Summer Rally Friday And Our Expiring ITM Debit Spread Hedge for +78% Gain

GDP was soft and Consumer Sentiment was the lowest in a year - perfect reasons for a 27 handle S&P rally in 2 trading sessions! For those Weekly Trading Service members holding the ITM SPY Debit Spread Hedge expiring today, we will leave this position alone to expire ITM for full profit of +78% in 3 days. After opening the trade as a long call we employed a Debit Spread Hedge by selling a call against our long call. Creating a Debit Spread Hedge is a great way to lock in profits and reduce risk exposure. It is a strategy we use a lot as it can hedge a trade that is going against us as well as one that is working for us; the best of both worlds! This strategy reduced our capital risk exposure by 80% for our SPY trade while also greatly reducing our break-even point, and all while still providing a profit opportunity of +78% for the trade. To provide education on how the Debit Spread Hedge reduces risk and locks in gains we have provided the following resource available on the www.BookingAlpha.com homepage: How To Hedge Long Calls Or Puts With Debit Spreads The existing Weekly Service DIA long put took some heat today as markets continued their Thursday Euro-headline rally. As stated when the trade was opened, we expected we may be a little early deploying the put which is why we used Aug expiry. It is worth noting that going long/short with straight calls/puts can exposes us to more Delta which can whip position values around. Thus, stop loss thresholds and adjustment parameters are different than with traditional spreads. We can always employ a Debit Spread Hedge if things get a little too uncomfortable. For now, the higher the market goes unabated (for instance a a 2 day straight up rally for no real newsworthy reason with no digestion) the happier we are. The Monthly Trading Service is performing great and has already booked a gain of +5.10% for August alone. Furthermore, the Monthly Trading Service portfolio has gained +24.4% since in the 2.5 months since May expiration! Our existing August spreads are positioned well with 3 weeks left until expiration. We have an IWM Bear Call Spread (to complete an Iron Condor) and a MNX Iron Condor on the radar but are holding off for now....maybe we'll deploy them next week. Thanks to everyone and have a great weekend!!