Greater reference has been made in recent times to the association between blog readership and market reversals, not just from Barry's TheBigPicture from this past February and March, but also in the spikes in volume for TraderMike, Traderfeed, and my personal blog. So for this paper napkin research I did some analysis of my personal blog web traffic. I converted my visitors number using the same calculation as used for on-balance-volume; termed on-balance-visits. When the S&P closed higher I added my blog readership to a cumulative total, when it closed lower I subtracted it. Overall, I experienced strong readership growth; moving from around 400 visits a day in October 2007 to the 700 currently:By using an on-balance-visit calculation I can sidestep some of the concerns which may effect other metric calculations ...

As you probably know Iron Condors are short Vega - which represents your positions sensitivity to shifts in implied volatility. In a relatively low volatility environment this can be troublesome when suddenly volatility spikes and your Iron Condors suffer as a result. So lets say you add some Vega to your portfolio by buying some 4 month calendars (ex: June/October) to hedge against an expected volatility pop. You now have a net Vega position of 100, your Delta is flat and you have some good Theta. The next day the VIX spikes up 2 points on some heavy selling. In theory you should get close to 200 bucks from the pop since you have 100 Vega and volatility went up 2 points. To your suprise your portfolio suffers just as if you had never even added the calendars - in fact it seems they made it worse. So what gives? ...