Feb192016

Week in Review – February 15 – 19, 2016

Week in Review

 

Option to Profit

Week in Review

 

FEBRUARY 15 – 19, 2016

 

NEW POSITIONS/STO NEW STO ROLLOVERS CALLS ASSIGNED/PUTS EXPIRED CALLS EXPIRED/PUTS ASSIGNED CLOSED EX-DIVIDEND
0  /  0 0 2 1   /   0 1   /   0 0 1

 

Weekly Up to Date Performance

February 15 – 19,  2016


Alright, last week and the week before and the week before that, it was all about oil.

How about this week? Well, it was the same as last week. Oil, oil, oil and maybe a little bit of interest rates, interest rates, interest rates and negative interest rates, too.

Unbelievably, there was actually the first assignment of the year following one of those rare 2016 newly opened positions.

For all of the excitement this week and the two very strong days to start the week, there were no new purchases.

During the week the S&P 500 was 2.8% higher and that was good enough.

The single new assignment matched the performance of the S&P 500 during its holding period, so there was no particular advantage to having had made the trade, but it felt good to finally get one done.

This turned out to be a good week, but no so much for the performance relative to the S&P 500 but rather due to the ability to get some rollovers done and to actually live long enough to have seen an assignment.

Otherwise, it was a lonely week of just sitting and watching.

Much of that was done in the hopes that Thursday and Friday would end up being the same as Tuesday and Wednesday and maybe propel the market even higher.

But deep down I really wanted to see some stability come in after those two really large gains to start the week.

We’ve seen far too many really big moves in both directions and while that’s good for the volatility induced premiums that can be had, it creates a real sense of concern for the bottom falling out. The large moves higher are like an open invitation to take profits and what is really needed now is an open invitation to invest in the future and not relish in the past.

I think that ending the week on a flat note is probably a much more healthy thing than if we had gone higher and higher.

That would only make me think of how much another fall would hurt.

For next week, with a little bit of cash coming from that single assignment, I might be more inclined to want to add some new positions, but especially if the market opens with some weakness to start the week.

I probably wouldn’t be enthused with a strong decline, but wouldn’t mind a mild move lower or just a mild move higher.

I felt happy being able to get a couple of rollovers this week, even if having to go longer term on the expirations, though.

It was nice to finally generate some additional income, particularly as this week had only a single ex-dividend position and next week has none.

I don’t expect that next week will be a busy one from a personal trading perspective, but I could envision being willing again to dig into some personal funds and effectively lend money to myself to bolster the acsh position in an effort to create some income from what may be under-priced stocks.

For the most part, that had worked well in the latter half of 2015, but I really haven’t felt very assured about doing the same in 2016.

Maybe with a little stability and a little digestion of the recent gains I could find some reason to dip another toe or two to test the waters.

 

.

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:  none

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

Calls Rolled Over, taking profits, into a future monthly cycle:  HPE, UAL

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: eBay

Calls Expired:  Ford

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:    AZN (2/17 $0.30)

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.



Feb122016

Week in Review – February 8 – 12, 2016

Week in Review

 

Option to Profit

Week in Review

 

FEBRUARY 8 – 12, 2016

 

NEW POSITIONS/STO NEW STO ROLLOVERS CALLS ASSIGNED/PUTS EXPIRED CALLS EXPIRED/PUTS ASSIGNED CLOSED EX-DIVIDEND
1  /  1 4 0 0   /   0 0   /   0 0 4

 

Weekly Up to Date Performance

February 8 – 12,  2016


Alright, last week it was all about oil.

How about this week? Oil, oil, oil and maybe a little bit of interest rates, interest rates, interest rates and negative interest rates, too.

Unbelievably, I actually opened a new position this week.

That new position was 3.4% higher on the week while the adjusted S&P 500 was 0.6% higher and the unadjusted S&P 500 was 0.9% lower.

There were still no assignments for the year as the market continues the back and forth that mostly ends up taking the numbers lower and lower.

But, at least existing positions fared better than the S&P 500 for the week, no doubt with both helped out by Friday’s strong close.

This turned out to be a good week, thanks to Friday’s close.

But it was actually more than that, as Friday’s close just added paper gains.

It was a rare good week because there was actually a new position opened and a number of new call sales were made. On top of that there were a few ex-dividend positions.

Ultimately, i don’t care how it happens, but I just like to see income generated and this week was better than anything else in 2016 to this point.

That isn’t saying much as the market still closed lower on the week and it would have been far, far worse had it not been for another Friday coming to the rescue.

