I charted the weekly prices for the year-to-date on the Dow Jones Industrial Average ($DJIA, $INDU, $DJI, the Dow) after the index closed for the week at 14,712.55 on Friday, April 26, 2013. Chart technicians have to be careful not to draw trend lines that fit the story they want. Being objective isn’t always as easy as…
Month: April 2013
Sold TLT June Call Spread
Selling vertical call spreads on TLT is one of my favorite trades. I did it three times last year and only had one assignment. That one assignment ended up turning into a $2,400+ profit. The spreads that expired worthless were just good profits on their own that required no adjustments. I didn’t jump back into…
Sold T July Naked Puts
AT&T (T) got hammered yesterday after their disappointing earnings call. I thought the beating was a little bit of overkill and looked to the puts column for a path to profit. I expect the downside from the new lower levels to be somewhat limited based on the dividend yield. The forward dividend yield is 4.6%….
S&P 500 Chart – Bears’ Turn?
I charted the daily prices for the past six months on the S&P 500 index ($SPX) after the index closed at 1,555.25 on Friday, April 5, 2013, almost exactly where it was when I charted it two weeks ago. The charts are easy to read sometimes and leave little doubt as to what is to come…
Options Expiration – April 2013
I came into today with only a couple of positions remaining. I closed my other April options over the past few weeks, mostly with poor timing. My AAPL bear put spread was a fantastic trade, except I closed it for a loss before the fantastic part worked itself out. I missed out on a nice…
Sold UCO July Covered Calls
This has not been my month for timing exits from my positions. I’ll go into more detail on this tomorrow about what “could’ve been” with other positions. In reference to UCO, it’s annoying me more than trades usually do. I had a chance to get out of my UCO ratio spread with a realized profit…
Dow Jones Chart – April 12, 2013
I charted the weekly prices for the past three years on the Dow Jones Industrial Average ($DJIA, $INDU, $DJI, the Dow) after the index closed for the week at 14,865.06 on Friday, April 12, 2013. The technicals haven’t changed for the most part, but have a new twist to them now. The daily chart looks similar to…
Finished Closing UCO Vertical Put Spread
I’m very happy I didn’t chase the UCO trade yesterday to close out my vertical spread portion of my UCO position. I didn’t know if I was going to have a chance to get out at the same price after the first two contracts hit in the morning yesterday and then UCO recovered. Luckily for…
UCO Ratio Spread – Partial Fill to Close
Along with my 600 shares of UCO and the covered calls that go with them, I started the day long six UCO April $30 puts, short six April $28 puts and short six more April $27 puts. The six long puts cover six of the short puts, but it’s really semantics for which one until…