I have no options contracts expiring today. I didn’t start the month with a bunch on my plate for May. Over the past few weeks, I closed or rolled out the positions I did have for May. Since I don’t have any positions that changed today that I need to cover, I’m taking the opportunity to post what I have in my current portfolio.
| Symbol | Shares/ Contracts | Expiry | Strike | Type |
| TLT | -10 | June | $127.00 | Calls |
| TLT | 10 | June | $129.00 | Calls |
| EEM | -3 | June | $43.50 | Puts |
| QCOM | -2 | June | $65.00 | Calls |
| SSO | -2 | June | $72.00 | Puts |
| UCO | -6 | July | $28.00 | Calls |
| UCO | -6 | July | $33.00 | Calls |
| T | -3 | July | $37.00 | Puts |
| UWM | -2 | July | $52.00 | Puts |
| DIS | -1 | July | $65.00 | Puts |
| IWM | -3 | July | $95.00 | Puts |
| UCO | 1200 | Stock | ||
| QCOM | 200 | Stock |
I have $65,843.12 in cash to cover most of the puts shown above. That leaves me with a little more than $20,000 in margin exposure. It’s not an insane amount, but deserves to be watched and managed. I’ve thought about buying some puts to hedge some, but obviously haven’t. The longer this rally goes on without a decent correction, the more I worry. The technicals haven’t turned yet, so I haven’t panicked early. At a minimum, I might close some more exposure soon to remove the risk of a real sell-off.
I’ve had a limit order in for more than a week to close my TLT call spread. I’m trying to close it for $0.03, which looks like the median price for the spread. I might raise that to $.04 on Monday or Tuesday if it doesn’t hit by then. My hesitation comes from the commissions I’ll have to pay for the 20 contracts and my belief in TLT’s upside limits. I don’t expect TLT to break above $127, but it is a risk I could eliminate while my upside potential is so small from here.
I don’t have an order in for it yet, but might close my SSO June $72 puts. They are down to a $0.32/0.35 bid/ask. That’s not a lot to gain over the next five weeks. On the other hand, the S&P 500 would have to drop 7% in five weeks (quite possible) for these puts to come into play again. That might be the ideal time to actually buy SSO and ride a recovery bounce higher. Another route would be for me to buy June $70 or $71 strike puts as a cheaper hedge. That would protect me from a black swan event and save me a few bucks in the meantime.
Nothing else is as tempting as those two since none of my other options is very cheap yet. I might have to add some more exposure with put spreads again. We all know a correction will happen one day. It’s just hard to spend money on insurance while the bubble is still expanding with no catalyst in sight over the near term. Clearly, the trigger will be something we (or at least I) didn’t know was coming.