Comcast Corp (CMCSA) is up nearly $1.50 in the past six trading days. Today ends the third options contract I’ve sold on CMCSA and it finished $.03 ITM, only crossing the $27.50 mark again in the final minute of the day after making a run as high as $27.64 mid-day. This was fun to watch today as it bounced around. I’m sitting almost dead on break even now so if it gets called or not is not a huge impact to me. I’d like to see it rise on Monday and allow me to sell more puts on it while I avoid more commission charges for having the options excercised.
Ameritrade’s rule is “Any equity option that is in-the-money by $0.05 or more at expiration will be automatically exercised.” CMCSA being $0.03 ITM should keep the shares with me, but that’s not always the case as someone else has the right to make that call not me. With CMCSA sitting just below its falling upper trend line I might sell new covered calls immediately in the morning if it doesn’t start off the day up. Right after close the bid/ask went up a few cents, but that doesn’t really mean much for Monday, but its better than being down.
I think Comcast will turn out fine. Watch Applied Materials. I did July calls at $17, trying to make easy money if the stock flounders or goes down. Expect to have to buy to close the calls and then do new calls as the stock comes back up. Don’t normally trade this way, so hope I called it right. I want a turn at Comcast when i can.
As it ends up, CMCSA was “called away” from me this weekend. Of course I want it to drop now so I can consider getting back in later, but I’ll have to wait for the wash rule to pass in 30 days since I’m taking a loss on the stock itself.
You might be on to something with AMAT. If I do anything on AMAT it will be to sell puts at 14 or 15. It appears to have just broken its downward trend, so you might find some profit on it again soon. I’ll keep watching it and might write a post on it this week if it moves how I like, but I’m not to bullish on the NASDAQ right now in general.