Last month, my margin balance forced me to buy back 600 of my short TLT shares for a loss and then IB wouldn’t let me sell puts to cover my remaining shorts. TLT has fallen more since then, so I decided to test the waters again now that those trades have long since settled. I…
Month: March 2016
Options Expiration – March 2016
The only March option I had remaining coming into today was one TLT March $125 naked call. The other nine, out of my initial 10 March calls, were assigned at the end of February, but I was left with this single contract to deal with. After the nine TLT March $125 calls were assigned at the…
What is PeepTrade?
First the disclaimer: I’m now a PeepTrade Guru. Now what it is – Peeptrade.com is a new site (actually still in beta until next week when they present at the South by Southwest Festival) that allows “Peepers” to view the portfolios and trading activity of the “Gurus” allowed on the site. Each Guru sets their own price…
End of the Month Summary – February 2016
February was nasty for a little while and then patience paid off. I think the lowest intraday balance I saw my account hit in February was around $72,000. I didn’t think bonds would stay high or stocks would stay low, so I waited and watched most of the month. While the indexes were basically flat…
TLT – Early Option Assignment
When I logged into my account yesterday morning, I had an annoying yellow warning highlighting my “Account” button. I was being warned that I had no “Post-Expiry Excess (predicted)”. No excess is equal to a margin call, but this was only predicted, so I was only being annoyed I couldn’t get the color back to…