Milktrader

Iterating Until Convergence

Thursday, July 2, 2009

RUT Iron Condor for August

Bulls and bears are on summer vacation. But they left their children behind to keep the market humming along during their well-deserved break. So as the cubs and calves fight it out, I expect much ado about nothing. Enough so to put on an Iron Condor in RUT, the European-style, cash-settled index that tracks the Russell 2000 small caps.

I'm not playing it safe on this one, but I don't expect to carry it through to expiration. I've chosen the 20 delta at the short strikes, which is almost a coin flip in terms of probabilities. I've also taken this trade with a little too much time to expiration. Normally, I will take an Iron Condor with a max of 48 days to expiration, but this time I'm playing the summer holiday and hoping to steal some extra theta.

The strikes on the put side vertical are 450/460. On the call side vertical they're at 560/570. Credit received is $3.15.

The general idea is to take this trade off when price action threatens the short strike. And hopefully I've eroded the short strikes enough to get a profit from the trade.



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