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Category: Dr. Duke's Blog
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Trading continued to follow the dollar in inverse fashion. The dollar was trading with gains relative to other currencies this morning and the market fell; then the dollar weakened and the markets took off. RUT closed up almost $10 at $605 while the SPX rose over $10 to close at $1078. Initial unemployment claims were better than expected this morning, but the dollar trade overwhelmed that news.

My Feb condors are doing very well at this point. The 540/550 put spreads are now over two standard deviations OTM and the 640/650 call spreads are more like 1.5 standard deviations OTM. The position stands at a gain of $2,614 with a position delta of -$2 and theta = +$136 - hard to be more delta neutral than that.

The Mar condor is being squeezed by today's upward move. The delta of the 640 calls hit 19 this afternoon, so I purchased two April $640 calls for $9.00. This position closed near breakeven with a delta of -$31 and theta = +$88. Without the adjustment, the position delta would have been -$87 and theta would be +$118. So our adjustment cut delta in half and reduced theta, but not terribly. If the market continues upward, I will be doing some "what if" analysis around adding one more long Apr call or simply closing and rolling the call spreads.