ACondor Update: What the First 122 Trades Taught Us

This ACondor update comes out of a review of every trade the bot has placed since launch: 122 closed trades, 52 on my live account and 70 in the sandbox. I read each one against the rule that opened it and the rule that closed it, then sorted the losses into two piles: rules that were wrong, and rules that were right but read a bad number. Five things changed between August 27 and September 13. Each one is below, in the order it shipped, with the losses that drove it. Where a change cost real money, the figure is here. The short version of every entry is on the full changelog.

Earnings Trades Rebuilt From the Strike Out (August 27)

Seven live earnings condors lost $850. Every loss had the same shape. The stock’s post-report move blew through the implied move, and one of our short strikes was sitting inside it. We were selling a move the market had already priced and then getting run over when the stock delivered it.

The rebuilt engine places short strikes at the further of two points: the 16-delta strike, or 1.3 times the implied move. Wings are twice as wide as before. The credit has to be at least a third of the wing width or the trade is skipped. Names with a beta above 1.3 or an implied move over 8% are skipped outright. The trade now uses an expiration a week past the report instead of the nearest one, which leaves time to defend the position if the print goes against us.

Two names drove the design as much as our own seven trades did. CRWD and META beat their implied move more often than not in the history we looked at. When the market’s own estimate of the move is wrong that often on a name, the fix is to stop selling that name’s print. Skipping expensive prints is the edge.

The rebuilt engine went into the sandbox first and stayed off on the live account until the sandbox could prove it. It came back on for the live account September 9, and I cover that under the last change below. The full mechanics of the engine are in how ACondor trades earnings with iron condors.

Defense On, Book Sized Down, Long Options Off (September 9)

Three problems surfaced in the same pass through the ledger.

Tested condors had been sitting unmanaged for a week with time still on the clock. A condor got tested, the bot noted it, and nothing happened. The defense for that situation existed and was not running on the live account.

The buying-power ceiling had been lifted to 95%. At that level the account has almost no room left, and one bad week tests everything at once.

Outright long calls and puts had never once closed a winner under the 50% stop. The structure had a perfect record, in the wrong direction.

The bot now rolls the untested side of a tested condor for credit. This is tastylive’s primary defense, and their data says it wins 78% of the time against 36% for exiting at the breach. The buying-power ceiling is back to 50%, inside tastylive’s allocation guidance of 25 to 50% of buying power. Outright long options are off on the live account. Debit spreads stay.

Three Entry Checks, and the Put Spread Can Compete (September 9)

The condor ledger split cleanly along one line. Live single-stock condors entered at moderate volatility lost every time. The same condors on ETFs made money. Two things explained the gap. The wings were too narrow for expensive stocks. And the volatility check we were running was the weakest version of the test.

Three checks now sit in front of every premium entry. Individual stocks need a higher volatility rank than ETFs before they qualify. A condor on a single stock is skipped when the wing is too narrow relative to the stock’s price. Implied volatility has to sit at least three points above realized volatility, so the bot only sells premium when there is premium to sell.

The bull put spread can now compete with the condor for an entry without waiting for a directional signal, capped at two open per account. All of these checks are visible on the dashboard as active gates, so you can see which one blocked a trade.

The basis is tastylive’s wing-width study, their expected-move study, and their own guidance that the volatility risk premium is the edge, plus 48 live trades of our own data. More on that premium as the edge is in how ACondor keeps its edge honest. The rules are the same; the list of names they apply to got shorter.

Exits That Wait for a Fair Quote, and a Disaster Wing for Put Spreads (September 10)

A long MDT call was sold seven minutes after the open, at the bid, on a quote 70 cents wide. At the true midpoint the position was down 37%. That is under the 50% exit rule and should not have triggered anything. The bot had taken the broker’s mark, which had collapsed to the bid on a lopsided early book, and fired the rule on that number. Three earlier exits had the same shape.

