Category: Stock Picks

I only have two options set to expire today, one covered call and one naked put.  Both of them are for small cap ETFs and both are finishing in the money.

One UWM April $35 covered call - I sold this covered call back in December while UWM was trading just a little under the strike and I’m letting it call away my 100 shares of UWM rather than buying rolling out the calls to a higher, …

Last year I had a plan to use LEAPS and other not-quite-so-long dated options to build the foundation of my investing year.  It was great in theory, but I got anxious when I started lagging returns in the first few months of the year.  That made me raise my strikes and increase my risk.  I did so not long before the big 20% correction hit.  The fast and steep correction led to a different anxiety.  I panicked near the bottom …

Close to the end of yesterday’s trading session I started to think it was time for me to leg back in on a few trades.  After all, I was only looking for a 5% dip and the SPX made it 4.6% lower.  That should’ve been close enough for me to act at the time, but I was too patient and missed the big open today.  That didn’t deter me much.  I just ended up selling higher strikes that I would …

I charted the past three months of daily prices for the Dow Jones Industrial Average ($DJIA, $INDU, $DJI) after the index closed at 12,849.59 on Friday, April 13, 2012.

The moving averages have been the story lately for the large cap index.  Last week I pointed out the S&P 500 was headed for the 10/20 day …

This S&P 500 ($SPX) chart shows the past six months of daily prices after the index finished the week at 1,398.08 on Thursday April 5, 2012.

Thursday’s close left the SPX in a precarious position.  It remained above its four month trend line of higher lows, but closed below its 10 and 20 day moving averages …

I charted the past six months of daily prices for the Dow Jones Industrial Average ($DJIA, $INDU, $DJI) after the index closed at 13,212.04 on Friday, March 30, 2012.

The trend lines of support and resistance that have been in place for the past six months are still holding true, but are inching their way towards …

This S&P 500 ($SPX) chart shows the past four months of daily prices after the index finished the week at 1,397.11 on Friday, March 23, 2012.

The S&P 500 made yet another trip to the top of its trading range, but found resistance at the trend line of higher highs.  As has been the case since …

Those of you who have been reading My Trader’s Journal for a while know that I have a hard time staying out of Qualcomm (QCOM) for very long.  As many times as I’ve been in and out of it, I think I might have even done better if I had just bought and held it from when I listed it as one of my positions in my first blog post in April 2007.  Back …

We haven’t really had much a dip to talk about in months, so I’m pretending that when the market was down more than a half percent today that it qualifies as a buying opportunity.  Once I saw that it wasn’t going to turn into a free fall, I sold a couple of naked puts to add some more exposure.  I really wanted to see a better sell-off before I sold these puts, but I didn’t feel like I could be …