As I mentioned last week, I’m underinvested. The first step I took this week to remedy that was to move more funds to the international ETF I’ve been using lately, FEZ. FEZ attempts to track the Euro STOXX 50 Index, which happens to be heavily weighted in the Financial Services sector (26.72%, according to Yahoo!…
Month: January 2014
Options Expiration – January 2014
I closed all of my January options before today. That made today’s option expiration a non-event for me, so I figured I could take the opportunity to post a portfolio update. I’m still underinvested and need/want to add some more exposure, but haven’t decided what else to add after my two well-timed trades this week….
Sold New DIS Naked Puts
After writing my earlier post for my Ford naked puts, I left my desk for an appointment. By the time I got home to check how the day ended, I saw that the markets’ slide picked up some pace and along with it, Disney (DIS) fell deeper. As I’ve mentioned in a couple of earlier…
Sold Ford (F) Naked Puts
Sometimes patience pays off and sometimes it causes you to miss a trade. I was looking at Ford ($F) last week when I saw it come off its lows and move above its 10 and 20-day moving averages. I thought it might see resistance at its 200-day moving average, but it didn’t and I realized…
S&P 500 Chart – January 10, 2014
The chart below shows the daily prices for the past six months on the S&P 500 index ($SPX) after the index closed at 1,842.37 on Friday, January 10, 2014. The sideways movement over the first seven days of the year has given the 20-sma time to draw in closer to the 10-sma. If the index moves…
A Nibble on UCO
I’m so far underinvested right now that I caught myself looking for anything that I could reason to be a good trade. The risk seems greater in the near-term to me than the option premiums are offering on most index ETFs. That’s keeping me away from selling new puts on my recent standard ETFs. DIS…
DJIA Chart – 2013 Review and 2014 Prediction
I charted the daily prices for the past year on the Dow Jones Industrial Average ($DJIA, $INDU, $DJI, the Dow) after the index closed for the month at 16,469.99 on Friday, January 3, 2014. The index fell as low as its 10-day simple moving average (sma), but hasn’t fallen below it yet. When it does, which…
Closed Low-Premium Naked Puts
Today gave us another boring day for stocks. At the open, it looked like we might see a bounce off of yesterday’s drop, but it didn’t take the bears long to overtake the bulls again (or at least bring get them in check). Most of the day traded around breakeven for the S&P 500 and…
End of the Year Summary – 2013
2013 was a great year to be an investor. Stocks barely made a move off of their recurring new highs throughout the year, which made it hard not to make money, even for those who sold on dips instead of bought on dips. Every year I question whether or not it’s wise for me to…