The 50% premium stop now waits out the first 15 minutes after the open and skips any quote that is more than 30% wide, the same treatment every other profit-and-loss exit already got. The bot prices off the live bid and ask midpoint when it has both sides, and falls back to the broker’s mark only when it does not. Every exit now records the bid, the ask, and both marks it saw, so a bad exit can be traced to the exact quote that caused it.

A profit-and-loss rule is not an emergency. The emergency list is assignments and expiration day, and those still fire whenever they need to. The widest quotes of the day are the first minutes after the open. Reading a loss off them sells at the worst price of the day for no reason. Every rule fires on a number, so the number has to be a fair one before the rule is allowed to see it.

The same day, put spreads got a new way to be built. The tastytrade short put is one of the highest-probability trades there is, and a naked put on a $15,000 account cannot keep a fixed loss cap. The new build sells the one standard deviation put, buys a far-out 5-delta put as a disaster wing, then pulls the wing in until the max loss fits the per-trade cap.

tastylive’s 14-year study is the reason for the 5-delta wing. It keeps 83 to 85% of the naked put’s profit, cuts the worst loss by 31%, cuts buying power by about 90%, and leaves the win rate unchanged. That is the behavior of the naked put with the loss cap of a spread. It is running in the sandbox next to the condors before any live account sees it.

The Early Win, and Bearish Bets Paused (September 13)

The directional lane had a pattern I did not like once I saw it laid out. Winners peaked within one to three days and then faded. Four trades that were up 34 to 78% of the premium paid rode all the way back to the 50% stop. The bot had the win in hand and gave it back because no rule told it to take the money.

Bearish directional bets lost nine of 11 on the live account. Single-stock condors at moderate volatility lost every time while ETF condors made money, the same finding as September 9. The broader ledger read: 25 stop-outs with zero winners among them, most never profitable at any point, the rest profitable early and given back.

A directional trade now closes when it is up 30% of the premium paid, the mirror of the 50% stop. Bearish directional structures are off on the live account. They keep running in the sandbox so we keep measuring them, and the numbers will decide whether they come back. Single stocks need a volatility rank of 70 or higher to qualify for a condor. ETFs keep the lower bar.

Two housekeeping items shipped with this. A reporting bug that understated fees on the dashboard is fixed, so the net figure you see is the net figure. And the rebuilt earnings engine from August 27 is back on for the live account as of September 9. Its first live trade gets a same-day review.

tastylive’s research supports the index and ETF core of this book and says nothing that supports a bearish single-stock lane in a rising market. So the live account trades the part of the book that has paid, takes the win the market hands it, and lets the sandbox keep testing the rest. If you are newer to the core structure, how iron condors generate income walks through what all of these gates are protecting.

None of this is a forecast. These are corrections to rules that lost money, made from our own ledger and from published research, and the bot can still lose money under the new rules. Every one of these changes gets the same treatment the old rules got: it runs, it gets measured, and it stays only if the ledger says it should.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is the earnings engine back on the live account already?

The rebuilt engine ran in the sandbox from August 27 with the live account switched off, and it came back on for the live account September 9. The first live trade under the new rules gets a same-day review. The seven trades that lost $850 all had a short strike inside the implied move, and the rebuilt engine cannot place one there.

Does the bot still take bearish trades?

Bearish directional structures are off on the live account and still running in the sandbox, where we keep measuring them. Outright long calls and puts are also off on the live account. Debit spreads stay. Condors and put spreads are neutral to bullish premium trades and are unaffected.

Why does the 50% stop wait 15 minutes after the open?

The first minutes after the open have the widest quotes of the day. A long MDT call was sold seven minutes after the open on a quote 70 cents wide, at a mark that read past the 50% stop when the true midpoint was 37% down. The stop now waits 15 minutes, skips any quote more than 30% wide, and prices from the live bid and ask midpoint. Assignment and expiration-day exits are on the emergency list and still fire whenever they need to.

Will the put spread with the disaster wing trade in my account?

Not yet. The disaster-wing build is running in the sandbox next to the condors, and no live account sees it until it proves out there. The standard bull put spread can already compete with the condor for an entry, capped at two open per account.

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