The first month of trading with my new options strategy ended with modest success, as I managed to “thread the needle,” and have the SPY stay within 2 points of itself from last Friday to this Friday: All in all, I added $450 to the bank as the weekly SPY 131 option spreads I sold [...]
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The market’s rise to about 1310 this week meant that I absorbed a small loss on my short term SPY spreads; I sold three January 128 spreads for $2.29 last Friday, and bought them back for $3.08 today, all told a loss of $237.00. I put the position back on with weekly SPY options [...] In the first week of 2012, my new options hedging strategy has produced a raw (not adjusted for commissions) profit of $468, with only 10 minutes spent at the keyboard. The S&P 500 was at 1280 last Friday when I sold three 128 weekly option spreads for $2.28 net each. This Friday the index had [...] With the gap down this morning, and VIX shooting past 40, I’m making a “quickie” spur-of-the-moment trade, and buying somewhat reasonably priced September 30 VIX calls for $3.10. Hope to be out of this one by Monday, as vacation looms. For my late summer trade, I’m going to stick with VIX options, but try a little different tack: put spreads. I’ve put on what amounts to the equivilent of two VIX September put spreads: twenty contracts on a 27.50 – 25 spread and ten more on a 25-20. Essentially, this is a simple bet that [...] The dream of pain-free easy summer trading has turned out to be just that — a dream. With this being the last day to trade August VIX contracts, I closed out my open positions for a nice hefty loss of almost $2,500.00. I’m going to chalk this up as a live-and-learn experience. And since misery [...] Every trader worth his salt has at some time or other known the feeling of being trapped in a trade. And once you’ve experienced that feeling, try to burn it in to your brain, and avoid getting trapped again! Making mistakes is unavoidable if you take a directional position in the markets. Learning from mistakes [...] I dodged a bullet again at VIX expiration, and was able to book a nice profit on the July calls I sold last month. Then I turned around and repeated the trade, selling 12 more 25 calls, this time for August 17th, for $0.80 each. July VIX settlement was 19.10. I’m a lot more nervous [...] The term summer trading can mean almost anything to anybody — including the “sell in May and go away” notion that you shouldn’t be doing it. (Head to the Hamptons, instead!). What I’m looking for is essentially a minimalist approach to summer trading — something that will let me and my kids do our things, [...] With the markets opening mixed this morning, I escaped unscathed with my remaining May VIX options position, which was a now-naked sale of VIX 20 calls. The May settlement figure for VIX came in at 18.02, and though it is not material for my trade, VIX has since deteriorated further to the mid-16 range. Maybe [...] |
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