Day of reckoning.

Today my spreads are close to my short strikes on SPY and BYY but I feel confident that they will hold until EOD and remain 100% profitable... the market will decide. Both are about $1.20 from strikes... not too bad for BYY as it is under $40 but not so good for SPY as it is around $115.

Those trades aside, the reckoning comes down to my thinking about the spread trade cash requirements between Questrade and Strikepoint/Optioneer.

The method and underlying index create a similar, if not quite comparable playing environment. The only issue is the handling of the iron condor as a single trade for the purposes of total exposure as opposed to separate call and put spreads with aggregate exposure. The ease of Strikepoint trading as single orders using software for order entry and spreads that are already mixed compared to doing all my own math at Questrade and position management that is far more hands on might be a consideration. but I LIKE doing all the math, so it doesn't count.

At this point I will be transferring the majority of my cash over to Strikepoint to maximize the trading power in that account and leaving a minimum amount of cash in my Questrade account to use with one of my other plans. I have not decided how much yet, nor have I decided if it will be a straight option trade setup but it will definitely not be spread trading for a while. I expect that I will pickup the Bullish Percent Index charting and go with the BPI triggered sector ETF rotation idea and see how that works in real life as I never got the time to do much more tha play test it in hindsight. Perhaps I will add an S&P500 moderating factor or a currency hedge or maybe tie in the Dow Jones and Russell with some consideration for small, medium and large cap performance...lots to consider.

BYY is heading slowly down but neither made a move off the bell...although SPY opened down and is heading down a bit which is in my favour at least. I should close BYY so it does not go near loss territory but I will ride it until noon and see where it may go.

My other two spreads have gotten very little or no screen time here so I should mention them...that's what happens when they do pretty much what I expect when it comes to spread trades...no news is good news.

XLE (Energy Sector ETF) has remained high and as this is a put spread, remained profitable for me.

APOL, some stock or other, that's bad when I doen't even recall the real name, has done the same. Strangely it is priced simialrly to XLE and has followed very simialr patterns so it must be a large energy related stock... in hindsight I would have been better off putting both positions together into XLE and saved some commissions and the possible risk of having a stock option take a hike due to some company issue that may be unrelated tot he energy market in general.

I'll update my performance page after today closes to be sure I don'e jump the gun by entering my numbers ahead of the close... not that I am terribly superstitious but the market does some weird things often enough.

Jeff.