Last month, my margin balance forced me to buy back 600 of my short TLT shares for a loss and then IB wouldn’t let me sell puts to cover my remaining shorts. TLT has fallen more since then, so I decided to test the waters again now that those trades have long since settled. I…
Author: Alex Fotopoulos
Options Expiration – March 2016
The only March option I had remaining coming into today was one TLT March $125 naked call. The other nine, out of my initial 10 March calls, were assigned at the end of February, but I was left with this single contract to deal with. After the nine TLT March $125 calls were assigned at the…
What is PeepTrade?
First the disclaimer: I’m now a PeepTrade Guru. Now what it is – Peeptrade.com is a new site (actually still in beta until next week when they present at the South by Southwest Festival) that allows “Peepers” to view the portfolios and trading activity of the “Gurus” allowed on the site. Each Guru sets their own price…
End of the Month Summary – February 2016
February was nasty for a little while and then patience paid off. I think the lowest intraday balance I saw my account hit in February was around $72,000. I didn’t think bonds would stay high or stocks would stay low, so I waited and watched most of the month. While the indexes were basically flat…
TLT – Early Option Assignment
When I logged into my account yesterday morning, I had an annoying yellow warning highlighting my “Account” button. I was being warned that I had no “Post-Expiry Excess (predicted)”. No excess is equal to a margin call, but this was only predicted, so I was only being annoyed I couldn’t get the color back to…
Sold FEZ Shares for a Loss
Stupid bonds! TLT is making February a rough month for me. At this morning’s high, it was up more than $6 from where it finished January. I dealt with a lot of the risk when I hedged a couple of weeks ago, but it still isn’t fun to see my account down so much while I…
Options Expiration – February 2016
I only had two options expire today. The big one was on TLT where I have 10 TLT February $124 calls that will be assigned. I’ll be forced to sell 1,000 shares of TLT that I do not own at $124 while TLT finished the day at $131.01. My cost per share will be higher…
Added Another TLT Ratio Spread
The TLT ratio spread that I opened yesterday helped cut my losses today, but I still wasn’t fully hedged yet on my TLT exposure, so I came back to the well to cut my risk again. While TLT was trading at $133.66, I sold 10 TLT June $125 calls and bought 20 TLT June $134 calls for…
Hedged TLT Position
I’ve been watching TLT climb like a machine since 2016 started. I expected every spike to be the last one and every dip to be the turning point to lasting lower prices. I should’ve bought a far out of the money hedge weeks ago, but figured I could weather it. Then I got a margin call…