Week in Review – March 24 – 28, 2014

 

Option to Profit Week in Review
March 24 – 28, 2014
 
NEW POSITIONS/STO NEW STO ROLLOVERS CALLS ASSIGNED/PUTS EXPIRED CALLS EXPIRED/PUTS ASSIGNED CLOSED
7 / 7 4 9 1 / 0 4  / 0 0

    

Weekly Up to Date Performance

March 24 – 28, 2014

New purchases beat the time adjusted S&P 500 this week by 0.2% and the unadjusted S&P 500 index by 0.4% during a week that saw no over-riding theme, pattern of trading nor news. However, before jumping up and down, that beat was only relative, because new positions fell by 0.1% for the week.

The market showed an adjusted loss for the week of 0.3% and unadjusted loss of 0.5% for the
week, while new positions lost only 0.1%.

Only.

By contrast, existing positions significantly out-performed the market by 1.2% for the week, deriving some benefit from rollovers and newly covered positions. That, too, is in relative terms, as in absolute terms existing positions advanced 0.8% for the week. That was an unusually large beat and it’s not the sort of thing that I would get accustomed to seeing, although I could easily get used to it.

For positions closed in 2014 and only one such position was added this week, performance exceeded that of the S&P 500 by 1.6%. They were up 3.6% out-performing the market by 87.4%. SO far, that wide beat has continued, although I continually expect that margin to decrease and will do so once the market strings together a few strongly positive weeks.

For a week that really had nothing going on it was fairly busy and confusing for most everyone.

While much was made of the air being taken out of the higher flying momentum stocks, for three of the days this past week the S&P 500 trailed the Dow Jones by quite a margin. The market was weaker than many would have guessed based simply on the most common measure. It wasn’t only those high fliers that took a beating last week. Basically anything that had shown a recent gain was fair game and the price corrections were fairly large when they did take place and were also fairly indiscriminatory.

The markets kept looking for direction and there really wasn’t any to be found. Whatever optimistic tones there may have been on some mornings as trading started basically dissipated as the trading sessions wore on.

It could be because we’re just at that awkward time of the year when there’s nothing much going on and we’re still also a few weeks away from the beginning of the next earnings season.

The market really doesn’t like being in a vacuum. It needs something to bounce off of or to react to. Leave it on its own devices and nothing good can come of the situation.

Yes, there’s an ECB meeting next week and there’s also next Friday’s Employment Situation Report, but there’s really not much going on and neither of those should offer any real surprises.

While the market did give up most of its gains to close the week, it was still impressive that it was able to ignore the late news coming out of Ukraine, suggesting that Russia has amassed even more forces along the Ukraine border.

When the Crimea news broke at the same time of the day on a Friday three weeks ago the market gave up a very significant rally in fear of the unknown.

Not so today.

Anyway, each week leaves me with some disappointment, even if the net result s positive.

This week it’s that only one position was and 7 new positions were opened. Since I’ve been actively trying to reduce the total number of positions, that is a set back, but as far as set backs go, I can deal with this one.

It does, however, also put a little bit of a crimp into how much I’m willing to spend next week on new positions. When trading closed on Thursday, on the downside, I was seeing what looked like lots of bargains awaiting on Monday.

In a way, I was glad to see a number of them become less appealing by taking on their gains on Friday, particularly since I won’t have quite as much in reserve when trading begins next week.

When it’s all said and done my cash reserve will likely settle in at about 37% and I will be willing to take that down to 25%, or about 5 or 6 new positions for next week.

While maybe not trading quite as much next week, I would be happy to see the same kind of results with next week’s expiring positions occur as we saw this week.

What was positive for the week, besides the bottom line, was the ability to rollover 9 positions and find new cover for an additional 4 positions.

Every little bit helped this week, including those aggravating DOH trades, for those of you playing along.

With a fair number of positions set to expire I would certainly like to see some of those assigned and the rest rolled over, but as you’ve probably noticed by now, there’s really very little likelihood that any one week is like the one just past or the one next up.

 

 

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

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



New Positions Opened:  BMY, CMCSA, COH, EBAY, FDO, HFC, MA

Puts Closed in order to take profits:  none

Calls Rolled over, taking profits, into the next weekly cycle:  APC, EBAY, FDO, GM, MOS, MRO

Calls Rolled over, taking profits, into extended weekly cycle:  AIG (4/11), CSCO (4/25), VZ (4/11)

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 cyclenone

New STO:  CHK, CSCO, FCX, LULU

Put contracts sold and still open: none

Put contracts expired: none

Put contract rolled over: none

Long term call contracts sold:  none

Calls Assigned:   COP

Calls Expired:   C, FDO, TGT, WFM

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:  PM (3/25 $0.94)

 

 

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For the coming week the existing positions have lots that still require the sale of contracts:   AGQ, C, CLF, FCX, FDO, GM,  IP, JCP, MCP, MOS,  NEM, PBR, PM, RIG, TGT, WFM, WLT, 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.