Current Positions – January 28, 2009

I’ve been itching to make a new trade today, but held back since it seemed I didn’t have any good ideas other than it’d be cool to make more money.  I tend to make mistakes when that’s my starting point.  Instead of posting trade details today I’m just showing what my current portfolio looks like.  I own one call, I’m short a handful of calls and puts and I’m long a smaller handful of stocks.

While I write this at 1:05 pm my account balance is $56,493.54, still ahead of my goal for January (but the month isn’t over yet).  I mistyped before January options’ expiration when I said I wouldn’t be on margin since I freed up some cash to cover my AAPL naked put assignment.  The slip was due to the fact that I had two AAPL naked puts and that option assignment put me on margin.  With the options I’ve sold over the past week and a half I’ve brought my margin balance down to $7,690.46.  I’m comfortable letting that sit there since I think I’ll make more using that money in play than the margin interest will cost me.