The S&P 500 has pushed to new highs and once again brushed off its recent minor slump. After April’s option expiration, I was left under-invested and needed to get some more skin in the game. My account balance has still been growing, thanks to TLT, but I knew I was missing out on more gains…
Tag: SPY
SPY – 1 Year, Daily Chart
The chart below shows the daily prices for the past year on SPY, an S&P 500 Index ETF, after the ETF closed the week at $206.44 on April 2, 2015. A horizontal trend line has emerged close to $204 that has acted as both support and resistance multiple times since mid-November. This horizontal line and the ascending trend line of…
Dropped SPY Hedge & Exchanged AAPL for DIS Puts
I’ve been thinking about closing my SPY October $160/180 vertical put spread for more than a week. SPY recovered nicely from its recent decline and I didn’t feel like it was giving me the protection I wanted. With the long puts being nearly 10% out-of-the-money, I don’t think I was protecting much. I don’t expect to…
Options Expiration – June 2014
I only had one option set to expire today and I decided to buy it back before the shares were assigned. While XLF was trading at $22.83, I bought to close three XLF June $23 naked puts for $0.18 and paid $55.26 including $1.26 in commission. Three months ago I sold these puts in-the-money for $1.00…
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…
Option Trades on SPY & UWM
I wrote recently that I had a limit order in place to close my far out-of-the-money UWM April $72 puts. Well, the order expired before I found a taker on the other side of the trade. By then, I decided UWM wasn’t worth closing for 10 cents and changed my order to close if I…
Options Expiration – February 2014
Once again, I had a thin day for closing positions on option expiration day. The only option I had remaining coming into today was one SPY February $185 naked put. It was in-the-money by $0.90 after yesterday’s close and started today by gaining ground up to $184.89 before rolling over and closing at $183.92. I…
Sold February SPY Naked Put
In my update yesterday, I said I was considering buying shares of SPY and placing a trailing stop limit to exit on a dip. After thinking of that plan a little longer, I decided that didn’t make a lot of sense because I don’t expect any drop in prices to be more than a few…
Options Expiration – October 2013
This month’s options expiration was another easy one for me. I only had one option expire today and it was not even close. UWM is trading at $78.14 while I write this, meaning my two UWM October $52 puts will expire worthless and I’ll make a full profit. I could’ve made a lot more on the trade…