VXX P/L & Charts

I warned yesterday about considering taking profits in VXX, this is already a volatile asset with the percentage moves for this week at -1.37%, +6.60%, +5.89%, -4.62% and +1.04% so far today, add to that leverage of options and gains come and go quickly.

Generally speaking, if you know VXX is likely to go down, you know the market is likely to go up and vice-versa, if VXX is likely to do nothing with the market, then you are just watching profits erode through time decay.

This was a silly mistake on my part not to have closed it earlier, its still a profitable position, but much less so than it could have been had I closed it yesterday at the close.

 VXX 5 min from yesterday's negative divergence to today's positive divergence, that's good enough to shut down an option designed to be played as a "Hit and Run" position, some of the others I have no problem leaving open until next week, but the volatility in this one doesn't make it worthwhile.

The same timeframe in the SPY gives general confirmation, you can see the negative divergence at the top is very small and a relative divergence which is the weakest, thus I'm not concerned for other positions in general.

The P/L could have been a lot better, this print out below is as of today, yesterday's at the close would have been higher.

At the $ 2.94 fill this a.m., the P/L is 15.3% instead of 23.4% from just 15 minutes earlier. This is one of the problems with putting a real $ model portfolio which I'd like to do, there are a lot of other problems/complications as well, but being distracted costs money, sometimes a lot.

Real quick I just want to share a quick story many of you have heard, but it's a good reminder and some have not heard it. I literally don't remember the last time I used a limit order for anything, it may have been this time which I think was about 10 years ago.

I went on vacation, I use to always preach, "If you are distracted or on vacation, close your positions", if for no other reason than to enjoy your vacation. I had one position I liked a lot and though it would take off, the market was no where near this volatile so I put in an emergency stop, the kind that is about twice as low as you might normally place it just to be sure I wasn't knocked out on a silly intraday move. Then on vacation the market took the stock down to my stop, hit it and then went on to close up something insane like 5-10% and kept going as I expected. The low of the day, my stop. Everything you put on the books, no matter what your broker may say, is seen by someone, I keep everything mental now.