Sold December AAPL Naked Put
My AAPL October $205 naked put is set to expire worthless in a couple days and mid-day today I figured I should go ahead and enter a limit order to sell a new contract. My October put option has a bid/ask of $0.08/0.09 and I don’t think it’ll be assigned, so I’m letting it run its course to save a few bucks. That mentality has bit me before as an underlying stock crashes a day or two before expiration, but I don’t see that with AAPL with their earnings call not for another couple weeks.
While AAPL was trading at $220.47, I sold one AAPL December $210 naked put for $5.90 and received $589.33 after paying $0.67 in commission. Apple was trading at $221.30 when I placed the order and the bid/ask was $5.40/5.50. I saw that the high trade of the day had been $6.25 in the morning when AAPL was trading under $219.50. Since the trend has been flat to slightly higher intraday lows, I thought my order would hit tomorrow morning if not Friday. As I write this an hour after my trade went through, I already have a $30 paper profit, but expect that to waiver over the coming weeks fairly often.
When I pull back to a six-month view of the chart I can see likely support around $213 based on the longer trend line of higher lows. With that in mind, I could’ve waited to test that trend line, but I’m not worried about AAPL’s long-term health and trajectory, so I opted to get in now.
Another reason to wait for a better entry point is the moving averages. They are painting a more short-term bearish picture. The 10-day moving average converged yesterday with the 20-day moving average and crossed below it today. While AAPL traded above the 10-day briefly today, it is almost right on it as I write this. The 50-day broke support for less than 20 minutes (if that) this morning, but it did break before looking like it’ll close above it.
On a positive note, AAPL’s forward PE is only 16.13 and the Williams %R indicator on the 14 and 28-day periods move bullishly above the oversold range three days ago and has had multiple confirmation days above it. This technical indicator alone shows the recent change in momentum and helped
push me into making the trade today versus waiting for another $.50-1.00 in premiums. Also, I went $10 out of the money with my strike in case I’m wrong. That $10 and the premium I received gives me 7.29% of downside protection before I lose a penny. That’s 12.44% below it’s intraday high of $233.45. Even with having more than 7% of a buffer, I stand to make 2.74% on this trade or 14.98% annualized. I’m content with making almost 15% annualized without accepting a bigger risk.
Not counting my October AAPL naked put that I expect to expire worthless, I have over $9,000 in cash and need to deploy it. I was happy to have the cash available during the recent weakness in stocks and am searching for something new again.