I’ve just arrived to Arona, the final leg of the trip with my family. The last 2 road trips, we use this as a rest and catch-up stop (so I’ll be backtesting and working like mad). There’s not much else to do but that 🙂
I’ve had a very slow summer re P/L as the market has been the lowest vol possible and I am a net seller of premium and premium hasn’t been cheaper 🙂 I’ve been sidelined a lot waiting for high vol entries for the STT and it’s never come. The trades on entry do prefer a higher vol (STT) and while the BSHs love a low vol entry, I’ve been using RCs to pay for them but it’s not keeping up on the pay-off. I try to have a positive UEL on the STT at initiation to compensate but I haven’t put on enough STTs! So I have too many BSHs to STTs right now as I am sure most of us do. You put these things on in low vol and get them paid for so that when you get your higher vol entry for an STT, you’re nice and hedged. I wait for two days of vol or down days to get into additional PCS to help pay for them OR I set the STT at higher UEL (basically same thing as adding PCS right) but we just haven’t had that. It’s incredible really. Frustrating market. So in essence, the market has been pretty much the worst for the trades…at least the worst ‘now’ seems to be just slow profit. On Jul 27th, we had a single large vix spike and down day and the balances jumped super high, I liked that..but it lasted a few hours lol. I am sure vol is coming soon..just waiting it out. My Dec trades have a negative UEL right now and I am waiting for one larger down day to get that fixed..maybe I should just do it soon..vol is so cheap though, I’d be getting paid crap 🙂 The trials and tribulations of decision making. The combo trade I am discussing below should fix all of this for me.
-
Combo Trade
I’ve been developing a combo trade that can be put in on ANY market type and will profit an average of 8.5% on margin per 45 day period (and I haven’t seen a loss in 30 months of backtesting). I had previously posted returns for one version of it on this blog. I’ve tweaked it a bit and and am finishing it up and will post those results as well. I think the mastermind group is dedicating 1.5 hours next week to investigating and talking about the combo trades. I am very hopeful that this is the base trade going forward, it’s not had a loss yet in backtesting and survives Aug 24 w/ large profit.
I’d probably slap them on via the IB desk as one large order. It’s completely hedged in a black swan and can be scaled high. The average draw down is ~$700 per unit(very rare) and the profit target is $350.
I’ve been testing this combo since May in various forms and I had abandoned it when I incorrectly calculated the margin in May. Stupid mistake. Had I not, I’d have had them on for the summer most likely and they’d have reached profit target. Instead, I was doing STTs, BSHs and RCs separately. I’ve done poorly paying off the BSHs via the RCs due to the environment and I’ve got caught with the STTs a bit with negative UEL issues waiting for a down day. Frustrated but I have to wipe the slate clean and start fresh for the year though and get these combos and 555s going and aim to close off the year with good profit.
-
Returns
As mentioned, it does about 8.75% on margin per 45 day period. So its a 6% a month trade but we always have 35% of our balance available so it’s more or less like a 4.5% return per month nen-compounded. That said, I am mixing in 10% of the account with the TTT(555) trade which reduces margin drastically thus boosting that return on margin and also provides really good returns in and of itself. The plan is to go live with the PC2 and TTT(555) trade soon and start bringing in the returns that’s been lacking this year so far as this exploration and trial for finding the perfect trade starts coming to an end ‘ish.
-
TTT(555)
The TTT(555) trade was developed by Ron (Trading Dominion) and was a take on a previous trade that took advantage of skew dynamics across expirations. Essentially selling the part of the curve that at it’s highest and buying the part of the curve at it’s lowest across expirations. The margin requirement is the minimum and if you have other trades like the STT on, it would actually reduce overall margin heavily. The average days in trade is 10 and the profit is typically 100% of margin in 10 days (about 67% of the time) and the other 33% of the time you lose similar. The equity curve from 2015-to date was 1k turning into 22k. Incredible returns. For more information, join the mastermind group! If it isn’t obvious, I am just a member, I don’t make anything from the recommendation except hopefully leveraging the ideas you add to the group 🙂 Ron only charges I think $30 a month to keep the lights on for the group (site, organising the mastermind sessions etc).
Here’s the direct link to extra details about the course dealing with the Space Trip Trade, Foundations, and the Black Swan Hedge. Once you get through that, join the mastermind and that’s were we’re discussing all these trades. Invaluable.
https://academy.tradingdominion.com/pmtt/