A friend of mine educated me on the basics of options at a very small New Year’s eve party at the end of 1998. I’ve been hooked since then. He was a certified financial planner and was able to explain how options worked with little pain. Maybe it was the single malt scotch he was…
General Motors (GM) Naked Puts
These are the opportunities I’ll miss when I’m in a job that actually keeps me busy. When GM was off its early morning highs and trading at 35.80, I sold three November 32.50 naked puts (GMWZ) and received $317.75 after commissions. GM finished the negotiations with their UAW union and seem to have found a win-win situation for both…
Adobe (ADBE) Covered Calls
Adobe (ADBE) bounced off its rising trend line of higher lows yesterday and had a great finish to the day. I have 200 shares in my IRA and had a limit in to sell two new covered calls on it for November 42.50 (AEQKV) that hit and I received $388.50 after commissions. I made the mistake of buying back…
Sold AXE Naked Puts
I wrote about Anixter International (AXE) a few weeks ago and exchanged some comments about AXE after it broke the 78 level I was asking for. Yesterday morning while entering the pile of orders that have mostly hit now, I entered one on AXE. I waited longer than I could have because I wanted the…
Sold DOX Naked Puts
I certainly didn’t mean to make five trades today, but that’s how it worked out. The first three were planned as I originally wrote, BNI was supposed to hit in a few days and the fifth, AMDOCS (DOX) was just a big surprise. Not a total surprise since I knowingly entered the order, but my limit…
Sold BNI Naked Put
After writing about Burlington Northern Sante Fe (BNI) a few weeks ago I might have misjudged this one today. I put a limit in for BNI this morning based on the idea that the chart looked like it would pull back a little bit sometime in the next few days. The premiums were nothing special this morning,…
Option Trades, Naked Puts & Covered Calls
I started off the week with a few trades this morning. I went right back to the stocks I just had options expire on to start with before moving to the other list I wrote up this morning. While AA was trading at 37.47, I sold three out-of-the-money (OTM) November 35 naked puts (AAWG) and received…
Stock Picks – September 24, 2007
I spent a lot of time reading this weekend and in a rare moment of focused attention, I finished reading all of Barron’s before the weekend was over. I also read an aging Smart Money magazine I hadn’t finished yet. The whole time I read I kept a pen and piece of paper next to me and wrote down…
S&P 500 Chart 9-21-07
To mix it up a little this week I took a look at the monthly S&P 500 ($INX) chart for the past five years. I went back this far to try to get a better idea of where we stand in reference of this long bull market. I used the monthly chart to take out some of…