Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while know that I’m a fan of selling calls on TLT. The basis for my attraction to the bond ETF is that it’s volatile and tends to follow patterns. Most importantly, when it does reach new highs, it reverses away from these price spikes…
Options Expiration – January 2020
I came into 2020 with a light load of equity exposure and that low percentage of my invested cash is only going lower today. I had three option contracts expire today and sold one new one. Two of my option contracts were on IWM where I had a strangle using an IWM January $160 naked…
SPY Chart
The chart below shows the daily prices for SPY, an S&P 500 ETF, after closing the week at $325.71 on January 10, 2020. Last quarter, I pointed out the longstanding trading channel that was likely to offer support from the downside and suggested SPY would probably move back towards the upper trend line within this…
Year End Summary – 2019
After such a rough ending to 2018, 2019 was an amazing year to be an investor. I can imagine that most of you would agree with me that it was a relatively easy year to be a bull. We had some nice dips in stock prices that were buying opportunities and never faced anything that…
Options Expiration – December 2019
The final monthly options expiration of the year was an easy one for me. I only had two options scheduled for today’s expiration, a covered call on FEZ and a naked put on MDY. Since today is the ex-dividend date for FEZ, my in the money FEZ December $38 covered call was assigned overnight. I…
Month End Summary – November 2019
November helped bring my account balance close to my year end goal of $100,000, but I was more conservative than I could’ve been and trailed the major indexes for the month. The good news about my conservative stance that I haven’t adjusted yet is that today, the first trading day of December, is lower and…
Sold IWM Naked Put for January
I’ve been sitting on too much cash since the last monthly options expiration and finally decided to put some of that cash to work today. I didn’t like much of what I could see available in the options world while volatility is so low. Eventually, I opted for a naked put on the small-cap ETF,…
Closed FEZ Naked Call
In the first second of trading on Monday, while FEZ was trading at $39.75, I bought to close my FEZ January $40 naked call for $0.65 and paid $65.72 including $0.72 in commission. This option was my mistake trade from Friday when I sold this call before I realized I already had a covered call…
Options Expiration – November 2019
I had three different options expire today. I could’ve rolled all three earlier, but opted to wait until today to see if anything new would change on the trend lines after stocks plateaued beginning late last week. The picture hasn’t gotten much clearer, but I opted to make my adjustments today anyway because I’d rather…