The Easy Way To Place An Iron Condor For A News Trade

Statistics Canada releases the Building Permits news, which details the change in the total value of new building permits issued. Along with that news coming out Wednesday, June 8, at 8:30 AM ET is the Housing Starts numbers being released just before at 8:15 AM ET.

Traders watch these news events, as they are an indicator for future construction activity, which creates jobs and purchases by builders and eventually homeowners. The USD/CAD has had an average move of around 30 pips in response to this monthly news.

Trading Nadex spreads and using an Iron Condor strategy, a trader will be prepared whichever direction the market moves. This strategy buys below the market and sells above the market for anticipation of the market settling close to or at where it started from entry. The profit potential should be $30 or more combined between the spreads. Entry would be 8:00 AM ET for 10:00 AM ET expirations.

For this Iron Condor, two Nadex USD/CAD spreads are needed. To set up, one could buy a spread with $15 or more profit potential with the ceiling where the market is trading at the time and sell a spread with $15 or more profit potential with the floor being where the market is trading at the time. This is very easy to do for traders who use the spread scanner designed for Nadex spread trading. All the information for spreads available in chosen markets is in one window. Below is a layout of the spread scanner.

If the market makes its average move and then pulls back to settle within the two breakeven points, the trade will profit. The easy way to figure the breakeven points is to know the total combined profit potential of the strategy. If upon entry, the bought spread has a reward potential of $16 and the sold spread ends up with a reward potential of $15, then the combined potential is $31. The market can move that amount, or 31 pips up or down, as those are the breakeven points, and settling between those points will mean profiting to some amount.

The market can move beyond the breakeven points but stops should be placed to keep the ratio 1:1 risk to reward. To find these two points, simply double the total combined profit potential, and if that were $31, then double would be 62. Stops should be placed 62 pips above and below from where the market started.