TTD was a a mistake as I entered these with 14 DTE rather than the O DTE so am now holding this trade to see what happens into next week. Forgot to clarify about that.
Weekly Pin Butterfly Strategy
- Thread starter caroy
- Start date
I think I remember that you have stated before that you were profitable earlier in the day on Friday and profits deteriorated in the afternoon. It would be interesting if you have the time to use the TOS "on-demand" feature to price out each week's positions at 11 AM. Since you already know your entry prices you would just have to price out the sale of each position at 11 every Friday. As you stated this week a more realistic valuation would be to price out the two vertical spreads separately rather than the BF as a whole. TOS "on-demand" will give you the midpoint of the spread which overall may be slightly in your favor but it would give you a pretty good comparison of your actual results with a fixed 11 AM exit strategy.
@caroy , I enjoy your journal and thanks for sharing.
Just some observations and thoughts, if you are okay with that:
1) You're trading a lot of symbols - you had 10 flies open on Thur for the overnight hold and opened another 6 on Fri for the intraday.
2) There are a lot of meme's, esp in the Fri intraday stocks, and these can move big/irrationally, thus blowing out the fly's profitability within minutes. You noticed how GME was hanging around the ideal 200 strike (your body) for most of the time, till about 15 mins before the close when it shot up to 209, turning a good profit into a big loss.
3) Not sure what time of the day you tend to close your trades, but "power hour" and certainly the last 15 to 30 mins of the trading day can see big moves. So maybe look at taking a smaller profit if one is available, earlier in the day? Esp true for less liquid stock, where spreads can widen and fills can be poor within the last hour.
4) I'm surprised at the narrowness of some of the fly's, eg SQ was only 5-wide (240-245-250). Am curious how you decide on the width?
5) Request - is it possible for you to post what the stock price was at the time you opened the trade? This would make it clearer whether the fly was ATM, or bullish or bearish.
Happy trading.
Just some observations and thoughts, if you are okay with that:
1) You're trading a lot of symbols - you had 10 flies open on Thur for the overnight hold and opened another 6 on Fri for the intraday.
2) There are a lot of meme's, esp in the Fri intraday stocks, and these can move big/irrationally, thus blowing out the fly's profitability within minutes. You noticed how GME was hanging around the ideal 200 strike (your body) for most of the time, till about 15 mins before the close when it shot up to 209, turning a good profit into a big loss.
3) Not sure what time of the day you tend to close your trades, but "power hour" and certainly the last 15 to 30 mins of the trading day can see big moves. So maybe look at taking a smaller profit if one is available, earlier in the day? Esp true for less liquid stock, where spreads can widen and fills can be poor within the last hour.
4) I'm surprised at the narrowness of some of the fly's, eg SQ was only 5-wide (240-245-250). Am curious how you decide on the width?
5) Request - is it possible for you to post what the stock price was at the time you opened the trade? This would make it clearer whether the fly was ATM, or bullish or bearish.
Happy trading.
@ffs101
Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to avoid intraday and just go with 10-12 overnight flies and avoid most of the meme wsb stocks. Looking to exit everything and avoid the last hour of trading. On the QS it was especially narrow as it was an Iron Fly with a neutral view when entered. On these I look to only make 10-15% and hope the market opens neutral. They are put on with the same bias that the stock will gravitate or pin towards strike with the highest OI so if I see the set up that favors the IF over a directional biased put or call fly I go with that. As i'm selling for a credit the max loss is the width of the fly minus the premium received so I use the max risk number to decide on position size making the IF the same risk capital as the other positions that are on. I'll try to make a note of where the underlying price was at when the fly is opened next week.
Cheers!
Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to avoid intraday and just go with 10-12 overnight flies and avoid most of the meme wsb stocks. Looking to exit everything and avoid the last hour of trading. On the QS it was especially narrow as it was an Iron Fly with a neutral view when entered. On these I look to only make 10-15% and hope the market opens neutral. They are put on with the same bias that the stock will gravitate or pin towards strike with the highest OI so if I see the set up that favors the IF over a directional biased put or call fly I go with that. As i'm selling for a credit the max loss is the width of the fly minus the premium received so I use the max risk number to decide on position size making the IF the same risk capital as the other positions that are on. I'll try to make a note of where the underlying price was at when the fly is opened next week.
Cheers!
Ah the intraday SQ had a bull bias bot at 9:17 am sold at 9:43 am CST
am i to take it that so far you are net flat... up 1% ytd?
I'm not knocking the performance as its intellectually honest. i don't do weeklies but i have contemplated that a similar strategy that i run is actually flat pnl as well.
I'm not knocking the performance as its intellectually honest. i don't do weeklies but i have contemplated that a similar strategy that i run is actually flat pnl as well.
Yep pretty much flat. I'm only trading with about 15 k in risk capital so the return on risk is up 20%. Once I get consistent I plan to up the weekly risk allocation.
My experience is that its hard to run more than that on trades like this. You have two significant risks that are almost unhedgable:
1. Having the rare idiosyncratic risk that all your stocks gap down or up at once.
2. Having a correlated blow up where all stocks go down. This is kind of hedgeable but you never have enough hedge when the market craps out or you have too much hedge when the market doesn't.
Week 23 - Opening Positions
* exited the TTD carry over from last week at 1.25 for a $200 winner going into this week
ABNB 8:16:8 150-155-160 calls bot @ $1.78
COIN 5:10:5 240-250-260 calls bot @ $2.97
DDOG 5:10:5 100-105-110 calls bot @ $3.20
FB 4:8:4 350-360-370 calls bot @ $3.57
NFLX 4:8:4 530-540-550 calls bot @ $3.75
NVDA 3:6:3 785-800-815 puts bot @ $4.40
PTON 6:12:6 120-130-140 calls bot @ $2.68
RIOT 8:16:8 35-40-45 calls bot @ $1.60
ROKU 2:4:2 430-450-470 calls bot @ $6.16
VXX 10:20:10 28.5-30.5-32.5 calls bot @ $0.56
ZM 2:4:2 380-400-420 calls bot @ $6.62
Thoughts
* exited the TTD carry over from last week at 1.25 for a $200 winner going into this week
ABNB 8:16:8 150-155-160 calls bot @ $1.78
COIN 5:10:5 240-250-260 calls bot @ $2.97
DDOG 5:10:5 100-105-110 calls bot @ $3.20
FB 4:8:4 350-360-370 calls bot @ $3.57
NFLX 4:8:4 530-540-550 calls bot @ $3.75
NVDA 3:6:3 785-800-815 puts bot @ $4.40
PTON 6:12:6 120-130-140 calls bot @ $2.68
RIOT 8:16:8 35-40-45 calls bot @ $1.60
ROKU 2:4:2 430-450-470 calls bot @ $6.16
VXX 10:20:10 28.5-30.5-32.5 calls bot @ $0.56
ZM 2:4:2 380-400-420 calls bot @ $6.62
Thoughts
- Went with fewer positions same risk allocation.
- A bit of a hedge with VXX only as it's cheap and majority of flies were calls.
- Went with @sigmas advice and widened the flies out a bit in terms of wings. Adds to cost increases POP and reduces commissions.