I’m charting the Russell 2000 for the first time on My Trader’s Journal to add some more variety to my charts. I haven’t traded much the past 1-2 weeks for precisely the reason that shows in this chart. I saw us coming to another turning point and didn’t want to leg in too deep before…
Sold DuPont (DD) Naked Puts
Possibly just out of boredom, I pulled the trigger too early on DuPont this morning. The chart said it could fall to 48 and maybe even as low as 46 before regaining support, but I admittedly got anxious and put my limit in too low, in between the bid/ask. While DD was trading at 49.64,…
My Trader’s Journal is One Year Old Today
One year ago today I wrote my first blog post. I started off with $43k and now have $83k. All of that, minus the 4.21% loss I’ve had over the past 366 (leap year) days, has been from contributions we’ve made to our investing account. According to Morningstar, here’s how I compare to the major…
SPY Chart – April 4, 2008
I’m charting the S&P 500 SPDR (SPY) this weekend. Like the rest of the large “spiders” it’s still in a trading range that started in January. For the past four days it touched top side of the relatively short upward trend line that started at the beginning of March a month ago, but couldn’t break through. …
Sold 8 NVDA Covered Calls
NVDA broke support yesterday. The 10 day moving average had been shaping up as a key line of support, but NVDA fell below that line intraday yesterday and then rallied to close above it. Today it didn’t even make a worthwhile attempt to cross above that 10 day line and even fell below the lower 20…
Sold AMAT Naked Puts
I sold four AMAT May 20 naked puts (ANQQD) today while AMAT was trading at 21.00. I received $307.00 after commissions. AMAT found support earlier this week at the 50 day moving average and has since moved back above its 10 and 20 day moving averages. Implied volatility at this strike was over 40 when…
Sold QCOM Naked Puts
Qualcomm, Inc (QCOM) is one of those stocks I always follow, some months closer than others. They’ve been bogged down for years in legal struggles over patents making their stock’s price not reflect their true value. That’s the true value if the patent issues work in their favor which likely will not be resolved any…
VIP Gaps up Past Resistance
I made no trades today, but loved the move up. On paper, I made over $2400 which pushed me back above $80,000 again for the first time in a while. Along with everything else I own that went up, my favorites were NVDA and VIP. These are the ones I highlighted last week with charts…
Monthly Summary – March 2008
I had another down month in March to round out a very poor quarter. This was my worst quarter for returns since both Q2 and Q3 of 2002 when my returns in each quarter were nearly twice as bad as this Q1 2008. I learned a lot six years ago and think I’ve learned a good…