You just don't see more action that we've seen in the past couple of weeks. What a ride! Let's talk about what we did with the position as the markets fell out of bed.
Figure 1 below shows that we purchased a Feb 130 SPY call. Why? Because the S&P had fallen more than three standard deviations below its 50-week moving average. We could not resist buying. We added the call at a cost of $460.
Figure 1. 
Figure 2: A couple days later, the call was worth $710 and we unloaded it taking a $250 profit. That same day, we rolled out the short Feb 150 call to September. This re-established a calendar spread at the 150 strike. Rolling out to September brought in a $380 credit, reducing the amount at risk in the trade to $180.
Figure 2. 
Now let's walk through what we've accomplished:
1) Last week, we had a calendar spread valued at $822.
2) This week, that spread fell to $540.
3) But we made $250 on a quick call purchase and sale.
$540 + $250 = $790
3) We then rolled the Feb call out to September and reduced our capital at risk to $180.
Recall that we began this position by risking $1,083. We have experienced what amounts to a worst-case scenario with the market plunging - it even touched FOUR standard deviations below the 50-week moving average - and have been able to salvage $790 of the $1,083. We have opted to keep $180 at risk. In other words, we've lost $293 on our options moves and could lose another $180. The max loss potential is therefore the $293 realized plus the $180 at risk, or $473. That's 4.73% of our initial $10,000. Of that $10,000, over $9,000 is happily earning interest. What's more, we are not done yet. The position is still in play and new opportunities will arise.
Principal: $10,000 |---|Position Value: $180 |---|Portfolio Value: $9,741
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Position Building: Week 4 
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