Since I bought my covered calls back on VIP on Friday, I wanted to cover them with new calls today as soon as I saw VIP wasn’t heading up again yet. I bought my calls back with the hopes that VIP would rally soon. Since I can’t take hope to the bank, I took some risk out…
Author: Alex Fotopoulos
Dow Jones ($DJI) Chart – June 20, 2008
When I first charted the Dow Jones Industrial Average, aka DJIA (ticker: $DJI) this morning I looked at the three month daily chart to see how bad the short term looked. I missed charting last week, but would have pointed out the trend line of lower highs would need to break before I turned more bullish…
June 2008 – Options Expiration
June 2008 turned into another profitable month for my short options to expire. Most expired worthless and the others still gave me a profit. These first three took some extra thought today since they did not expire worthless. I sold three DIS June 30 covered calls (DISFF) for $2.35 in the money after taking a…
Sold Mohawk Industries (MHK) Naked Puts
Three weeks ago, while Mohawk Industries (MHK) was trading around 75.00 I placed a limit order to sell naked puts on it if it dipped and the options’ premiums increased. Barron’s Lawrence Strauss had a bullish article on it earlier that week, but the chart didn’t seem to match the bullish fundamentals to me. I saw potential support…
Closed June DRYS “Insurance” Put
DRYS has come back up from its lows last week when I bought an extra June put to cover the July naked put. Since the new June 70 put (DQRRN) only had 4 1/2 days left before expiration I bought it back today to save a little of my insurance that I was paying out to protect me from…
Closed Boeing (BA) Calls
Yesterday I sold three naked calls on BA @ $0.60 and by the end of the day when BA pulled back from its highs the same calls were trading at half the price as where I sold them. After my last trade on SPY turning to a loss after I could have taken a profit,…
Covered DRYS Naked Put and Sold BA Calls
I sold a naked put on DRYS a few days ago while it was fallen from a limit order I placed 10 days earlier. Since then DRYS’ fall hasn’t slowed much. This morning, before 10:00 am, it was down another $5. Although this is still above my strike I realized what I should have done…
Emotion Free Investing – June 2008
I run the following drill one to three weeks before options expiration when I start to wonder if my holdings are still situated in a relatively safe place. What I find almost every time is that I’m better off than I expected. As much as I try to keep emotions out of my trading, it’s only…
Sold BNI Naked Put
Like yesterday, I don’t know what reminded me to give Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp (BNI) another look. I don’t see it in my notes and seem to remember coming across it on my spreadsheet I use to track potential returns. I’ve traded on it before and on Sunday, June 1st, I entered a limit…