Condor Ping Pong

It's been a while since I last posted but in that time, I've been playing the iron condor ping pong on the ZB again. I sold some call spreads when the ZB was at 122 and then sold some put spreads when the ZB was at 120. My trade currently looks like this.

The trade is up a decent amount even only after 5 days. Again I'm long term bearish on bonds so any chance they pop up I will go short deltas. The reason why I'm also adding the put side at this juncture is because I do believe that the equity markets will correct soon which will encourage the risk off trade (ie money moving to UST's) and that bond yields will remain attractive to buyers with the bonds at lower levels (bond prices and yields move inversely). The latest TIC long term purchases data showed that foreigners bought  85.1 billion of long term treasuries which was a large increase from the previous month which seems to support this theory.

Apart from this trade, I managed to get into a AAPL earnings BWB yesterday at the open. I bought the 325/315/295 Feb Put BWB for $0.20 credit. The plan on this trade is just to hold and see if markets do correct then it might be worth something at expiration. If not I will keep the credit on this trade.

The last trade I did was I went short the ES at an average of 1295 yesterday. I covered all of the position at 1292.5 before the market opened based on my gap guide subscription that showed that fading down gaps on Opex Wednesday was historically a very good trade. Thus my plan was to cover the position and then fade today's gap. Unfortunately I'm already out of that trade having went long at the open on the ES at 1290 and then moving my stop because the early morning market tape action was not all that positive. Therefore I moved my stop and covered at 1288.50 taking a small loss (as I type this I can see internals are getting weaker and so is the price action which vindicates my decision to cut into my trading plan and take the small loss rather than waiting for the market to hit it).

Overall quant studies are showing weakness this week and it's interesting to note that if the markets have not had 9 positive consecutive weeks since the 2009 bottom as Bill Luby of Vix and More blog points out. If markets finish positive this week, that will be the 8th positive week so some caution for longs is warranted.