Mar192016

Weekend Update – March 20, 2016

Weekend Update

Best laid plans often have a way of working out other than expected.

On slow days I make it a point to go and sit in anyone’s waiting room, even without an appointment, just to read stale issues of business and news magazines.

Eventually I get up and leave and feel better about my track record.

Doing that tends to reinforce the belief that the “experts” called upon to predict what awaits in the future are invariably wrong, even as self tying sneakers depicted in “Back to the Future” may now become somewhat of a reality.

Sometimes it’s the timing that’s all wrong and sometimes it’s the concept.

Unless you put much stock in a prediction, such as converting all of your assets to gold in anticipation of yet another Doomsday, they tend to be forgotten unless a dusty magazine is picked up.

The plan to be awash in the one true and universal currency might have seemed like a good idea until coming to the realization that it’s hard to spread on a slice of bread, even if you actually had a slice of bread.

While you can’t be very certain about the accuracy of a “futurists” predictions, you can be very certain that no self-respecting expert on the future keeps a complete scorecard and most would probably be advocates of having physician’s offices regularly rotate their stock of reading materials.

Continue reading on Seeking Alpha

Mar182016

Week In Review – March 14 – 18, 2016

Week in Review

 

Option to Profit

Week in Review

 

MARCH 14 – 18, 2016

 

NEW POSITIONS/STO NEW STO ROLLOVERS CALLS ASSIGNED/PUTS EXPIRED CALLS EXPIRED/PUTS ASSIGNED CLOSED EX-DIVIDEND
0  /  0 0 1 1   /   0 0   /   0 0 3

 

Weekly Up to Date Performance

March 14 – 18,  2016


At least this week it wasn’t all about oil.

For the first time in about 2 months we had a minor diversion from oil, thanks to an FOMC meeting.

There were no new positions opened this week.

Existing positions were able to match the performance of the S&P 500 for the week as it was 1.3% higher, as the market finally undid the losses of the first 6 weeks of 2016.

There was finally another assignment this week to join the solitary other assignment of 2016, marking the slowest start to a year that I can recall since 2008 and certainly the slowest for OTP.

To date, with only 2 assigned positions on the year, they are out-performing the S&P 500 for their holding periods by 3.2%, as the closed positions are 3.1% higher and the S&P 500 for the same periods of time is 3.0% higher.

Still, with such little activity, it does continue to feel good to seeing portfolio values, especially when that performance exceeds the market, as it did again this week and continues to build on its relative out-performance for all of 2016.

The market finished nicely higher for the week, following the trend that began at 2016’s low point on February 11th.

Oil continued higher, but despite some thought that maybe stocks were thinking about going their own way, by the latter part of the week any idea like that was thrown out.

What the week offered wa
s news from the FOMC that interest rates will not likely be increased as often as they may have originally planned.

Even though that reflects poorly on the economy, investors took that as being good news for them.

More cheap money is clearly more important than more economic expansion.

Just as with stocks following oil higher, at some point there has to be a realization that it’s the economy that should really matter and not being able to avoid a 0.25% increase in rates.

But that’s a realization for some other time.

It was nice to have a rollover this week and especially nice to have an assignment.

Although there were 3 ex-dividend positions this week, I still would have liked to have seen some more income opportunities. While Best Buy also had a Special Dividend, in addition to its regular dividend, I don’t really count those as the option strike prices are adjusted lower to account for those special dividends.

I had hoped to be able to sell some calls on uncovered positions, but simply couldn’t get what I thought were fair prices, as volatility started to decline across the board.

Nest week is a trading shortened week as markets will be closed on Friday.

There isn’t too much in the way of economic news next week, although the GDP will be released on Fridays as markets are closed.

Since the FOMC has already guided down on their GDP projection for 2016 there shouldn’t be too many surprises, although we won’t really know until the following Monday rolls along.

This week’s details may be seen in the Weekly Performance spreadsheet * or in the PDF file, as well as in the summary below

(Note: Duplicate mention of positions reflects different priced lots):



New Positions Opened:  none

Puts Closed in order to take profits:  none

Calls Rolled over, taking profits, into the next weekly cycle: none

Calls Rolled over, taking profits, into extended weekly cycle:  M (4/1)

Calls Rolled over, taking profits, into the monthly cycle: none

Calls Rolled Over, taking profits, into a future monthly cycle:  none

Calls Rolled Up, taking net profits into same cycle:  none

New STO: none

Put contracts expired: none

Put contracts rolled over: none

Long term call contracts sold:  none

Calls Assigned: GM

Calls Expired:  none

Puts Assigned:  none

Stock positions Closed to take profits:  none

Stock positions Closed to take losses: none

Calls Closed to Take Profits: none

Ex-dividend Positions:    BBY (3/15 $0.28), BBY (3/15 $0.45 Special Dividend), JOY (3/16 $0.01),  LVS (3/18 $0.72)

