The chart below shows the daily prices for the past three months on SPY, an S&P 500 Index ETF, after closing the week at $195.00 on October 2, 2015. For some traders, the tantrum seemed over. SPY had finally had its long-overdue correction with a 14.7% drop from an intraday high of $213.78 in May. To technical traders, the recovery seemed false…
End of the Month Summary – September 2015
September pushed my account value lower, but I’m still leading the indexes for the year-to-date by a wide margin. I took profits on my hedges in September and left money on the table since I didn’t sell my puts at the bottom. I could’ve made a few hundred dollars more on both my IWM and SPY…
Sold Calls on TLT, DIS and IWM
I was able to bring in $2,069.17 in premiums today by selling calls on TLT, DIS and IWM and rolling my DIS naked put higher. The TLT calls are naked, meaning I don’t have any shares I’m covering. The DIS and IWM calls are covering shares I already own. I was planning to make these…
Options Expiration – September 2015
I had three options expire today. Two of the three options will be assigned and one finished with a full profit. My one SPY September $215 put finished deep in the money, as did my one MDY September $280 put. My paper loss on these two puts was reduced more than a third by my 10…
Sold TLT October Naked Calls
Today looked like it was going to continue how it ended yesterday – with the bull market regaining its footing. That’s not how it played out and it didn’t take long to see the tide was turning. I did nothing in my account for a while, waiting to see how the day would settle in. By…
Sold IWM January Hedge
When I saw the market sell-off again this morning, I saw it as an opportunity. I was already planning to sell my IWM hedge, but realized I could raise my limit order and make a better profit than originally planned. I raised my limit order again pre-market, just to be safe that I didn’t get a…
Closed SPY Hedge for March 2016
I entered a limit order this morning to sell my hedges on SPY and IWM if we saw another price drop over the next two weeks. The S&P 500 was up by more than 20 points at the time and I thought we would have a solid finish to the day. I didn’t intend for…
Sold OTM DIS Naked Puts
Yesterday, I mentioned that I was planning to sell a new naked put on Disney (DIS) if the share price came down some more. When I saw the futures were down so much this morning, I raised my asking price from $1.90 to $3.50, just in case there was another stupid open that sent the shares…
End of the Month Summary – August 2015
As crazy as August was, I came out relatively OK. I lost money on paper, but not much compared to what it looked like it would be two Monday’s ago. I’m crushing the major indexes for the year-to-date and for the past 12 months too. My hedges have a good profit, but most of my…