| NEW POSITIONS/STO | NEW STO | ROLLOVERS | CALLS ASSIGNED/PUTS EXPIRED | CALLS EXPIRED/PUTS ASSIGNED | CLOSED |
| 1 / 1 | 3 | 3 | 5 / 0 | 1 / 0 | 0 |
Weekly Up to Date Performance
April 13 – 17, 2015
Despite Friday’s big sell-off, it was a nice week. Surprisingly so, but I’ll take anything.
This week there was just a single new position opened and it beat both the adjusted and unadjusted S&P 500 by a 1.0%, as the market squandered 4 days of decent performance with a closing day’s plunge.
The new position gained 1.0% while the unadjusted and adjusted S&P 500 each lost 1.0% for the week.
Existing positions had an unusually strong week thanks to energy and some other positions and out-performed the S&P 500 for the week by 2.5%, as they were 1.5% higher despite the market being down 1.0%.
This week 5 lots were added to the closed position list. Positions closed in 2015 continue to out-perform the market. They are an average of 5.5% higher, while the comparable time adjusted S&P 500 average performance has been 1.6% higher. That 3.9% difference represents a 253.9% performance differential.
Despite the market being down 1.0% for the week, this was a satisfying week.
Some of that has to do with the manner in which the market reacted to generally disappointing earnings.
It reacted in a mature way when disappointing earnings were released, if there was a significant impact from currency conversion. It also took reduced guidance in stride.
Based on the past, that wasn’t going to be a slam – dunk. The market hasn’t always been able to retrain itself even when it had already discounted what was widely known and expected.
To its credit, so far, this time around, it has.
Friday’s sell-off, another in an unending examples of why you can’t count those eggs too soon, was entirely ignited by overseas markets, especially news of increasing regulation in the Chinese stock market. Together with increasing speculation over a potential exit of Greece from the EU and you had a sea of red facing our market this morning.
Still, it wasn’t a bad week.
The real relief was being able to still see a nice number of positions get assigned and I especially like seeing that happen as their prices are moving lower.
Additionally, there was the chance to sell new cover on uncovered positions and to rollover most positions. The one position that expired, the United States Brent Oil Fund, was a position bought on speculation that oil would move nicely higher and so a deep out of the money call was sold with a 4 month time horizon.
Rather than roll that over and pay the price for doing so, it is a candidate for doing the same thing on the next move higher, as it closed today right where it was purchased 4 months ago. This time, I might look at an August option or even longer.
The best part, thanks to the strength in energy stocks for the week, despite Friday’s sell-off, was that existing positions actually gained 1.5% for the week.
With a couple of rollovers to next week, there are already some positions populating the week and a smattering of others for each week in the May 2015 cycle.
With a good number of assignments this week and the ability to replenish cash reserves at a time when the market took a nice drop, I may be more anxious and more able than has been the case lately to add some new positions.
The likelihood is that I would consider weekly options, although as volatility climbed a little on Friday’s sell-off and some positions may have upcoming earnings as part of the equation, there may be reason to look at some extended weekly expirations, as well.
Next week will be a busy one for earnings.
After today’s sell off and with cash in hand, I would really like to see some further selling, but today’s may have been fueled by entirely external factors occurring overseas. If earnings continue in the same path and we remain mature in not over-reacting to what we know to be coming, the market may have reason to continue higher.
We’ll see.
.
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: GPS
Puts Closed in order to take profits: none
Calls Rolled over, taking profits, into the next weekly cycle: ATVI, GPS
Calls Rolled over, taking profits, into extended weekly cycle: GDX (5/1)
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: BP (6/19), DOW (5/15), GDX (6/19)
Put contracts expired: none
Put contracts rolled over: none
Long term call contracts sold: none
Calls Assigned: CSCO, LXK, MRO, SBGI, SBGI
Calls Expired: BNO
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: ABBV (4/13 $0.51), CHK (4/13 $0.09), FCX (4/13 $0.05)
Ex-dividend Positions Next Week: FAST (4/24 $0.28)
For the coming week the existing positions have lots that still require the sale of contracts: AGQ, ANF, BAC, CHK, CLF, COH, FAST, FCX, HAL, HFC, .INTC, JCP, JOY, LVS, MAT, MCP, MOS, NEM, RIG, WFM, WLT (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.