Options Expiration – April 2011

I had short options on four different stocks/ETFs that expired today.  All were profitable and I plan to work with all of them again for either May or June expiration options.  My only April option that wasn’t profitable was QCOM and it was assigned a couple of days ago and has gained some ground since then.

• UCO – eight April 11 (pre-reverse split) naked puts AND one April 44 (essentially the same) naked put – These all finished far out of the money (OTM).  I plan to open more UCO naked puts next week.  I want to see the June contracts posted before I pick my contract.  I know I’ll be selling OTM again, but I’m not sure which expiration I want to sell.  I’m also curious if oil might be due for a little more give-back although it’s up nicely today after pulling back sharply from last week’s high.
• VXX – one April 33 covered call – Expired OTM by a fair margin after going in the money (ITM) mid-way through from the time I sold it to today.  I have 200 shares of VXX long still with two long puts for protection at the June $50 strike.  I also have two naked calls at the June $70 strike that I could go ahead and close since they are pretty much worthless already.  I’ll write another covered call on VXX and maybe two so everything expires in June and I can exit this position.  I’d like to wait for another day that it spikes, but by the time that happens again it could spike up to a level even lower than it is trading today.
• JPM – one April 46 naked put – Expired ITM.  I could’ve taken a profit on it and rolled it, but decided to accept the assignment and wrote a covered call on the 100 shares I’ll have on Monday morning.  While JPM was trading at $44.99 I sold one JPM June 46 covered call for $1.15 and received $114.65 after commissions.  I thought about selling right at the money for a June 45 strike, but I like JPM longer term and think it can work itself higher again.  I even debated sitting on it longer to see if I could catch a bounce next week now that it seems to have come to a landing.  The premium by itself is nothing to write home about, but if my shares are called away it’ll be a pretty good return from the current price.  Also, this new covered call strike is the same as the naked put strike so I’ll break even on the shares themselves and just keep the profits from both sides of the trade.  If JPM drops much more I’ll probably add another put then.  From here I’m being patient.
• ITRI – one April 55 naked put –  I had a chance to buy this back after lunch for five or 10 cents, but decided to wait it out through the afternoon at a minimum and maybe in to next week.  For $5-10 I really should’ve closed it a few hours before the end of the day or at least rolled it to May.  Most days out of the past few weeks (excluding yesterday) ITRI has moved above $55 intraday and used $54.50-54.60 as support.  Today it made it up to $55.28 and down to $54.43.  The May premiums are pretty good for the $55 strike and I figure if I missed out today on a good trade I can still push it out until June for a better cushion and cost per share price reduction.  Since I still like ITRI and only have 100 shares in play I decided I could take the risk in waiting although I did place an order to roll it at the end of the day, but couldn’t get a bite.  I wasn’t too giving on my bid since I think I can do better with a covered call on Monday.  You never know – I might decide to sell my shares on Monday if we see a pop over $55 again and then I’ll just open a new naked put again.  The risk is pretty much the same, so it’s just name calling at this point.  If I see any advantage on either side that’s how I’ll play it.  If ITRI drops more than I expect I’ll jump on the June contracts, still at the $55 strike though.  I don’t see me adding more ITRI puts in the near term.  If it falls below $50 it’s because something has changed and I there’s no need to chase a bad stock at that point.