Good Friday

Well lets kick it off with a trade that closed for me this morning for a profit. Always good to start off on a good note.

I entered a trade called a "Reverse Iron Condor" which is a basically a call spread and a put spread at the same time on the same security.

The security I chose was Citigroup. I figured that with the problems happening in Cypress, and the overbought nature of financial stocks at the time, that this strategy had a probability of success.

One of the reasons that I like Reverse Iron Condors is that you don't have to get the direction of movement right to profit on the trade. It's true that the losing spread takes some of your profit away, but lately I like removing the direction of the trade as a variable for success. Learning about Volatility has been a fascination lately, and is proving to be time well spent. Anyway.

With Citi common at about $47 on last Thursday the 14th I purchased the 48c/49c/46p/45p RIC for $.52. I entered the trade with 4 contracts (like I said, I'm small time).

I'm working in CA right now, so I had to be at work real early in the morning, and I don't get access to my broker very often or at all at work.

On the night before, I entered the order as a limit to buy at $.52 because the mid-point on the spread was .55 and I didn't want to pay that much. So, that Thursday night when I got home and saw that the spread was purchased, I entered separate limit sell orders for each side of the Condor for $.85.

I was losing all week on this trade as Citi was chopping above and below $47 until the day before yesterday when I got the break I was looking for on a Cypress headline. Normally on Wednesday I close a RIC That's not working for a loss or even to look at next week's condor opportunities.

C moved lower yesterday, and lower still today on the open until at about 10:30 EST the put side of the Condor closed at my $.85 limit.

So, the long and short of it all is $190 out last Thursday is $310 in today.

STT