OPENING AMD AUGUST 21ST 60/78 SHORT STRANGLE

... for a 2.90/contract credit.

Notes: Earnings play with high 30-day implied at 65.9%. Will look to take profit at 50% max or manage on side approaching worthless/side test ... .

Comment:

Pesky little thing ... . In call side test, so will look at rolling out to September next week to collect additional credit, improve my call side break even. 30-day is still at 56.1% with September 18th expiry-specific IV at 57.3%, so it still has some juice in it.

Trade active:

With very little extrinsic in the short put and the short call in test, rolling the 60/78 out to the September 18th 67.5/80 for a 2.60 credit. Scratch at 5.50.

Trade active:

I would prefer not rolling this out another cycle such that I have a broken play to contend with during earnings, so inverted here slightly by rolling the 67.5 short put up to the 82.5 short put intraexpiry for a 3.74 credit in an effort to either scratch it out or make something out of it this cycle; scratch at 9.24 on a two and half wide inversion. Still looking to get 1.45 out of this, so my revised price target is scratch (9.24) minus the original price target of 1.45 or 7.79. Break evens are now the short put minus 9.24 or 73.26 on the put side; the short call plus 9.24 or 89.24 on the call side.

Trade active:

Inverting further by rolling the 82.5 short put to the 86 for a 1.46 credit; scratch at 10.70 on a 6-wide inversion. Delta/theta -28.13/15.89 with 6.07 of extrinsic.

Trade active:

Ugh. Sometimes you gotta bite the bullet ... . Rolling the September 18th 80C/86P inverted out to the uninverted October 16th 90/92.5 skinny short strangle for a .73 credit. Scratch at 11.43.

Trade active:

Rolling the October 16th 92.5 short call down to the 82.5 for a 3.20 credit. (Yes, I'm chasing my tail a bit in this). Scratch at 14.63 with a 7.5-wide inverted.

Trade active:

I'm essentially long my short put at 90 minus my credits collected of 14.63 or 75.37, so rolling my 82.5 short call down to the 76 strike for a 2.37 credit. Total credits collected of 17.00 even on a now 14-wide inversion, so the most I can make on this is 3.00 running into expiry. My preference is to bail from this prior to earnings in 40 days.

Comment:

Hmm. Maybe there is a (trading) God ... . With inversions, you want a finish between your inversion strikes. It's slightly green here with 18 days to go; 16.83 for the inverted short strangle versus my 17.00 scratch point. Generally, I take broken setups off for scratch when I can, but am going to hang out in this until between 4 and 10 days to go.

Trade closed manually:

Out today for 16.25, a .75 ($75) winner. I'll take it after all the goofing around ... .