Sep 21, 2018 EWZ 41 call at $0.09 Bought 1 Sep 21, 2018 EWZ 45 call at $0.12 Credit $0.82 Total Credit $2.21 Your goal is for the options to expire worthless on September 21 and EWZ to trade from $35 to $39. Your current P/L is $3.08 - $2.21 = -$0.87 ($87.00) plus commissions.
Looks like you've got two condors going here... The 30-35-40-45, and 31-33-39-41. It's not a dangerous position per se, but you're going you take a nasty haircut if you want to get out early. Max loss is $700 minus your credit...assuming OOO got it right above, that's a pretty solid position if the price is in the $37 range...I'm just let it ride and let the chips fall where they may...and start inquiring about assignment and margin so you understand that whole process rather than having a crappy September 24th.
thx very much. not sure how i ended up here w 2 ICs. must have been smoking rabbit tobbacco or eating pluff mud on my beach here in pawleys.
thanks very much - can you tell me more about what you mean here "assuming OOO got it right above, that's a pretty solid position if the price is in the $37 range" thx again.
OOO = @OptionsOptionsOptions $37 is the center of a very wide range where this makes money on expiry (like 33 - 41 on Sep 21)
Ok so you bought 2 iron condors of put/call combo expecting probably that the price would go up strongly but now are stuck with 2 puts that were and still are ITM right now. And since these options are American style which means they can be exercised against at any time up to and on the expiration date, I usually suggest to close the ITM options to avoid being assigned. But usually it's the call options that have the highest chance of being exercised especially if they pay dividend and since all of your short calls are OTM right now so you don't have to worry about being exercised against right now. Right now the biggest problem is really the 2 ITM short puts cuz they are the ones that are bleeding you right now. And you can either roll the 2 short puts (at least the 35 strike one) forward to lower strikes or close them outright depending whether you think the underlying is going to continue its downtrend with the price spiraling down or has a chance of recovering in the future.