Options Expiration – January 2014

I closed all of my January options before today.  That made today’s option expiration a non-event for me, so I figured I could take the opportunity to post a portfolio update.

I’m still underinvested and need/want to add some more exposure, but haven’t decided what else to add after my two well-timed trades this week.  It looks like I caught UCO and DIS on their lows (at least for the past few weeks) when I sold those puts.  The rest of my positions are out-of-the-money, except for SPY, which is a little more than $1 in-the-money.

I have a paper profit on all of my options and some of those have a sizable cushion between each underlying stock or ETF’s current price and the strike.  This set-up gives me more reason to open more exposure and I plan to do so next week, especially if prices would slip a little and cut some risk for me.

I keep waiting for a move in one direction or the other for stocks, but the market keeps sliding sideways.  I shouldn’t complain and should sell more out-of-the-money puts to take advantage of the easy time decay.  The trouble is that usually when it seems too easy is when we get a good correction.  I was really hoping for more volatility to open the year to make more trades on the dips.  I want to avoid pushing my next trade before the timing is right, but also don’t want to be overly cautious while the downside risk stays in check.

The following list of naked puts is all I have in play right now.  My account balance is right at $100,500, which leaves me with more than $17,000 sitting in my account losing to inflation.