Market rallied yesterday on Q3 GDP numbers, reversed all those gains today.

As they say, bear market rallies start on bad news, and end on good news. Of course, that's ignoring the fact that the Q3 GDP number is all fabricated anyway; it's a farce.

The bear blogs out there were calling yesterday's move "God's Gift to the Bears". And indeed it was. I loaded up on an ITM QQQQ NOV 40/41 bear call spread. Only $0.23 of risk, $0.77 credit spread (potential 300% gain on a bear call spread, pretty sweet deal). Today at the close, that spread is now $0.66 credit, and I've gained $0.11 on my $0.23 investment (my $0.23 risk is now worth $0.34). Quite a nice gain based on just a 2.5% downturn on the index. And if QQQQ closes under $40 on November 20th, I get to keep the entire premium . Also, the VIX was up 25% today... Totally annihilated that 11% drop yesterday. If only I had kept my VIX NOV 25 calls? Taking profits is a small price to pay for some safety. After all, no one went broke from locking in profits.

Everything else, I'm still holding. Not too worried. I'm not a delta chaser; I like to let theta do its work. Thus, about 75% of my portfolio is in bear call spreads, part of it is in straight VIX calls, and the rest is in cash still (in case we get a bounce, I may want to load up on some more bear call spreads, maybe another ITM one even).

That is, if EWZ closes under $75 (closed at $68.83 today), and VALE under $26 (closed at $25.49 today), and SPY under $110 (closed at $103.56 today), and QQQQ under $40 (closed at $40.96 today) all on November 20th, I get to keep all of their premiums (and I don't need to pay commissions to close them out!). Commission premiums on 50-100 contracts/leg spreads are really insane.

Next week, do we get a black swan event on Monday? It's very possible (and lots of bears are cheering for it, seeing as how we broke several very important trendlines across just about everything). However, the VIX broke its upper bollinger slightly today, so it may indicate a reversal on Monday. On the other hand, it could indicate that we just ride the upper bollinger all the way up for a while (as it's been known to do).

3 more weeks till OPEX. A lot can happen, but I'm feeling pretty comfortable.

43% portfolio gain in a single day... Obviously not like this every day, but these days are pretty nice :D. Note that the % losses are on the long leg of the spread, since they're all bear call spreads, which is perfectly normal.

Portfolio is up around 250% since September. My new strategy has been working out quite well lately, as seen with the holdings/plays in the previous post.

Tomorrow might be an up day, because of Q3 GDP release in the AM, and more POMO cash, but since I'm mostly in very safe bear call spreads, I'm not too worried about the short term impact.