Davec,
If I get up in the morning and see a $20 or higher profit I will usually take it. If not I will let it go to expiration. Be careful with US Tech. The stop triggers tend to shoot off early. It happened again to me last night. I have asked about this is the stop trigger posting area. I look forward to seeing and comparing your test results!
I set my trades last night before I went to bed. Got up this morning at about 6:00 AM PST and this is what I saw:
As I said I only expect to make around $20 per trade with this strategy. So I took profit and then entered into 4 more trades.
Also as a correction to previous posts on this topic the US Tech stop trigger does not activate early. I was confusing the spread price with the underlying price. Iâm guessing that since US Tech is the most volatile it will sometimes stop out before any time has passed hence the spread price and underlying are still very far apart. Not to say it canât or hasnât happened with any other instrument but US Tech is the only instrument that has been somewhat difficult to manage with this strategy. I may begin initially putting my stops further out at night on US Tech and then adjusting them in the morning.
Thanks again to Darrell and lionking for helping to clarify this for me!
Hi Jmart69,
I appreciate your post. I have also been trying to figure out an easy way to work with these daily iron condors. I have only been working on the US TECH 100. I figured if I could define the strategy correctly with this market then I would move on to the others to see if it will work with the rest. Different from the other markets, the US TECH 100 has a lot of premium built in the daily spreads as I am sure you have noticed (I think Darrel mentioned that it has to do with the fact that they changed the tick movement from 1.00 to 0.1 but left the size of the spreads the same and the volatility that it brings).
The reason for me babbling all of this is because you may not need to use the stop trigger. I started out using the stop trigger and noticed that on volatile nights I would get stopped out early, so I have been trying to refine the idea or come up with an âif this happens, then do thisâ strategy that would have an above average win-loss ratio. Anyways, if your risk tolerance is a 1 to 1 risk to reward ratio, you do not have to use the stop trigger because the premium in these spreads will give you more potential profit than risk meaning that your 1 to 1 risk to reward ratio will fall outside of the spread minimizing your risk. Not putting a stop trigger allows you to stay in the trade because it can always come back or if it has moved a lot and you prefer you can get out on one leg of the iron condor early taking the early loss and stay in the profitable one hopefully long enough to overcome the loss on the other side. Of course this all depends on your risk tolerance and how you manage the trade. I am still working on this as well. I have also been testing the idea of using a binary if one side if the market has moved substantially on one side. I am still testing out various different ideas to see which one fits me best.
Hope this helps in some way and any feedback is more than welcome. Thank you.
Happy Trading.
lionking,
What you say makes a lot of sense and I have noticed the superior amount of premium built into this instrument. I have also been stopped out early on volatile nights. If I could watch these trades everyday it would be hard to lose them (I thinkâŠ). With the exception of two or three times, when I have been stopped out early on US Tech I have won the trade and made more money because I lost less on the side that closed early and the underlying did not cross over.
However I cannot manage the trade indefinitely. I only have four hours at night and then about 30 minutes the next morning. I may run some tests with not placing stop triggers and setting them further apart at night and see how it goes. My win/loss ratio is really good so far. I was 45-15-4 in August and so far in September I am 41-6-1 with this strategy even with a few screw-ups. I will continue to experiment with the stop loss in demo until the end of this month. I would love to hear how you are doing as well!
Thanks for your feedback.
Once again I placed my trades before going to bed and when I got up all were in profit!
Of course I took profit! I will post final Demo results for both August and September here at the end of this month. After that I will begin Live trades using this strategy.
Awesome job on the Condors! And way to go for doing some back testing and keeping stats! yes, definitely check out the Stop Plug, it will help you very much in managing your trades!!
