Ha! Ha! "Ugh!" I was hoping an expert like you would chip in ATTICUS.
As a novice I´m going to think about your words of wisdom a bit. Right now it is sort of going on FAITH in your words of wisdom, not so much my learned process of thinking about it. Anyway sounds good from somebody I respect, so that is enough.
I´ve been off the internet for five days, due to internet connection protocol LAN problems and finally got it working on this Tuesday night. I mean with my own computer. Can´t say I´m a tech whiz though. Was just trying numerous different things, clicking here and there and everywhere and suddenly the darned thing started connecting and working and have internet back again. What I did haven´t a clue, but I´ll settle for it is working. Whatever miracle occured. Think I´m too late to trade the weeklies this week. Though I might paper trade the late Thursday, into Friday suggested STRADDLE trade, to see what happens, on a weekly. Arrived back home on last Thursday evening. 7 hour trip from the island. Only a 120 miles, but it is third world traveling. Chicken and pig bus and all, carrying backpack and big bag with my desktop computer gear. Tight fit on the seating, stop and go letting off passengers and picking them up local type schoolbus.
In the interests of staying in theme, of the LONG STRADDLE.
I had read that a Long Straddle can be worked using two CALENDAR spreads. Since I did my first CALENDAR on my own, using the entry and exit in TOS I take that as a milestone in my learning process. A week ago. At any rate, I noted that a CALENDAR can be done on CALLS, or PUTS. So in a STRADDLE I presume therefore you would be straddling both a CALL and a PUT CALENDAR. I found this interesting, because on my CALENDAR TRADE, I closed out early Thursday morning past, so I could catch an earlier water taxi from the island to the mainland, so I quit early for the week. At any rate I noticed that the CALENDAR earned less than my paper trades in the CONDOR and the BUTTERFLY. So far just one of each and it was more a learning lesson on how to enter and exit using the TOS platform as a unit, than the trade itself. Anyway, to make a long story short, it would seem a LONG STRADDLE composed of using CALENDARS ( two of them, PUTS and CALLS ) would give you the same return for selling THETA, or collecting TIME DECAY, as both the CONDOR and the BUTTERFLY. Which seemingly in this amateurs observations be a better deal.
Then I looked up a bit of reading and it was insisting on doing this stuff during a horizontal, or congestion place in the market action. Then I reflected back on watching ATTICUS bouncing all around the market trading multiple butterflies on stocks. Now I´ve avoided stocks, for some earlier conviction it was dangerous. Now I´m not sure how that came about. So I´ve only concentrated on learning on indexes, the QQQ and the OEX. Small account and I figured if I couldn´t learn there, it didn´t make sense messing around with things like stocks that I didn´t understand. But on these TIME DECAY collecting strategies using weeklies, that just perhaps my novice thinking, might look up stock earnings reports, as in an earlier venture studying the kING of TRADERS, Ryan Patrick. and the talk about earnings reports leveling out before the EARNINGS REPORTS I should be able to look up some stocks that the earnings reports are 10 days out, and thus eligible for a butterfly or two. Just a thought, if I can get my computer room back in action again. Stocks seem to level out and go sideways during that time period.
I´m not quite clear what the difference would be in dollar performance between a CALL CALENDAR and a PUT CALENDAR. I presume there would be some difference? Possible a loss of .30 cents on one side or something? Seeing as how to get maximum profit you want to EXIT when the market crossed the initiation of the underlying trade number, but in the real world, these may not happen and you would be a bit off when having to EXIT.
