59: Short Strangle Case Study - Adjustment Strategy That Slashed Our Loss By 87%

Show notes: http://optionalpha.com/show59

It's easy for traders, myself included, to talk about our profitable trades. I mean who doesn't want to talk about making money right? But we know that we can't win on every trade and today I'm going to cover an in-depth case study on our EWZ short strangle.

We started building the EWZ position with short strangles back in late November and ending making more 27 trades over the course of five months to adjust and hedge the position. It was by far one of our longest held positions, but at the end of the five month period we ended up turning a paper loss of $2,538 (the most we were losing at any one point) into a real loss of just $330. An 87% reduction in the loss.

It took a lot of confidence in our adjustment strategy as well as patience to let the market cyclicality play out, and my hope is that today's show helps you understand the overall adjustment philosophy that helped turn this trade around. Sure, it would've been great to highlight a case study where a trade went from a loser to a winner. That just wasn't the reality with these short strangles, and yet, I'm still happy with the results even though we lost money after everything. Plus, if it helps you avoid or reduce risk on the next options trade you make, well then I've accomplished my mission.