I bought 100 shares of USO (an oil ETF) at $99.00 and sold a September 98 covered call for $6.80 in my IRA a little more than two weeks ago. I’ve watched the price of oil fall fairly steadily since then. Around the same time I entered a limit order to sell a naked put on the same…
Author: Alex Fotopoulos
Closed MON Naked Put
Monsanto (MON) has dropped more than $30 in the past two months. I targeted $115 as a bottom and sold a naked put at the August 115 strike that expires today. MON fell as low as $103.50 a week ago and I held on thinking I could sell covered calls and still do fine with…
VIP Options Assignment
Vimpel Communications (VIP ) has been down for a while and I’ve actually been surprised that my latest naked puts had not been assigned earlier. This morning my two VIP August 30 naked puts options (VIQTF) were assigned and I bought 200 shares of VIP at $30.00 and I paid $6019.99 with commissions. A couple of days ago I wrote…
Sold CHK Covered Calls
I mentioned my plans for Chesapeake Energy Corp (CHK) in my post yesterday and today I acted on it. While CHK was trading at $45.16 I sold two CHK September 50 covered calls (CHKIJ) and received $318.50 after commissions. I saw CHK was up again this morning, but hit resistance at the 10 day moving average. On…
VIP Naked Calls and CHK Option Assignment
I was able to check the market yesterday before we walked down to the beach and again after closing. I had a couple of trades while away for two days. The first was a limit order I entered a few days earlier on VIP naked calls. While VIP was trading somewhere near $25.40 on Monday…
Oil ETF USO Chart – August 8, 2008
I charted USO this morning to get an idea of where the price of oil might find support. Don’t get too excited when you see these numbers, USO and the price of oil are not equal and do not move dollar for dollar. USO is down more than 20% from its high, making it a…
Diversification Update
I was way overdue for an update on my Current Portfolio page before today. I just updated my my list of stocks broken down by sector and then noted deeper by industry. This is an important table that I should keep updated every couple of weeks. This gives me a clear view of how diversified…
Added to CHK Position on Dip
Chesapeake Energy Corp (CHK) is taking a beating today as energy stocks are getting hit across the board. Last week I mentioned that I had a limit order to sell more naked puts on it in addition to the two CHK August 60 puts I already have. I fully expect to have these first two naked…
Russell 2000 Chart (RUT) – August 1, 2008
The Russell 2000 (“$RUT.X” in TD Ameritrade and “^RUT” in Yahoo! Finance) has been bouncing around a trading channel this entire year. What is now a ceiling for this price on the chart was the floor for the second half of last year. I won’t believe this channel is broken (in either direction) until we…