I had a good options expiration this November as most of my positions went my way. Here’s the breakdown of how everything finished for me.
- SPY – 112 Straddle (sold 1 put and 1 call at 112) – My put finished well out of the money and which means my covered call was deep in the money and my 100 shares of SPY will be called away.
- GLD – 130/140 Bull Put Spread – I had a brief moment where it look like was had played this right, but reality set back in quickly and GLD dropped. This morning while GLD was trading at $131.60 I sold to close one November 130 put for $.08 and received $6.99 after commissions. A few minutes later while GLD was trading at 131.51 I bought to close one November 140 put for $8.50 and paid $851.01 with commissions. That gave me a net loss of $286.05 for the position. I could’ve said more than $80 if I timed the high of the day better, but it could’ve gone the other way just as easily. I still think GLD has more upside left in it, but I’m not sure I’m going to trade on it again for a while until I see the dollar has finished its bounce back higher.
- VXX – I had two VXX November 20 (equivalent of $80 after reverse split) covered calls that finished extremely far out of the money. I’m planning to sell a new covered call, very close to the money, but I keep missing the mark on my limit orders.
- MS – 23/27 Strangle (sold 1 put at 23 and 1 call at 27) – My MS strangle finished out of the money on both legs and I took a full profit on each. Since I expect the pretty much the same trading channel to hold true for the next couple of months I sold another strangle. While MS was trading at $25.50 I sold one January 24 naked put at $0.80 and one January 27.50 at $0.60 and received $137.97 after commissions.
- MSFT – My 2 MSFT November 23 puts finished well out of the money and the other leg of my strangle caused my 200 shares to get called away last week when I wrote about it. I might come back to MSFT in 2011.
- CVS – I thought my 3 November 31 covered calls were going to finish well out of the money, but the past couple of days have been huge for CVS. I planned to wait for the final few minutes of the day to sell new covered calls, but CVS kept bouncing back close to $31.00 and I didn’t want to risk selling calls and having no shares to cover, so with just over 10 minutes to go in the day I rolled my calls. While CVS was trading at $31.00 I bought to close three CVS November 31 calls for $0.06 and sold three January 31 calls for $1.18 and received $332.32 net after commissions. This brings my cost per share down to $29.63 after I originally purchased the shares for $33.00. CVS finished the day at $31.03, so I think I made the right move, at least for now. I could not have placed my November strike any better and that’s always nice to get extra cash and not lose the shares yet.
- JPM – 39 Straddle – I worked this position about as well as I could have. Since JPM finished so close to my strike I was able to make a profit on both legs of the straddle. The naked put finished with a full profit and once I felt comfortable on which side of $39 JPM was going to close I rolled the covered call to January. While JPM was trading at $39.32 I bought to close one JPM November 39 call for $$0.36 and sold one JPM January 39 covered call for $2.03 and received $167.97 net after commissions. Immediately I went back in and sold one JPM January 39 naked put for $1.77 and received $175.74 after commissions. That gave me $343.71 total for the straddle and now I’m set to make a profit if JPM finishes between $35.56 and $42.43. I expect it to stay between $37.50 and $41.25 so I have some room for error.
- DVY – My 2 November 46 naked puts finished out of the money and I took a full profit. I could’ve used a higher strike, but didn’t want the extra risk associated with aiming for too much. I’ll probably write new puts on DVY once the January contracts are posted.
- IWN – My 2 November 58 naked puts finished out of the money and I took a full profit. I have another naked put for January already using another small cap ETF (IWM) and it’s not too far out of the money right now. That’s going to make me wait another week probably to see how everything starts to shake out and even then if I add IWN back to my list again it’ll have to be with naked puts that are a little further out of the money to give me a bigger cushion again.
- UCO – I only had 10 November 8 naked puts left from my original strangle. They finished out of the money by a long shot. I rolled my November calls yesterday and wrote about it then. I don’t know how soon I’ll add another set of naked puts to this position. Since I already have 1,000 shares I’m not sure I’m willing to add another 1,000 at $9.00 just yet and don’t think I could get much for the $8 strike. (I don’t even see a bid posted right now.) I might consider selling five more at the $9.00 strike on a dip, but I’m not in a rush to do so.