June 2019 finished fast and sound. I was following my path to financial freedom strictly, although I must admit, I got a bit greedy and did a few adjustments to collect more credits. These adjustments were not necessary and could potentially endanger my efforts to become financially free.

I am aware of this deficiency and getting back on path with my goal and strategy.

I had many discussions over my strategy with many investors and followers. Many didn’t like that I collect $30 – $35 dollars per contract. They say, it is not worth it.

But my strategy is to collect “crumbs” which would allow me to widen my strikes so far away from this crazy market, that I can sleep soundly, calm, and well. What is it worth to collect large premiums when the trade goes bust later on? If you see my track record you will find out, that I have mostly winners. So is it worth to me to collect small premium? Yes it is, as it allows me to collect it week by week without losses. And if you want large premiums and potential frequent large losses, go ahead. But not my style. Not anymore.

In June I followed the rules but I over-traded a bit. Although, there was a lesson in it. I learned how much fees and commissions I pay. And it was not a pleasant discovery.I learned it cost me 30% to trade!

Before, I ignored the fees and commissions. I saw it as a necessary business expense. The only difference here is that – one – your journey to financial freedom is slowed down – significantly! – and two – you cannot claim those expenses as a business expense unless you achieve a Traders Tax Status (TTS).

As I mentioned before, in my May 2019 post, I had to adjust my minimum premium requirement from 0.30 to 0.35 per contract just to account for fees. And that gets me closer to the market and make my trade more dangerous.

But recently, about two days ago, I decided to dust off my old theory of what is better – a 5 dollar or 10 dollar wide Iron Condor? There was a very heated discussion and debate on Facebook about this matter. There were people who claimed that it doesn’t matter, others were claiming that 10 dollar wide is a bad idea, and some liked it.

There was definitely one good reason for a 10 dollar wide trade – commissions. With 10 dollar wide trade, I can trade fewer contracts, achieve same result but reduce commissions. Thus, next month, I will investigate this opportunity and will try a few trades 10 dollar wide to see how that goes.

 · June 2019 results:

But let’s go to the June 2019 trading results.

June income has been great and exceptional. However, I do not expect it to repeat at all in the future as the income has been achieved by over-trading and for the next month it must not be done again.

It was not that I traded too many contracts but I was rolling them. For example, the very last trade #23 was going well and as the market kept sliding lower and lower, I started lowering the call spreads down, collecting additional premiums. It was an exceptional trade. But I endangered my call side and realized my mistake as soon as the market reversed on Thursday and continued rallying. Fortunately, I wasn’t punished for these unnecessary adjustments, but it reminded me not to touch the trade until it is really necessary. It was good and it felt great collecting additional premium, but it could turn into a large loss.

In June 2019 we made $4,945.43 revenue (double of the plan).

 
June 2019 trades:
 

Trade #23
Trade #22
Trade #21
Trade #20
Trade #18

Here is a link to my live 5 year plan spreadsheet.
 

 · Weekly short term trading strategy

Here is a quick list of our short term (3-4 DTE) strategy (simplified):
 

1) Open a new trade on Tuesday morning only.
2) Open with the same week Friday expiration (3 DTE).
3) Collect min. 0.35 credit.
4) No wider than $5 per trade.
5) Multiple contracts based on available buying power (BP).
6) Let the trade expire.
7) Wings at 5 delta or near as long as credit is 0.35.
8 ) Close one half of the position when tested side reaches delta 30 and roll the entire untested side down (or up) to offset the cost.
9) Close another half of the trade when the tested side reaches delta 40 and roll untested side lower (or higher).
10) Roll the remaining tested side higher (or lower), open more contracts, and roll untested side down (or up).

Here is an example of above described adjusting strategy:

We open 10 contracts with delta 08.
Put side gets tested and reaches delta 30.
We close 5 put contracts and roll 10 call contracts down.
Put side gets tested further more and reaches delta 40.
We close additional 3 put contracts.
We roll 10 call contracts lower.
The put side gets tested even more (touch).
We roll the remaining 2 puts down and open new 3 (or more) put contracts (at delta 16).
We roll call side lower.

 · Monthly long term trading strategy

We are also trading long term Iron Condors. We split the buying power to trade between the short term trades (3 – 4 DTE) and long term trades (50 – 60 DTE). However, the traded buying power of both combined trades shall never exceed the total allowed buying power.

