Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Scaling in to ZB Shorts as planned

This morning I awoke to find my standing order to short ZB at 121'00 was triggered in the early hours. Unfortunately as the picture shows, my order to cover at 120'00 missed by two ticks. We then rallied almost two straight points in a few hours. That is a huge intra-day move for bonds. I am glad to see intra-day volatility still alive and I'm scaling in to a max short position of 5 contracts as planned. Beginning this week there are now weekly options available on ZB, so I dabbled in this a bit and sold the FEB1 123 strike call for '330 ($515). I've got a good-til-cancel order in to short another 2 contracts near the top of the trading range at 122'00 and if triggered this would leave me with short exposure to 5 contracts. I'm prepared to add to the short position if we break the range to the upside, but I would wait a while to see how it acts above 122'00, and what has changed in the macro environment to make the long bond yield head towards 4% again.

5-minute chart showing three entry points this week

Hourly chart of last few weeks entry/exit points

 Daily chart of 119-122 trading range

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