UPDATE: IWM 11/17 135 LONG PUT-10/27 138 SHORT PUT DIAGONAL

This trade started out as a same strike calendar with the back month at the 40 delta strike and the front month at the same strike (see Post Below). As price has moved and I've rolled aspects of the setup, it has now morphed into a diagonal, with a roll today from the October 13th 138 short put to the October 27th 138 short put for a realized gain and a .26 ($26)/contract credit to delta balance the setup and to further reduce cost basis since the short put was approaching 50% max.

The previous scratch point was .72; it's now .46.

Unfortunately, I don't have that many roll opportunities left to further reduce cost basis, so I'll need some fairly significant movement toward the put side to bail on this prior to back month expiry ... .

Trade active:

Decided to burn up a roll to improve the whole diagonalized spread: rolling the Oct 27th 138/Nov 17th 135 to the Nov 3rd 143/Nov 17th 145 for a .04/contract credit. The 138 short put was getting too small in value (it finished the day at .15) to be able to roll it for something worthwhile. The scratch point is at .42.

Trade active:

Although the Nov 3rd (24 DTE) short put aspect has lost a significant portion of its value (it's at >30% max), decided to leave it alone to see how the market deals with the opening salvo of earnings reports in the next several days, largely in the finance sector (JPM, GS, BAC, WFC, etc.).

Trade active:

Rolling the Nov 3rd 145 to the Nov 10th 145 for an .18 credit. Scratch at .24.

Trade closed manually:

Late post: exited last week for a .13 db, a .37/contract loser. Although the short aspect was going to decay to zero, so was the long, so unlikely to be a winner, significant or otherwise ... . The basic bet was on tax reform failure.