The Calendar Options newsletter continued its positive trend in the fourth quarter, giving us our best return to date. Our model-portfolio¹ return for the quarter exceeded 40%, bringing our total return for 2009 (not including the cost of commissions) to 55.62%. The maximum drawdown, standard deviation, and number of months positive for the newsletter model portfolio were all comparable to the S&P 500...
Monday, December 28, 2009
The iron condor newsletter returned over 18% in the final quarter this year, versus 3% for the benchmark and market index, and also managed to outperform both the market and our benchmark for 2009. Just as importantly, our maximum drawdown (9%) and standard deviation (5.6%) were nearly identical to those of the market as a whole (9%, 5.7%), indicating that we also outperformed on a risk-adjusted basis. There is a common misconception that an iron condor options spread is only suitable during…
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Comments Off
Earlier this month, we announced a change in how we're going to publicize the performance of our strategies. Much as a company's performance and the price of its stock can suffer in the long-run as a result of too much focus on short-term performance, we believe that investors do best when they take a long-term perspective...
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Investors are notorious for chasing performance. If a mutual fund or advisor or trading strategy has done well recently, chances are much greater that traders will commit money to that strategy or product, often independently of the long term performance, general suitability, or distinguishing features of the strategy or product. I’ve seen the same behavior among the audience for our paid newsletters: after a winning month, new subscribers are more likely to rush in, and if we have a flat…
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Comments Off
The unrelenting August rally put some pressure on the call side of our iron condor positions. However, we were able to close out the month with flat-to-positive performance for the newsletter trades due in part to our ability to stagger trade entries based on volatility and delta exposure and to size positions on a risk-adjusted basis – both techniques that we teach on the members area of the site. We are nearing the end of the September expiration cycle and…
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Comments Off