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Iron Condor – How To Lose Your ENTIRE Trading Account Quickly
Posted by: | CommentsThe Iron Condor is perhaps the most dangerous option strategy around.
The thing is, when rookie option traders first hear of this strategy (perhaps from a late night infomercial or free hotel seminar conducted by slick salesmen touting it as the greatest thing since sliced bread) – very few seem to able to resist the temptation to jump right into trading them head first – with actual real hard earned money on the line – and usually way too much of it.
And unfortunately what always seems to happen to a high percentage of them is that they promptly wind up getting their trading accounts demolished and their heads handed to them on a platter.
Now stop.
Before you start to get the wrong impression, please, let me clarify something here.
I absolutely LOVE iron condors. ALOT. In fact, the iron condor is right up there as one of my favorite trading strategies.
And I think it REALLY IS a good solid trade.
And all those stories and claims about making 5 to 10 percent a month while barely spending any time looking at market – and how the odds are so unfairly on the side of the iron condor trader – and how trading iron condors is just like becoming the ‘house’ instead of the gambler – yes – I believe all those claims and stories too. In fact, not only do I believe those stories – I KNOW they are true – because I experience it myself first hand on a regular basis.
Here is the problem: All those fresh, green and excited new option traders have no idea what they don’t know. This trading options for income thing is like an alien planet – with a whole new set of rules inside a brand new reality. And when the person who has introduced them to this new way of trading just tells them about the good but forgets to tell them about the bad – they wind up jumping in with way too much confidence, misunderstanding, and expectations that are completely wrong.
Yes it’s true that iron condors and credit spreads can be put on with an eighty to ninety percent probability of winning. And yes it’s true that they can generate returns of over ten percent a month. BUT – they also come with a dangerous risk to reward ratio that can be in the range of ten to one.
This means that in order to achieve those 80 to 90 percent probability trades – you need to risk ten dollars to make just one – or to be more realistic – you need to put at risk $10,000.00 for the chance to make just $1,000.00.
And as mammy used to say to us kids – ‘that ain’t nothin but a real awful bad egg’.
Because once you do the math you find that even with those glorious monthly returns with 80 to 90 percent probability of winning – all it takes is just one problem month to come along and cause a loss that will completely obliterate the 8 to 9 wins you’ve managed to rack up – as well as potentially the rest of your entire account!
Nevertheless…
All isn’t lost. There IS hope…
Because – as I wrote previously – I REALLY DO like the iron condor strategy.
It’s one of my favorite trades – and it continually generates profits for me.
So clearly there must be a way to profitably trade this strategy without allowing that awful risk to reward issue to get in the way.
And yes, there certainly is.
It’s all in how you manage the trade.
That risk to reward problem quickly becomes a complete non issue as soon as you educate yourself on the proper way to initially set these trades up and how to correctly manage and adjust them.
You just need to take the time BEFORE jumping into the iron condor pool to equip yourself with this little bit of knowledge. A few simple ‘tricks of the trade’ – so when those problem months DO come along (and they WILL believe me) – you will know exactly what you need to do to immediately squash that threat, easily adjust yourself out of the problem, and experience the iron condor for all it’s ‘really’ cracked up to be.
To learn these ‘tricks’ to trading the Iron Condor , go to this Iron Condor Adjustments site and watch my free video. It will show you an extremely simple method for properly placing, managing, and ADJUTING iron condor trades.
Double Calendar – New Food For Iron Condor Traders
Posted by: | CommentsAn alternative trade for iron condor traders who are curious about other option income strategies is the double calendar spread.
What is a double calendar spread?
It’s basically just two separate calendar spreads placed on the same underlying, usually situated on either side of where the stock or index is presently trading at.
What are calendar spreads?
A calendar spread is the sale of a front month option at a specified strike and the purchase of a further out month option at the same particular same strike.
Here is an example:
Sell 1 June 30 Call Buy 1 July 30 Call
The way this spread generates profits is from the variances which will arise in the volatility stages of the 2 different strike options, as well as from the fact that the front month option will without a doubt decay at a swifter rate than the deeper further out month option.
A single calendar spread produces a somewhat skinny, profit tent over where the underlying is currently trading at. Nevertheless, when two calendar spreads are used on each side of where the underlying is ticking at, it creates a double calendar. The profit tent on this trade is drastically wider, protecting a larger sized range over the stock / index current trading price.
Following is a sample of a double calendar spread with XYZ trading at 30.
Sell 1 June 25 Put Buy 1 July 25 Put Sell 1 June 35 Call Buy 1 July 35 Call
A cool thing about the double calendar when compared to the traditional iron condor trade, is the fact that the double calendar spread will be significantly more flexible when large rapid movements occur in the stock market. If you were to view the risk graph of the double calendar spread right next to the risk graph of the iron condor spread, you would see how the 0 day active P&L line holds up much better over an extended range than the similar line on the risk graph of the iron condor trade.
Furthermore, soaring volatility rewards the calendar trade, basically pumping further gain into the position. So in a situation wherever the market suddenly tanks and moves downward, what might be a disastrous scenario for an iron condor trade could turn out to be a great circumstance for a correctly setup double calendar position.
To learn more about the Double Calendar spread visit Ted Ninos website at: http://www.doublecalendar.com Grab a totally unique version of this article from the Uber Article Directory