Europe has been showing signs of weakening for a while and I should’ve reacted quicker. This morning I capitulated and sold my 200 shares of FEZ for $37.10. I received $7,418.84 after paying $1.16 in commission. FEZ was up for the day and I thought I should cut my losses on an up day. I pulled…
Author: Alex Fotopoulos
TLT Weekly Put Spread Series – Update 2
The TLT October 10 $117/117.50 put spreads that I sold last week expire this afternoon and look like it will finish far out-of-the-money. This move against me will give me a realized loss of $79.74 (on top of the realized loss of $51.24 I took last week on my first TLT spread). Since I won’t…
S&P 500 Chart – October 3, 2014
The chart below shows the daily prices for the year-to-date on the S&P 500 index ($SPX) after the index closed the week at 1,967.90 on October 3, 2014. Before the market opened the next day, index futures were predicting a positive open as the reigns were being handed back to the bulls after a 4.6% mini-correction. When the monthly…
TLT Weekly Put Spread Series – Update 1
I learned a good lesson today as I messed around with TLT put spreads. When the monthly jobs’ data beat expectations, I thought TLT would drop based on the belief that it was more likely the Fed would raise rates sooner than later. At first, the market agreed with me and TLT sank as low as…
Rolled UWM Naked Puts
I’ve been watching UWM as the Russell 2000 index worked through its decline. Before today, I had two UWM October $75 puts and two UWM October $73 puts. I sold these puts when the strikes were far out-of-the-money in June and July respectfully. Yesterday, the $75 strike puts moved in-the-money and today the $73 strike…
Option Trades on TLT and YHOO
After I wrote my month end summary this morning, I thought I was finished writing for the day. Then, over a span of nine seconds, two of my limit orders hit when stocks were near their lows of the day. I forgot that I entered my YHOO order as a “Good-til-Canceled” limit order, but that…
End of the Month Summary – September 2014
My account did fine for most of September, but the last week knocked me lower for the month. The S&P 500 and the NASDAQ Composite are still ahead of me for the year-to-date, but I’m ahead of the other major indexes with room to spare. If it were not for my MDY and UWM positions’…
Sold BABA Naked Put
Options on Alibaba (BABA) started trading today and I decided to jump in while the volatility was still high and the option premiums are rich. While BABA was trading at $89.04, I sold one BABA November $80 naked put for $1.76 and received $175.21 after paying $0.79 in commission. I should’ve made my trade earlier in…
Rolled September MDY Naked Put
Only about 22 minutes of open trading time passed between when I wrote that I had an order in place to roll my MDY put from September to December to when my order hit. The time span happened to carry from the market close yesterday to today and I’m glad I got the order in…