As with other of these strong closes to the week, it’s hard to get overly excited about what may be in store for the following week.

I did spend a little bit of money this week, but I’m under no pretenses that next week will necessarily be more inviting.

What next week does offer is some thought of rollovers after having gone 2 weeks with no expiring positions to even consider.

While there aren’t many for next week either, especially by month closing standards, at least there’s some possibility of rollovers or assignment.

That would be nice, as 2016 hasn’t had much to cheer about and we could all use some good cheer at the moment.

Here’s to next week.

.

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:  none

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:  GDX ($22.50 6/17/2016), GDX ($25 9/16/2016), NEM ($35 9/16/2016)

Put contracts expired: none

Put contracts rolled over: none

Long term call contracts sold:  none

Calls Assigned: none

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:    BP (2/10 $0.595), IP (2/11 $0.44), MRO (2/12 $0.05), MAT (2/12 $0.38)

Ex-dividend Positions Next Week:  AZN (2/17 $0.30)

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.



Feb52016

Week in Review – February 1 – 5, 2016

Week in Review

 

Option to Profit

Week in Review

 

FEBRUARY 1 – 5, 2016

 

NEW POSITIONS/STO NEW STO ROLLOVERS CALLS ASSIGNED/PUTS EXPIRED CALLS EXPIRED/PUTS ASSIGNED CLOSED EX-DIVIDEND
0  /  0 4 0 0   /   0 0   /   0 0 1

 

Weekly Up to Date Performance

February 1 – 5,  2016


Oil, oil, oil.

Aren’t you glad I didn’t say oil.

Maybe it’s funnier if you start with “Knock, knock.”

This was just an absolutely horrible week that began with oil leading the market higher and lower, but ended with jobs taking center stage.

Depending on how you like to spin things it was either a good jobs number or a bad one, but for now it looks as if the market can’t make up its mind over what it wants.

Does it want slowed growth and a lesser chance for interest rate hikes or does it want good economic news?

This was another week of not having initiated any new positions and it was another week of being happy to not have done so.

The S&P 500 fell 3.1% on the week, although existing positions ended the week absolutely flat

At least that was good.

It actually wasn’t all that bad of a week as long as you didn’t open any new positions,

The real surprise of the week was the opportunity to actually sell some calls on uncovered positions and to generate some income for a change.

There were absolutely no trades the previous 2 weeks and if not for a number of ex-dividend positions last week, it would have been 2 weeks with no income generation at all.

This week, not only was there finally some option related income, but even an ex-dividend position.

Next week, at least has more ex-dividend positions, but I’m hoping for more opportunity to sell some calls on the many uncovered positions on own.

I am still having a really difficult time justifying any consideration of parting with cash to open any new positions and I don’t see what will change that for next although I am beginning to get more intrigued about the possibility of adding some energy positions.

The recent ups and downs are making them much more appealing as the premiums are getting really, really big.

But, with that, of course, comes the risk.

Somewhere, sometime and somehow the tide will turn and that risk will be rewarded, but there have been so many times in the past year when that seemed to so obviously been the case.

And guess what?

That’s not the way it worked out.

I suppose I can be grateful for this past week’s personal portfolio calm, but there’s absolutely no reason to believe that can be sustained, especially if there’s continued weakness in energy.

As in the past couple of weeks I don’t have any positions expiring this coming week and am not too seriously considering adding anything new, so the few ex-dividend positions may be all there is to look forward to, until the following week and the end of the February 2016 cycle.

That’s not much to look forward to, though.

.

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:  none

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:  DOW (6/17/16), FAST (5/20/16), MAT (4/15/16)

Put contracts expired: none

Put contracts rolled over: none

Long term call contracts sold:  none

Calls Assigned: none

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:    INTC (2/3 $0.26)

Ex-dividend Positions Next Week:  BP (2/10 $0.595)

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.



Jan292016

Week In Review – January 25 – 29, 2016

Week in Review

 

Option to Profit

Week in Review

 

JANUARY 25 – 29, 2016

 

NEW POSITIONS/STO NEW STO ROLLOVERS CALLS ASSIGNED/PUTS EXPIRED CALLS EXPIRED/PUTS ASSIGNED CLOSED EX-DIVIDEND
0  /  0 0 0 0   /   0 1   /   0 0 4

 

Weekly Up to Date Performance

January 25 – 9,  2016


Last week it seemed as if the secret to having a gain was to not trade all 5 day in a week.

But maybe the secret is to wait for Thursday and Friday, because for the second week in a row strong gains on both of those days saved the markets from having really, really bad weeks.

