May surprised me and I ended up with a better gain by month’s end than I expected. At mid-month, I thought we were on pace to see a good correction finally. Luckily, I didn’t panic and instead of dumping options while some of my positions moved in-the-money, I bought hedges on SPY and UWM and…
Updated DIS Naked Puts
More than a week ago, I entered a limit order to close my Disney (DIS) naked put for June. It was more than $5 out-0f-the-money (OTM) and was getting pretty cheap for as long as it had remaining before expiration. Finally, my order hit this morning. While DIS was trading at $84.01, I bought to…
Book Review: The Joy of Financial Security
A few months ago, I received a free copy of Donna Skeels Cygan’s book, The Joy of Financial Security. I don’t review many books and when I do, I make it a point not to let the fact that I received it at no cost influence my opinion. I don’t make it through more than…
Added a Hedge on UWM
I talked about my UWM option positions in my last post. It looked like small-cap stocks were turning around and I figured I should wait before exiting my four naked puts since I had so much time value left to erode still. Over the weekend, I came up with another plan that seemed like it could…
Options Expiration – May 2014
Options expiration days have grown into a non-event for me lately. Once again, I have no options remaining on the last day to trade them. This tendency to close my positions early evolved over the past few months. Part of it has come from having options that are either close to or out-of-the-money. Before long,…
Closed and Rolled Out of May
I mentioned yesterday that I had a couple of options I still needed to deal with for May expiration. I decided to move on both of them today instead of waiting for the end of the week and expiration, just in case something happened over the next few days that took away from the profits…
Starting to Hedge
This past weekend I spent some time working on formulas in a new spreadsheet for comparing different ways to hedge my account using the S&P 500 ETF, SPY. I came up with a plan and was excited about implementing it as soon as the market opened. However, by the time the market opened, I started…
End of the Month Summary – April 2014
April didn’t offer much to write home about, but I pulled out a tiny gain on paper and locked in more realized gains before the month ended. I’m still not being too aggressive in my trading. While I was more active than my March count, I only made five trades in April. I’m torn about…
Closed UCO July Naked Puts
Oil prices have been rising for the past month, but started to look shaky this week with as UCO fell below its 10-day moving average. Actually, oil is still in its upward trend that started in three months ago, but I’ve already made the easy money on my UCO option trade. While UCO was trading…