| NEW POSITIONS/STO | NEW STO | ROLLOVERS | CALLS ASSIGNED/PUTS EXPIRED | CALLS EXPIRED/PUTS ASSIGNED | CLOSED |
| 3 / 3 | 6 | 5 | 8 / 0 | 3 / 0 | 0 |
Weekly Up to Date Performance
April 28 – May 2, 2014
New purchases for the week badly trailed the time adjusted S&P 500 by 1.4% and also lagged the unadjusted S&P 500 index by 1.7% during a week that only had 3 new positions opened.
The market ended the week with an adjusted gain for the week of 1.0% and an unadjusted gain of 0.8%. On the other hand, new positions lost 0.7%.
For positions closed in 2014 the performance exceeded that of the S&P 500 by 1.6%. They were up 3.6% out-performing the market by 95.7%, an amount that has remained very high and expanded again this week.
As with most weeks there’s usually something to be pleased about and something that you wish would have gone better.
This week was no different.
I don’t usually use hindsight, but if I did I would have bought more new positions for the week, had I known that I wouldn’t have to be so concerned about having enough free capital to play the game next week.
Last week was ending just how this week appears to be, with heightened concerns about Russia and Ukraine getting out of hand.
The difference is that last week finished very weakly and fewer positions were assigned than new positions were purchased, resulting in less cash reserves than I would have liked.
This week the concerns seem more grave, yet the market is more calm, if you ignore precious metals.
But with that calmness came a nice number of assignments and a nice number of rollovers, which I think made up for the lack of new purchases and thanks to Coach, their less than stellar performance.
In all, it was a little of everything, but especially meeting the dual objectives of getting some additional cover for uncovered positions and cleaning house a little.
With a lot more cash in hand to begin next week than the last I am less concerned about a sudden flash point overseas and strictly from a stock market opportunism perspective would welcome some broad based selling to start the week.
Better next week than this past one..
However, in addition to preferring peace and diplomacy, I would also rather still see more positions get their cover than pick up some bargains right now, so that will be the priority for me, again.
Not that you really have any control over that sort of thing.
Any precipitous weakness may change that fairly quickly, at least once it seems as if some stability is reached. But in the event of market strength to open the week the goal will be to continue getting new cover and seeing more positions subject to assignment.
This coming week earnings do slow down a bit so that factor will be downplayed, although the market itself hasn’t taken much in the way of cues from earnings. Instead it’s been a story of individual stocks either getting brutally punished or less frequently getting exalted, as the market hasn’t been very forgiving, but also hasn’t been all that laudatory.
With both the FOMC and Employment Situation Reports being essentially non-events and with earnings drying up those extraneous events, such as armed conflict overseas can get magnified, so it will be another interesting week coming up, but then again, aren’t they all?
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: COH, CY, DOW
Puts Closed in order to take profits: none
Calls Rolled over, taking profits, into the next weekly cycle: GM, GPS, LOW, TXM, UNH
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: IP (June 2014)
Calls Rolled Up, taking net profits into same cycle: none
New STO: FDO, FDO, IP, MA, PM, VZ
Put contracts sold and still open: none
Put contracts expired: none
Put contract rolled over: none
Long term call contracts sold: none
Calls Assigned: AIG, BBY, CMCSA, DOW, JPM, KSS, MOS, PM
Calls Expired: BX, COH, FDO
Puts Assigned: none
Stock positions Closed to take profits: BMY (for those that weren’t assigned last week)
Stock positions Closed to take losses: none
Calls Closed to Take Profits: none
Ex-dividend Positions: TXN (4/28 $0.30), C (5/1 $0.01)
Ex-dividend Positions Next Week: SBUX (5/6 $0.26), MET (5/7 $0.35), Wy (5/7 $0.22), WLT (5/8 $0.01)
For the coming week the existing positions have lot
s that still require the sale of contracts: AGQ, BX, C, CLF, COH, DRI, FCX, FDO, GM, JCP, LULU, MCP, MOS, NEM, PBR, 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.