For the second week in a row we actually had  consecutive gaining sessions and big ones, at that.

But this was now the second week since early 2009 that I mad absolutely no trades and it was the second consecutive week, at that.

At least this week had a number of ex-dividend positions and much more importantly, overall asset value went nicely higher.

The index itself was nicely higher, showing a 1.8% gain on the week, but you can thank Friday’s gain of 2.5 for all of it and more.


The themes for 2016 are still pretty obvious.

China and especially oil are still big, but there is something old that has become something new for 2016.

And that’s the FOMC and it’s also a case of bad news being thought of as good news, as the market rallied on the seeming belief that there was a slowdown ahead and that interest rates may not be poised to be raised anytime soon.

That, despite the fact that the FOMC didn’t close the door on a March 2016 rate hike and they certainly didn’t say that it was a “one and done” kind of situation.

So what we saw, as the GDP came to a crawl was the market likely reacting to the idea that there wouldn’t be sufficient data to actually raise interest rates.

How is that a good thing?

Bueller, can you tell me? How is that a good thing? Bueller?

It isn’t, but that will be a problem for next week’s market to deal with.

I’m just happy to have some more money on paper than has been the case of late..

It was just good to be able to have kept pace with those last two days and hopefully there will be some more to come and an opportunity to sell some calls on uncovered positions, as I’m still not ready to bet that the bad news is good news feeling is the sort of thing that can sustain a market.

But I’ll take it for now.

< /p>


.

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:  none

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: none

Calls Expired:  BAC

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:    F (10/27 $0.15), FAST (1/27 $0.3), KMI (1/28 $0.125)

Ex-dividend Positions Next Week:  INTC (2/3 $0.24)

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.



Jan222016

Week in Review – January 18 – 22, 2016

Week in Review

 

Option to Profit

Week in Review

 

JANUARY 18 – 22, 2016

 

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

 

Weekly Up to Date Performance

January 18 – 22,  2016


Maybe the secret to having a gain in 2016 is just not being open to trade all 5 days of a week.

Afer another bad start to the week there was something that we haven’t seen in a long while.

Consecutive gaining sessions and big ones, at that.

But this was the first week since early 2009 that I mad absolutely no trades.

I can’t recall whether there has been a week in the time frame or longer that also didn’t have a single ex-dividend position, either.

But that was this week. Nothing, nothing at all.

The themes for 2016 are pretty obvious.

It’s almost embarrassing just how tightly the market and oil are correlated. While China is a theme, too, there’s no escaping the incredibly tight tandem moves of oil and stocks as they continue to defy their normal relationship.

Oil moves and the market moves in the same direction and has been doing just that for more than a year at this point and yet it still seems so bizarre.

This week, though, for a change, that meant that in the latter half of the week the market went higher. Hard to believe, but the price of oil actually went up on the week,

It might have had gone even higher earlier in the week, but the strong advance by oil, which ha sent the market strongly higher, reversed itself.

You can probably guess what the market did at that point. It gave up its big gain on the day, just as had oil.

There wasn’t much reason to support the nearly 20% gain in the price of a barrel of oil for the week other than the price had been beaten down so much and so fast.

Ultimately, that’s not a very good reason to keep iy going higher, so I’m not expecting too much as next week gets ready to begin and we get back to 5 days of trading.

Still, it was nice to end the week with the S&P 500 moving about 1.6% higher, especially since 2016 had already seen a 10% decline on the year.

Since that 10% decline came during the course of only 11 days of trading, it’s plausible that the entire loss can be offset just as quickly, but what would be the catalyst for supporting that kind of rally?

That’s hard to say, unless earnings can have some kind of meaningful turnaround from where they have been going.

With still very little cash in reserve and absolutely no positions set to expire next week, there are at least some ex-dividend positions.

But I don’t expect to be an active participant when it comes to adding any new positions during the week.

Since it has been a while since a few positive days have been strung together, I’ll have to see the proof before spending any money.

I would definitely much rather, though, see the market continue going higher and get a chance to find any uncovered positions to sell a call upon.

There were a few times this past week that I thought that was going to happen, but it just wasn’t there.

Maybe next week will be different, but it will take a lot of those different kind of weeks to make up for the damage done in just the first 2 weeks of the year.


.

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:  none

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: none

Calls Expired:  BAC

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:   none

Ex-dividend Positions Next Week: F (10/27 $0.15), FAST (1/27 $0.3), KMI (1/28 $0.125(

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.