Here is how I will be trading those long term trades:

1) DTE shall be 50 or more.
2) The IC width shall be 25.
3) The collected premium shall be $3 or more, the more the better (12% of margin)
4) The short delta 10 or less as long as collected premium is $3 or more. If a premium at delta 10 is less than $3, increase DTE.
5) Adjust the trade up or down if any short strike reaches delta 30.
6) Close the trade to collect minimum of $1.25 or more (5% of margin).

The adjustments for these kind of trades will be rolling the entire trade, when the tested side hits delta 30 or more, down or up. However, as soon as the trade reaches the minimum required credit, we will close the trade and immediately opening a new a new one.

 
Previous posts related to this plan:
 

May 2019 financial freedom report – June 01, 2019
My 5-year Plan to Freedom Update – May 22, 2019
April 2019 financial freedom report – May 05, 2019
Fed up with my own lack of discipline, putting down a plan to reach FI – April 17, 2019
 
 

May 2019 is over. For many this month was very difficult and a lot of people lost money, that was at least, what I have read in Facebook Groups. Of course, there were savvy traders and investors who made money in this volatile market. I made money too.

In this month I met the goal as planned. I was very careful to follow the plan and trade as described in my goal plan. Following the rules strictly helped a lot to no lose. Although, the end of the month was very shaky and I was very afraid of what the outcome may have been, I started even panicking at some point and started adjusting my last week trade too much. I noticed that and stopped doing it. Sometimes, it pays to really do nothing but it is easy said than done.

 
May 2019 results:
 

In May I stuck to the rules to the tee! No rules broken, no violations! I started also trading increased number of contracts. My first month going with 10 contracts and going up to 16. It was scary at first. I was well aware that increasing the contracts would bring more premium but also wipe out more of the previous gains should the trade go bad. But that was a risk I was OK to take to grow my account into independence.

I learned another thing which at first I considered negligible – fees. Once I started trading larger amount of contracts, I realized that with the fees (even though low fees compared to others) I will not be able to meet my goal as planned. I had to adjust my minimum premium to account for the fees if I wanted to stay on track. So I decided to increase the minimum premium collected to 0.35 from 0.30 a contract.

 
Monthly long term trading strategy
 

Another adjustment to the trading was adding a long term Iron Condors. I decided to split the buying power allowed to trade between the short term trades (3 – 4 DTE) and long term trades (50 – 60 DTE). But the traded buying power of both combined trades shall never exceed the total allowed buying power.

Here is how I will be trading those long term trades:

1) DTE shall be 50 or more.
2) The IC width shall be 25.
3) The collected premium shall be $3 or more, the more the better (12% of margin)
4) The short delta 10 or less as long as collected premium is $3 or more. If a premium at delta 10 is less than $3, increase DTE.
5) Adjust the trade up or down if any short strike reaches delta 30.
6) Close the trade to collect minimum of $1.25 or more (5% of margin).

Here is an example of a first trade I opened in this manner. My goal is to hold this trade no longer than a month. That means, I want to be opening this kind of trade every month. If it cannot be done, I will probably stop trading these long term trades. I do not know yet.

The adjustments for these kind of trades will be only rolling the tested side (delta 30) down or up and moving the untested side closer to offset any debit needed to roll. But, as soon as the trade reaches the minimum credit, I will be out and immediately opening a new trade.

Here are the results:

In May 2019 I met all goals as planned:

1) Starting value was as per the plan
2) Number of traded contracts was as per the plan
3) Monthly premium collected exceeded the plan (the plan was $1,680.00, collected premium was $2,690.00)
4) Monhtly deposits slightly exceeded the plan (the plan was $2,600.00, deposits were $2690.00)
5) The ending value was slightly below the plan (the plan was $14,342.00, final value ended at $14,337.00)

The shortage was caused by fees and due to the plan adjustments in the middle of the month. But overall, I consider May as accomplished per the plan.
 

 
May 2019 trades:
 

Trade #17
Trade #16
Trade #15
Trade #14
Trade #13

Here is a link to my live 5 year plan spreadsheet.
 

