Quote from newguy05:
sorry shortie, i know you are just learning but i really laughed out loud in the office here, people are looking at me.
...
yeah, the journal has turned out to be pretty funny so it is not totally useless.
i chuckle myself imagining people giving you strange looks.
Reading up on the Box spread I see that the structure is useless for my purposes since I am not doing any fancy arbitrage that Tradingjournals has inquired about.
"In options trading, a box spread is a combination of positions that has a certain (i.e. riskless) payoff, considered to be simply "delta neutral interest rate position". For example, a bull spread constructed from calls (e.g. long a 50 call, short a 60 call) combined with a bear spread constructed from puts (e.g. long a 60 put, short a 50 put), has a constant payoff of the difference in exercise prices (e.g. 10). Under the
no-arbitrage assumption the net premium paid out to acquire this position should be equal to the present value of the payoff.
They are often called "alligator spreads" because the commissions eat up all your profit due to the large number of trades required for most box spreads."
WIKI
I need to modify my approach. One possible modification is to
NEVER create Box Spreads by picking alternative option strikes while leggin into position.. It is not that they are hurtful. Simply, building the second leg to lock in the profit is the same as closing the original leg (but the downside is more open positions to make things confusing)