I don’t think I have ever had a expiration cycle where there were no losers – until this one. On the other hand, no big winners either, just a fairly consistent return. Notice the mix of spreads: 5 Verticals, 4 Calendars and 1 Iron Condor. This month I had difficulty finding good Calendar and Double Calendar trades, whereas the Bearish trend provided highly profitable Bear Call spreads. Point is, trading more than one strategy (to fit current conditions) allows for more flexibility.
Although the month is not over yet, I have $2,472 in the bank and a 3.98% return on total account value (19.3% return on risk). The amount of capital at risk (so far) has been $12,787, which is only about 23% of my Spread Account.
Have you ever watched any of the TOS archived Chat Sessions? Check out the July 8, 2009 chat called Good Trade/Bad Trade with Tom and Tom. It presents some great ideas for applying different spread strategies under various conditions. If you are a TOS customer and haven’t watched any chat videos, you can get to them by clicking 
and selecting the Seminars tab. Open the July 2009 section and pick that video (detailed below).
This week I opened a few trades for JUL expiration: AAPL Bull Put and AMZN Bear Call. Check them out on my In Play page.
Each day I scan my watch list for prospects. I noticed CME looks quite weak and in a strong bear trend (see chart).
Yesterday I opened a JUL/SEP 300 Calendar that should show a nice profit between $286 and $316, which is just about where the trend line will put it on JUL expiration. Because of the long Put is in SEP, I have the possibility of rolling the short Put to AUG – depending on the price of the stock. Stay tuned. Ah, the plans of mice and gurus 
Friday I will be looking at the weekly options on SPY, DIA, QQQQ and IWM for potential prospects. It should be fun and may be able to pick up a few extra bucks at the same time.
◄ Jeff ►