Weekly short term trading strategy
 

Here is a reminder of my strategy and way how to trade (simplified):
 

1) open a new trade on Tuesday morning only
2) open with the same week Friday expiration (3 DTE)
3) collect min. 0.30 credit
4) no wider than $5 per trade
5) multiple contracts based on BP
6) let it expire
7) wings at 5 delta or near as long as credit is 0.30
8 ) close one half of the position if the loss reaches $1.00
9) close everything if the loss reaches $1.50
10) if the market swoons through $1.00 and reaches $1.50 or even swings further, close everything.

with 5 delta, (2 SD) the swings still may happen (you never know what crazy people would do on Wall Street) but the breach is very rare. It still may happen, everything may happen, but it should happen occasionally, when panic hits…

 
Previous posts related to this plan:
 

My 5-year Plan to Freedom Update – May 22, 2019
April 2019 financial freedom report – May 05, 2019
Fed up with my own lack of discipline, putting down a plan to reach FI – April 17, 2019
 
 

At first I didn’t want to post the entire plan to my freedom because I was afraid. The numbers in the plan look so ridiculous that I was afraid that after posting the whole plan it would be ridiculed. So I decided to post it only a year by year. I would post a year 1, then two years, three years, and so forth.

But I also take this plan as a challenge. I am aware that the numbers in the plan look unrealistic and maybe they are. But if they are not, I want to see for myself whether they are achievable or not. And if they are achievable, I wanted to have a record of this plan from day one. I wanted to show to all people who follow my blog and my trading that this is what I said in 2019 and this is what I have achieved in 2024. And posting my plan in 2024 could be seen as cheating. Like I have posted this only when I was sure I could meet the plan but avoid posting it if I fail. This doesn’t go with my strive to be transparent.

Therefore, I am posting here the full plan to freedom I set in April.
 

Lately, I was playing with the numbers how to adjust the plan to achieve the goal faster. The reason for that was some personal life issues which made me to think that I need to achieve the freedom earlier than as planned above. I will post about the reasons later, not now.

I am still aware of all the risks. I am aware of possibilities of losing trades which would delay the plan. But I have a plan and trade management in place and thus I am aware of potential risks.

To speed up my path to freedom, I decided to further consolidate my accounts and liquidate my Motif account and transfer the funds to my trading account. This would bring in additional $2,600 dollars to this account.

I also decided to raise my traded contract from current 50% to 70% of available buying power. With these adjustments, the new plan would look like this (and it would also shorten the entire time to freedom by one entire year – given, there will be no stupid loses…):
 

Here is a link to my live 5 year plan spreadsheet.
 

I have tools, I have determination, and I have a money management to achieve the goal. All I need is a discipline to follow the rules and mitigate potential losses to minimum. If so, I should be able to achieve this goal. Let’s see…
 

 
Previous posts related to this plan:
 

May 2019 financial freedom report – June 1, 2019
April 2019 financial freedom report – May 05, 2019
Fed up with my own lack of discipline, putting down a plan to reach FI – April 17, 2019
 
 

April 2019 is in the books. In this month I met the goal as planned. There were a few changes I made which modified the entire plan:
 

1) I decided to combine my trading accounts into one. I closed my TD Ameritrade account (TD) and transferred funds to my Tasty Works account (TW).
2) This transfer increased money in my TW account and adjust the goal (see below).

 
The Original Plan:
 

Adjusted Plan:
 

April 2019 results:
 

How did I do in April 2019?

I did well:

• The starting value of the account was as planned.
• However, I violated number of contracts. There were occasions were I traded more contracts than what the plan allowed. I “approved” this to myself saying that I traded more contracts to catch up with short trading weeks available to me. The plan was to trade all four weeks in April but I only could trade three weeks. Although this didn’t backfire (unlike the breaking of the rules at the beginning of May 2019) I made money, not lost money.
• We exceeded the premium collected over the plan.
• The deposits were made as planned and actually exceeded the plan.
• The ending value exceeded the plan.
   

Here are the results:

Here is a reminder of my strategy and way how to trade (simplified):
 

1) open a new trade on Tuesday morning only
2) open with the same week Friday expiration (3 DTE)
3) collect min. 0.30 credit
4) no wider than $5 per trade
5) multiple contracts based on BP
6) let it expire
7) wings at 5 delta or near as long as credit is 0.30
8 ) close one half of the position if the loss reaches $1.00
9) close everything if the loss reaches $1.50
10) if the market swoons through $1.00 and reaches $1.50 or even swings further, close everything.

with 5 delta, (2 SD) the swings still may happen (you never know what crazy people would do on Wall Street) but the breach is very rare. It still may happen, everything may happen, but it should happen occasionally, when panic hits…

 
Previous posts related to this plan:
 

May 2019 financial freedom report – June 1, 2019
My 5-year Plan to Freedom Update – May 22, 2019
Fed up with my own lack of discipline, putting down a plan to reach FI – April 17, 2019