I came into today with only a couple of positions remaining. I closed my other April options over the past few weeks, mostly with poor timing. My AAPL bear put spread was a fantastic trade, except I closed it for a loss before the fantastic part worked itself out. I missed out on a nice…
Sold UCO July Covered Calls
This has not been my month for timing exits from my positions. I’ll go into more detail on this tomorrow about what “could’ve been” with other positions. In reference to UCO, it’s annoying me more than trades usually do. I had a chance to get out of my UCO ratio spread with a realized profit…
Dow Jones Chart – April 12, 2013
I charted the weekly prices for the past three years on the Dow Jones Industrial Average ($DJIA, $INDU, $DJI, the Dow) after the index closed for the week at 14,865.06 on Friday, April 12, 2013. The technicals haven’t changed for the most part, but have a new twist to them now. The daily chart looks similar to…
Finished Closing UCO Vertical Put Spread
I’m very happy I didn’t chase the UCO trade yesterday to close out my vertical spread portion of my UCO position. I didn’t know if I was going to have a chance to get out at the same price after the first two contracts hit in the morning yesterday and then UCO recovered. Luckily for…
UCO Ratio Spread – Partial Fill to Close
Along with my 600 shares of UCO and the covered calls that go with them, I started the day long six UCO April $30 puts, short six April $28 puts and short six more April $27 puts. The six long puts cover six of the short puts, but it’s really semantics for which one until…
Rolled DIS Options Out and Up
The Disney (DIS) trade I made a couple of months ago for April expiration wasn’t quite aggressive enough. I sold those two DIS April $55 puts while the contracts were in-the-money by $0.05 and then saw DIS slide lower some. I didn’t sweat the dip, but didn’t take advantage of it either. Last year, I…
S&P 500 Chart – April 5, 2013
I charted the daily prices for the past six months on the S&P 500 index ($SPX) after the index closed at 1,553.28 on Friday, April 5, 2013. Since November, the S&P 500 has traded in a narrow ascending trading channel with only two prior dips to the trend line of higher lows. This trend line was…
Sold Far OTM SSO Naked Puts
I just got back in town yesterday after taking a few days off for vacation. (I highly recommend a day at LegoLand Florida if you have a 9-year old son, just get there at the open.) I set-up all of my limit orders to expire before I left my office. I didn’t want something big…
End of Month Summary – March 2013
I had a nice recovery in March, mainly due to the turn around in oil and my heavy position in UCO, the leveraged oil ETF. Other positions helped through time value decay on my naked puts, but UCO is what I’m living and dying by lately. I’ll be ready to unload my UCO holdings if…