Does anyone do WEEKLY Iron Butterflies?

#1

I want to demo yet another strategy. Take a forex pair & try to get a wide iron butterfly on the weekly. If you can last until Wednesday or Thursday, I’m thinking you could exit one side that’s being threatened & not even worry about the other side losing. Right now I have one on the EUR/USD pair. I just got in (BUY 74.50 ; SELL 31.25), and it’s 4am Thursday morning. Yeah, it’s a bit late. My strikes are still 150 pips apart!

If I get in on a Monday or Tuesday, I’m wondering if I could get a 72/28 or better butterfly 200 pips apart. Maybe even set working orders on both sides to get 300 pip butterflies??? Has anyone tried this? I like the weekly contracts (I can’t believe I’m actually saying this) because they are so far apart. I know there’s more time to be “wrong” on the weekly butterflies, but whenever I try to do a daily butterfly, the prices are usually one good (maybe buy 74) and one bad (maybe sell 19) and they are so close! I always end up losing those. On the WEEKLY butterflies, I’m thinking if we get good prices around 30/70, we can exit one side if it’s threatened for maybe a $20 loss & the other side would expire pretty comfortably.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated! I’m thinking when I go live again in February, I’ll do this with one contract on each side as a compliment to my other strategies.

#2

Not sure why you might be wanting to do weeklies. True, the wings will be far apart, but with the changing Implied Volatility we have been seeing…that could be a very risky trade. The Premium collection will not start to kick in until about Wednesday evening -if I remember correctly. So in the mean time you will just be sitting there hoping for a small amount of price movement. You can make just as much by placing a 1 to 2 hour trade as you can with the weekly. You also will not need as much of a wing spread to have full profit. Seems to me the percentages are higher with a shorter trade. That and coupled with our Expected Range indicator have shown me good profits. I love to do IB during lunch hours and early Friday afternoons. . Be sure you are out before 4 if at all possible.

#3

Thanks for the reply! I don’t like IB trades normally, because I don’t win. The 2 hour strikes are just too close. I think I won one of those in ten tries or so.

I was also thinking about putting working orders on the weekly binaries & then I could get in after it moves 100 pips or more. That way I get a better strike than the one I would’ve grabbed originally. If the premium collection doesn’t start to kick in until Wednesday, I could take a look at what happened from the beginning of the week until Wednesday morning. If it dropped quite a bit, I could buy a binary a few strikes below the market. The opposite would be for an upwards market. I’d just try to find the one that moved the farthest, expecting a pullback, or maybe assuming the market will exhaust the movement in that direction…

I’m doing really well on my 5-minute binaries & the “Afternoon Delight” strategy, so this weekly binary thing might just end up being a throw-away test. :slight_smile:

#4

How have you been trading the 5 min binary? I haven’t found a good method yet that works for me?

#5

5 minute Binaries are highly discouraged by Apex. Pricing ladder will eat your shorts. Use 20 minute if US indices or 1 hour. 5 minute Bins are no mans land. IF you want to be successful, have the probabilities in your favor. 5 minute binaries are more of a sucker bet, as we are looking for the edge to be in our favor before trading ANY trade. This is regardless if you are trading Bins, Spreads or KO. Which I am loving trhe newer Knock Out Trades.

#6

5 min are not recommended they are the hardest contract to trade the easiest is futures you can trade micros with only a $400 account.