I only had three options finish in the money today (one on MON and two on SLB) and made changes to both positions to give me more downside cushion and increase my chances for a bigger profit by the end of the series of trades. I could’ve exited both positions with a little profit today, but decided…
Author: Alex Fotopoulos
Sold IWM July 52 Naked Put
As I’ve sat on the sidelines with most of my cash idle for the past few months I’ve missed out on a lot of the rally. I decided I should make an attempt at putting a little more money at risk. I’ve made a few individual stock trades, but wanted more exposure still. Since I…
Stock Picks – June 2009
In a comment of a post last week Ronan from Invest Using Options gave us a few of his recent stock picks. This gave me the idea of starting a recurring post of stock picks from other bloggers and readers. I’ll keep these posts fairly short and list any stock picks I’ve received through email. …
Sold CVS Vertical Put Spread
Kopin Tan wrote a bullish few paragraphs in today’s edition of Barron’s about CVS Caremark Corp (NYSE: CVS). One of his points for calling CVS a buy is the historically low P/E ratio it has right now. I checked Ford Equity Research and found this chart of CVS’ historical P/E versus it’s current price to earnings ratio. I’ve…
2 Dow Jones Industrial Average Charts – June 12, 2009
I’m posting two DJIA ($DJI) charts this weekend after the Dow closed at 8,799.26 on Friday. The top one is a look at the past 11 trading days. I typically chart using OHLC charts that show the highs and lows of the day, but thought a view of just the closing prices (the line chart)…
Sold Allstate (ALL) Naked Puts
I haven’t paid attention to Allstate (NYSE: ALL) much until this week when I read a bullish article in Barron’s June 8th edition and then on Motley Fool after that. I started the week with a limit order for a put spread (25 and 22.50) that didn’t hit. I forgot about it until this morning…
Rolled SLB June 55 Naked Put Higher
I’ve been torn on how to continue managing my Schlumberger Ltd (NYSE: SLB) position. I’ve been wrong for the past week or two on how fast oil was going to recover. As oil continued to climb this morning, SLB tagged along as it should. Once SLB moved up this morning my position moved to a…
Russell 2000 Chart ($RUT) June 5, 2009
I’ve been trying to pick an ETF to possibly enter the market with since I haven’t picked a new stock to run with and was watching IWM, a Russell 2000 ETF and saw the chart looked interesting. That brought me back to the Russell 2000 itself for an exact chart of the index. I charted $RUT after it closed…
Current Portfolio – June 5, 2009
I saw the morning news of new jobless claims that came out lower than expected and turned into a big bull for about an hour and 10 minutes this morning. That was enough time to consider changing my position on SLB and opening new positions on USO and SSO. I watched the futures take off…