Posted on April 30th, 2009 by
Mojo
OK, time to toot my horn a little bit…On April 1st I wrote a post about how I felt that the Nasdaq was unusually strong (relative to the rest of the market) and how tech was going to lead us out into future bullishness.
Here we are at the end of April and we are sitting pretty. Take a look:
The Nasdaq is up 175 pts or 11.3% in just one month! Where do you think it will go from here? For me, I’ll be watching for a break of the 8 day ema and look for an intraday entry using 60 min bars.
I’ll be camping tomorrow and out of touch so have a good weekend!
Mojo
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Posted on April 28th, 2009 by
Mojo
There is a FOMC meeting announcement on Wednesday at 2:15pm ET. I still have about 30% of my negative vega capital ready to deploy. If we get a nice little bump in the implied volatility I will look to sell some vega. 
Mojo
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Posted on April 24th, 2009 by
Mojo
Less than 2 weeks ago I place my Iron Condor for May. Maximum ROI was around 20% and I was hoping to capture 6 to 8% by the middle of May. With the price movement and volatility I was able to leg in on both sides seperated by 3 days and got good fills on both.
With the collapse in volatility and relatively calm movement of the RUT (remember I’m more than 100 points out-of-the-money) I was able to close early and capture an 8.5% gain. Since this trade makes up the majority of my “in use capital” I’ve already hit my dollar target goals for May.
SWWEETT!
Mojo
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Posted on April 22nd, 2009 by
Mojo
This evening (Wed) we are going to take a pause from our Options 101 class and have a regular team meeting. Since its post expiration we will go over last month’s trades, what worked, what didn’t and what potential trades are we looking at for May.
With the recent drop in volatility several long term trades and iron condors have already hit their profit goals. Should we reload? Or wait?
Feel free to send me your ideas and requests.
See you at 7:30pm! 
Mojo
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Posted on April 21st, 2009 by
Mojo
I tuned in on Monday to a live chat room being operated by a futures guru. We were looking at a pretty large gap down(-130 or so) and since it was Monday after expiry that gave us a low probability of a gap fill reversal.
As we opened the morning all markets were collapsing. I could hear my thinkorswim (TOS) platform dinging away as my profit goals were hit on my bearish positions. The guru was busy fielding questions and putting in counter trend trades (bullish trades in a bearish move) to try and ‘call the bottom’.
It wasn’t until losses had mounted and the market continued to move against him that he finally could see the market clearly. Just after lunch he switched into bearish mode and covered some of his losses.
This room is usually pretty and I sometimes trade along but I was standing starkly against his thinking and his entries. It was good to see how clearly he was wrong and I wondered how obvious my blind spots are as well.
Here are the lessons I took away from it:
1) Don’t try to call the bottom. Even trying this is either an exercise of fear or ego. If you must do this then move out to a larger time frame and use the break of the high of the low bar for a reasonable and repeatable entry (this would be much better than a gut feel).
2) Use the 50% fibo drawn from the previous close to the low of the day to give you your posture for the day. Any action below the 50% line and you should only take shorts on hard trending bearish days like these. My wife didn’t take any longs today and it saved her $800 in losses.
3) Beware of *any* guru that tells you its easy or foolproof. This guru had been doing very well and was a bit overconfident. That’s when guru’s (including myself) are especially dangerous.
4) Automated stops are absolutely necessary in scenarios where you are wrong about the posture. That will save your hide so that you can trade another day.5) As he was getting more and more behind he looked for additional oscillators and indicators that allowed him to stay in his posture much longer than if he was just watching the price action.
6) He finally did get the hang of it and quickly reversed his posture and was able to recover some of his losses.
Overall, it was good for me to watch and I think the guru did a pretty good job. Remember, it only takes one day of uncontrolled losses to end your career.
Mojo
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Posted on April 17th, 2009 by
Mojo
Here’s an update on my trade on MSFT. This was a followup to my post about tech leading us out of this bearish / neutral market. I did a video on how I chose my entry using multiple time frames and technicals.
Since I can’t trade AAPL or GOOG I thought MSFT would be a good substitute. Take a look:
I am currently up +26.7% on the trade. I’m long Jul 15 calls still. As we get close to that $20 resistance I will be looking for bounce down. If that happens I will either close the trade or sell the call. Earnings are coming up and I haven’t decided if I want to hold or not (probably not).
Have a good day!
Mojo
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Posted on April 15th, 2009 by
Mojo
I peeled away the high side on my USO double calendar so I’m now sitting short Apr 26s and long July 26s. I’m currently up +16.9% and USO is forming a near term basing pattern on the 10 min bars. If we start to head up from here my remaining position will start to lose profits and I will close it down. Here’s the chart pattern:
Mojo
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