Natural Gas and Oil Are Up on Gustav

It took a month since I first said it, but natural gas and oil are up nicely recently on hurricanes Fay and Gustav.  I can’t remember a summer/fall season where there wasn’t a scare that pushed prices up, at least temporarily.  The big question will be how long this spike in prices last.  I’m sitting on CHK and USO options that expire in two and half weeks with September expiry.

I’m still slightly bullish on the sector and will likely play it again after expiration.  Since I’ll be taking a loss on my CHK shares after selling multiple naked puts and then covered calls, I won’t be buying back in for 30 days to avoid the wash rule.  I could pick a nat gas ETF, but I’m getting ahead of myself.  11 trading days is a long time away in energy prices.  I could end up having the opportunity to hold my shares and write new covered calls.  Until then, I’m happy to see both my hedges and my regular positions were both up today overall.  Without trying to jinx myself again, I’m back to within $1500 of $100,000 again.  Hopefully I’ll make up that last $1500 through growth over the next couple of weeks.  I’m still expecting some more bad days to hit this market hard again and will try to be ready to trade on it when it comes.