Andrew Crowder's  Instablog

Do you believe now? With the market now down for the year with great uncertainty ahead why would you not want to use a strategy that can take advantage of a bull, bear or sideways market. It just doesn’t make sense why investors choose to stay away from options and it is my goal to show people, through my options strategies how to effectively use options to grow their portfolios or to just bring in income on a monthly basis.

I have been running the High-Probability, Mean-Reversion for several years now with great success and to prove its worth I decided to have all of my options trades monitored by a third-party starting last November. Since that time the portfolio has made 47.9%. The win ratio and returns of my options strategy speak for themselves. Yes, I am proud of the strategy and what it has achieved.

I have also recently added the Theta Driver strategy which is a credit spread strategy as a complement to my High-Probability, Mean-Reversion strategy. Over the past two months I ahve made several trades to show just how powerful the strategy is and how it can be used to enhance your portfolio and as a way to diversify using a strategy that options professionals use.

I  wanted to reiterate my sentiment regarding the High-Probability, Mean-Reversion strategy. As we all know the strategy enters periods of stagnant trading. Which is another reason I have decided to implement the Theta Driver options strategy. Again, this a long-term approach to options trading and is to be expected.  Boring – maybe to the aggressive crowd out there. But, I am more interested in the profitable trades. Trades that I am confident in due to the short-term extremes that have entered the stock market – high-probability trades. Again,  I think the win ratio and returns of my options strategy speak for themselves.

Ultimately, this whole endeavor is about creating and teaching you a successful way to make money using stock options. I have found that and again, I hope you can join me for the ride.

Theta Driver Options Strategy

The Russell 2000 (IWM) is now trading at $76.75 so my IWM credit spread for the August expiration cycle is trading at $0.02. With the underlying ETF trading 10.8% below the short strike of the credit spread and only 17 days left until August expiration I will allow the spread to expire worthless rather than take the trade off and use hard-earned dollars for commissions. In most cases, I would take the trade off, but a 10.8% move just isn’t likely over the next 17 days. The trade looks to make 17% as long as IWM trades below 86 at August expiration.

Check out the trade here.

As for my September Theta Driver trade, well, I will probably take the trade off as it is basically worthless. With 45 days left until September options expiration and the IWM trading 14.7% below the short strike of the credit spread (90 strike) and the spread only trading for $0.04 I plan on taking off the trade for a 12.5% profit.

Check out the trade here.

So, both trades were profitable 17% and 12.5%, respectively. As a result, I am going to open up the Theta Driver options strategy a little early and limit it to only 100 subscribers to keep it manageable. People have been chomping at the bit to get in so I might as well go ahead and start ASAP. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to email me.

I will continue to go over the trade in full detail in the Free Weekly Options Report and here on the blog.

Market Mumbo Jumbo

• Daily options report

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Options Strategy Indicator – Overbought / Oversold Extremes