Category: Finance

On Friday I bought some coverage for my USO position.  I’m long 100 shares of USO and bought two puts to give myself some downside protection.  While USO was trading at $61.22, my limit order hit to sell the puts.  I sold to close both October 66 puts (UNAVN) for $5.20 each and received $1028.50 after commissions.  Originally I bought these puts for $871.49 a few days ago, giving me a realized profit of $157.01. 

My trade …

I bought insurance puts on XLB (Materials Select Sector SPDR Fund) at the beginning of last week and then sold XLB puts at a lower strike and nearer expiration a couple of days lower to cut my costs.  I ended up profiting on both legs.  The puts I sold expire in three days and the puts I bought have a month to go.  With the markets falling again I took the …

I’m long 200 shares of QCOM that I bought from my last naked puts that were assigned at $52.50.  I sold covered calls at the October 50 strike a while ago only to see QCOM fall further and put me at a paper loss.  With almost all stocks up the past two days, QCOM has been struggling.  I decided to cut my losses on it and move on.  Barron’s also had some negative comments on QCOM’s outlook this week.  They’ve been …

I’m posting multiple Dow Jones charts (aka $DJI, DJIA, the Dow) today.  I’m starting with the one day chart, then the one week, followed by the one month and then I jump out to the 10 year chart.  I chose these because each chart’s story is interesting to me.  I worked from home on Friday and although I was loosing my shirt on the market, I couldn’t help be realize that the history of this past week and month are fascinating.  …

I covered my USO (oil ETF) long shares with two USO puts this afternoon.  Oil was a bad trade to get in for me and I’m stopping the bleading for the next few days.  While US was trading at $64.00 I bought to open two USO October 66 puts for $4.30 each and paid $871.49 after commissions.  $400 of that purchase cost is intrinsic value.

I’m long 100 shares, so on any fall deeper I actually profit with two puts in …

The DIAMONDS Trust Series 1 (DIA) is an ETF that seeks to match the results of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA).  After exiting my SPY (S&P 500 ETF) options this moring for an overall profit, I switched my attention to DIA. 

While DIA was trading at $82.32 I bought to open two DIA December 84 puts (DAVXF) for $9.10 each and paid $1831.49 with commisssions.  I played around with my entry point for the other leg of my trade, selling lower …

I started looking at what naked puts I’d likely be assigned next week and how much cash I still had in my account and decided I should close out my short and long SPY puts to help avoid going on margin during a bear market.  These SPY puts are the ones I got into this week and made the mistake of selling puts to go along with the higher strike puts I bought.  I made money on the trades overall, but …

The market is crazy today and I’m trying to capitalize on the VIX ($VIX.X) being up to the mid-50s, higher than it’s been in more than 20 years (could be ever, but that’s as far back as my chart goes).

While at $27.21, I sold four XLB October 25 covered puts (XLBVY) for $0.75 each and received $287.00 after commissions.  These are covered puts, not naked puts because I already bought November 32 puts.  If I can pull a …

Y’all are going to think I’m crazy now.  Now that I own two SPY December 110 puts and their value is made up of more than half intrinsic value, I decided to try to make a trade on SPY October puts out of the money in an attempt at a trade on SPY not falling much more before getting a day or two rally in between.  I’m expecting a short rally within the next two weeks and will buy these …