Questions on Iron Condors

May 30th, 2015, 03:50 AM

bartokInD

in my experience, i think it's best to open condors, strangles, straddles at once and close them at once. it's tempting to do one leg at a time, but my view is that you put the work into analysing the scenario and choosing the options, that's the core of the trade. when you start trying to get fancy, then you're moving away from what the trade should be about.

that's just my opinion - good luck,

I agree, its always best to open/close any complex strategy having multiple legs in one execution by using bracket orders, since it will save the spreads and the slide in greeks with time.

June 5th, 2015, 08:14 AM

sasquatch

When you trade an Iron Condor, should you close each leg individually? At times I can buy back one side for 5cents which would give me no commissions.

Which way is better, close the whole thing or each side individually?

I think it depends:

1) If you want to make things simple, you can close the whole strategy.

2) But if after closing one side you are happy with the remaining spread, you can keep the strategy and continue managing it as a new strategy.

June 5th, 2015, 04:15 PM

Another factor to consider while deciding whether or not to close one side of an iron condor and keep the other side open is the number of days remaining to expiration. Theta decay in far out of the money spreads is very slow. So, for example, if you have an iron condor that's still got 25 days to expiration and one side of the condor is sitting at 30 cents credit, it's probably better to close that side. Because it will take for ever for that 30 cents premium to decay any further. And, by closing that leg, you can remove risk completely from one direction. But these strategies are for experienced traders. For a beginner, the best course of action is to close the entire condor at once. Set a profit target and put a limit order on to exit the trade at once.

Questions on Iron Condors

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Questions on Iron Condors