Thursday, February 10, 2011

January Trading Recap

With January now past us, it was another successful month of income and spec trading. The ZB iron condor was closed on the 26th of Jan when the put spread was bought back for 0"05 debit. This meant that the second iron condor on the ZB for Feb returned a total of "17 ticks ($265) per contract traded or a ROI of around 28% (on SPAN margining).

On the spec side of things (futures trading), it has been going well but not quite as well as the ZB iron condors. Still struggling with psychological aspects in holding positions for longer than one day (probably due to conflicting analysis that I get). Anyway the combined result of both income and spec trading for the year is that the trading account is up 9.5% which I'm quite pleased about. I will have to work extra hard to maintain this type of consistency for the remainder of the year.

Not many trades on at this stage but I will be looking to leg into yet another ZB iron condor for March expiration (put side). Bonds have been and continue to get crushed with the improving economic data which brings us closer and closer to the day that these super low interest rates around the world will have to rise.

Still holding on to AAPL BWB which now looks like it will expire well out of the money. Overall the market continues to be bought on any dips and most sell offs have largely been contained and limited to one day. At this juncture consolidation is likely and I will be setting up day trades on the e-minis accordingly (I will post more about this later).

Longer term and intermediate quant studies still pointing to odds of higher prices, however in the very short term we will probably get consolidation this week (ie range trading).

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