This week we finished up with a $1,897 (1.27%) return, which outpaced the S&P 500 by 1.56%. All in all it was a really successful week for us. Our total YTD returns are up to 69.17% which is far outpacing the S&P 500 return of 17.29%. Most importantly of all, we wrapped up July with a profit of $4,155, which means we have made money in each of the first 7 months of the year. See below for the full detail:
CRSR has been annoyingly on a downtrend so that's put a little dent in our profits recently, but the rest of our "safer plays" made up for the $500 loss we took on the shares as that category of trade finished +$57. Basically breakeven but profit is profit. We really made some nice progress on our SOL, FFIE, DIDI, and CLOV trades that we had running this week which expired for $1,400 of profits. The SOL and CLOV trades were ongoing HT wheel trades which finished up after roughly 2-3 weeks. Here is how those looked:
Both trades were incredibly successful and pulled 3 and 4 digit annualized returns despite a 12.28% and 7.53% drop in the stocks respectively.
We also entered into a couple of earnings trades with AMZN and PINS. We sold an AMZN iron condor for $4.20 and set a buy order for $3.90 before earnings, which eventually filled and netted us a $30 profit. This admittedly was a stroke of good luck as AMZN tanked after their earnings report. We were not so lucky with PINS, which took a roughly 25% dive post-earnings. However as is the case with most of our trades, we were able to save it (a little bit). To manage the big downward move, we closed the put spread side of the iron condor for less than max profit and took advantage of the IV from the large downward move to sell 55p that expired today. Here is how that looked:
So instead of a roughly $300 potential max loss that we would have taken if we did nothing, we were able to salvage a little over $100. Still a loss, but losses are inevitable and it's important to try and limit the damage when it happens. I feel we successfully accomplished that here.
Looking forward, I am planning to be incredible conservative in what I trade. I have about as much buying power currently on the sidelines as I have ever had, which is incredibly important during times like these. The market has been on an absolute tear lately and inevitably the music will stop. The best thing we can do is position ourselves to be able to scoop up trades at great prices rather than panic about a margin call when things turn south next. Keeping a good amount of buying power on the sidelines accomplishes that.
We'll still have trades on a week to week basis since we want to benefit if the market keeps running upwards, however we're going to limit trade size until we start seeing some redder days in the market.
For the upcoming week we've added positions in Z, PLTR, and ATOS. We'll potentially look to add more as next week progresses.