Ex-dividend Positions Next Week:  none

For the coming week the existing positions have lots that still require the sale of contracts:   AGQ, ANF, AZN, BBBY, BBY, CHK, CLF, COH, CSCO,  CY, DOW, FAST, FCX, GDX, GM, GPS, HAL, HFC, HPQ, INTC, IP, JCP, JOY, KMI, KSS, LVS, MCPIQ, MOS, NEM, RIG, WFM, WLTGQ, WY (See “Weekly Performance” spreadsheet or PDF file)



* If you don’t have a program to read or modify spreadsheets, you can download the OpenOffice Suite at no cost.



Mar182016

Daily Market Update – March 18, 2016

Daily Market Update

 

 

 

Daily Market Update – March 18, 2016 (7:30 AM)

The Week in Review will be posted by 10 PM and the Weekend Update will be posted by Noon on Sunday.

The following trade outcomes are possible today:

Assignments:  none

Rollovers:  GM

Expirations:  none

The following were ex-dividend this week:  BBY (3/15 $0.28), BBY (3/15 $0.45 Special Dividend), JOY (3/17 $0.01), LVS (3/18 $0.72)

The following are ex-dividend next week:   none

Trades, if any, will be attempted to be made prior to 3:30 EDT.


.

.

Mar172016

Daily Market Update – March 17, 2016 (Close)

Daily Market Update

 

 

 

Daily Market Update – March 17, 2016 (Close)

Yesterday the focus was much more on the FOMC and Chairman Yellen.

The take home message was that the economy wasn’t growing as fast as had been hoped and the world’s economies are even worse.

As a result, the FOMC believes that it will have fewer interest rate increases in 2016 than it had planned.

Somehow, that’s good news.

I understand why it may offer some more time for people to get cheap money to play with, but the increases that the FOMC had in mind weren’t going to leave money more expensive for those borrowing, in any real terms.

Instead, a less than optimistic picture was painted, but traders liked it.

This morning, as it all sank in, stock futures had been all over the place.

They were moderately higher and then equally moderately lower, both bordering on triple digits.

In the meantime, stocks looked as if they might spend another day diverging from oil, which was again moderately higher.

Sooner or later I expected that had to happen, but as long as oil is going higher, I’d have liked to have seen some delay in everyone coming to their senses.

Based on the futures inability to get on a single frame of mind, I thought that today may very well be a day of confusion as various sides try to figure out whether yesterday’s FOMC news was good or bad.

Still, with yesterday’s close, the DJIA was at its highest for 2016, so it’s as if the first 6 weeks of trading never even happened.

It’s as if 2016 hasn’t even happened yet.

Ultimately, it seems that stocks decided to rejoin with oil and yesterday’s FOMC decision and rationale for the decision was still being embraced.

Although the market closed beneath its high for the day, the S&P 500 is now just very slightly in the red for the year as the DJIA is in the black.

Who would have thought?

Based on the number of trades that I’ve made in the first 10 weeks of 2016, you would be excused for believing 2016 had never even started yet.

Hopefully, that will change before the next interest rate hike.


.

.

Mar172016

Daily Market Update – March 17, 2016

Daily Market Update

 

 

 

Daily Market Update – March 17, 2016 (7:30 AM)

Yesterday the focus was much more on the FOMC and Chairman Yellen.

The take home message was that the economy wasn’t growing as fast as had been hoped and the world’s economies are even worse.

As a result, the FOMC believes that it will have fewer interest rate increases in 2016 than it had planned.

Somehow, that’s good news.

I understand why it may offer some more time for people to get cheap money to play with, but the increases that the FOMC had in mind weren’t going to leave money more expensive for those borrowing, in any real terms.

Instead, a less than optimistic picture was painted, but traders liked it.

This morning, as it all sinks in, stock futures had been all over the place.

They were moderately higher and then equally moderately lower, both bordering on triple digits.

In the meantime, stocks looked as if they might spend another day diverging from oil, which was again moderately higher.

Sooner or later I expected that had to happen, but as long as oil is going higher, I’d have liked to have seen some delay in everyone coming to their senses.

Based on the futures inability to get on a single frame of mind, today may very well be a day of confusion as various sides try to figure out whether yesterday’s FOMC news was good or bad.

Still, with yesterday’s close, the DJIA was at its highest for 2016, so it’s as if the first 6 weeks of trading never even happened.

It’s as if 2016 hasn’t even happened yet.

Based on the number of trades that I’ve made in the first 10 weeks of 2016, you would be excused for believing 2016 had never even started yet.

Hopefully, that will change before the next interest rate hike.


.

.