a dollar for every day of the year! :P
First off.. it seems like TOS has really given up when it comes to stops acting the way they should (as they do on the real money platform) and many of these trade are early closures. Still, you can see how the day was very positive, despite the platform's mess ups.
The Fed chairman was speaking today, so I wasn't about to trade real money today. Also, VIX started out below 15.. which is my cut off point for conditions where the market acts with any kind of normalcy.
The first thing I put on was the Iron Condor that M8B suggested. These things are wide.. even wider that what I learned to do.. just trade the low delta 5 strikes.. It turned out to be spot on. Much better that I would have done myself as it went much lower on the bear side than I would.. down to the delta 3 strike..
I also wanted to try one of M8B's suggested verts. They tend to be at a higher delta than I would choose, but in this case I agreed with the direction after looking at the chart.
Here's how everything looked on the 5m chart..
the lavender lines are the strikes of the IC, and the vert was looking good in the middle.
The vert hit its target with ease, so I add a couple more verts to also go with the bear move..
This last one was at the end of the bear run, but it still had some room to wiggle, so I increased the contracts sold to make into a good final trade..
And what do u know.. price behaved and stayed exactly where I wanted it to. If it fell any much more, the IC would have been lost.
Also, VIX managed to climb back up over 15 now, so I might get to trade for real tomorrow. 馃槑馃