Duo to the latest market conditions I started using different strategy. I set up a straddle on Wall St 30 2 long and 2 short contracts, than I also set up 1 IC on NQ just to protect me from flat market (lately its never flat). When 1 straddle makes $50 or more I close the profitable trade and leave all the others, Im not saying this is 100% win strategy but for the current market conditions its better than IC on its own and the worst case scenario you will end up at pretty much BE. No sl or tp is needed. I will post sceenshots when I set it up in about 6.5h. Thanks
Sounds interesting. Look forward to seeing your screenshots.
I think the IC will only lose money, markets are really volatile, I did some straddles, so far so good:
From what I see the best instruments for straddles are Wall St and US 500, risk on each is $140 up to $180 depends on the day but you can make $50- $100 or more per instrument, the NQ is not worth it cos risk is close to $300 and the profit is much lower also SmallCap wont make much money, Im not sure about crude oil cos I never did a straddle on it before. Anyway this is the 4th time I do straddle on indicies and each time it is profitable, still I need to test it for longer period of time. Also the idea is to not wait till expiry but close both trades when in profit, unless the losing trade is at max loss than its not worth it to close it. On this straddle I made $100 net profit today, closed the winning trade and the losing one is still open, who knows it may reverse right:
The price dropped on this one and I closed the 2nd leg of this straddle for $10 loss so total I made $176 net profit on this straddle today 
I noticed it has been a while since the last posts. Are ICs still working?
Yes they work but there is not much to them either you do them or donât. Make sure to line up expected range, with expected volume, with expected time, and compare that to current live pricing.
Also I recommend adding them after you have directional trading down so you can do both at the same time.
Know this is a bit of a necro⊠
But this is such a great idea. Been demoing for a bit while seeing if I can get into any directional trades to great success.
Even with todayâs volatility on the NQ still managed a very respectable $29 (per IC before fees) Had the potential to make around $28 more but with the FOMC meeting minutes being released, didnt really want to mess around with that. 
Hopefully I can start doing this live in a couple weeks. Thanks so much for sharing!
At first glance it appears that you have a buy order for the upper wing when you should have a sell order.
Peter
my .9801 was a sell and my ,9813 was a buy so i got them backwards?
Looking at the image you posted
You bought spread 0.9560-0.9810 @ .9801 (this one looks right)
You have a working order to buy spread 0.9810-1.0060 @ 0.9813 (this should have been a sell order).
You have no position size listed on the upper wing of the Iron Condor which suggests that you entered the order incorrectly as a buy order instead of a sell order and it hasnât triggered yet (the upper wing of this condor should be spread 0.9810-1.0060).
For Iron Condors you want to sell the upper spread and buy the lower spread.
ok thanks i see it now i will try to fine another one see if i can get it right when i fine one i will repost it tks
I have a couple quick Iron Condor questionsâŠ
Has anyone considered putting a âStop Triggerâ at the break even points on either end of the Iron Condor? It seems like this would just about guarantee a profit or break even.
When/where are the best places to hunt the Iron Condor? Iâm still a newbie, but I have been having a hard time finding them. Is there an efficient way to use the Spread Scanner to find them (i.e. filtering for only spreads with a positive premium)?
Any help would be appreciated!
Great questions! Iâll answer the second one first because it ties into the answer for the first one.
If you watch Darrellâs Iron Condor videos on the News Trading plan page, he explains that most of the Iron Condors are centered around high impact news reports. The News Trading plan page actually suggests when to put these on, which makes the hunt that much easier. News can create situations of higher implied volatility and that IV is what creates higher premium in the spreads. When the news comes out, you often see an immediate spike in pricing, and then as it is digested price can normalize back down to the levels it was at, prior to the news leaving you with a great premium collection opportunity.
Which leads into you second question, yes you can put a stop trigger at the break even points, but that is not the best way to execute these trades. Your stop could get hit on the initial spike in price only to see price move back towards the middle of what would have been a successful trade.
I highly recommend that you scroll all the way to the bottom of the News trading plan page, there is a ton of information on this page that can give you ways to reduce the risk on the iron condors, they are more advanced strategies, but the information is all there for you.
I hope this helps.
Peter.
