Option to Profit
Week in Review
June 15 – 19, 2015
| NEW POSITIONS/STO | NEW STO | ROLLOVERS | CALLS ASSIGNED/PUTS EXPIRED | CALLS EXPIRED/PUTS ASSIGNED | CLOSED | EX-DIVIDEND |
| 0 / 0 | 1 | 4 | 2 / 0 | 6 / 0 | 0 | 1 |
Weekly Up to Date Performance
June 15 – 19, 2015
Another week with no new positions opened, marking the first time that has occurred in consecutive weeks.< /span>
Looking back on the week in hindsight, I’m not certain that I would have done it any differently, but that may change when sitting here next Friday and wondering if opportunities weren’t missed to buy on the brief dip.
But for now there continues to be nothing to make one want to commit money.
As with last week whatever surges higher there were, became largely erased. This week, however, there was a little bit left over for our troubles.
The S&P 500 ended the week 0.7% higher thanks to two very strong days that were just stronger than the two very weak days were weaker.
There were, however, two assignments for the week. The 43 closed lots in 2015 continue to out-perform the market. They are an average of 5.0% higher, while the comparable time adjusted S&P 500 average performance has been 1.3% higher. That 3.7% difference represents a 275.6% performance differential.
This was one of those half empty – half full weeks, just as it was a tale of stories for the week that took the market in very different directions.
It was yet another week of no new positions being opened.
That was bad.
It was a week of lots of expired, unrolled over positions.
That was bad, too. Very bad, actually. In some cases, it was just inexcusably too expensive to do the rollovers, with the costs just being too high relative to the additional premiums. While I usually like to grab a trade when I can, sometimes it’s hard to justify when volatility is just so low and the premium reward on the other side of the trade is so paltry.
Existing positions only kept up with the market, so that gets a bad rating. Keeping up is a minimal expectation.
It reminds me of a teacher I had in 7th grade who was giving out award certificates at the end of the year to students.
You could either get one for Scholarship, Citizenship or Attendance.
He said if you get one for Scholarship, you should be proud of how smart you are and the work behind all you accomplished.
If you got one for Citizenship, you should be proud of the person you are.
But if you got one for Attendance, he said that was like toilet paper. The least you can do is be where you’re supposed to be.
On the good side, although not great, there were some opportunities to generate some income. Not as much as I would have liked, but Thursday’s advance helped to position some for rollovers that seemed to be unlikely candidates.
There was a new ex-dividend position and that was good, but not as good as in the previous 2 weeks that had lots of positions going ex-dividend.
Best of all for the week, there were a couple of assignments. Those were much wanted, although the cash reserve is still far lower than I’d like to have right now, as the market still seems far too tentative to get excited about.
Still, in a week where there wasn’t very much good to be had, that was as good as it gets.
With a little more cash in hand to begin the July 2015 option cycle, but with a decent number of positions set to expire next week, I’m still not overly excited about spending down the pathetically small cash pile. I would be much happier with rollovers and assignments.
However, part of the decision as to what to do next week may be determined by the likelihood of seeing those expiring positions contribute to the week’s income stream, which has been weak lately, as if it was a 75 year old man.
After a while, that sort of thing gets tiresome.
Happy Father’s Day
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: GDX (7/17), GM (7/17), KSS (7/17)
Calls Rolled Up, taking net profits into same cycle: none
New STO: FAST
Put contracts expired: none
Put contracts rolled over: TWTR (7/31)
Long term call contracts sold: none
Calls Assigned: ANF, BAC
Calls Expired: BNO, BP, CHK, GDX, KO, MAT
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: LVS (6/18 $0.60)
Ex-dividend Positions Next Week: DOW (6/26 $0.42)
For the coming week the existing positions have lots that still require the sale of contracts: AGQ, ANF, AZN, CHK, CLF, FCX, HAL, .INTC, JCP, JOY, LVS, MCP, MOS, MRO, RIG, 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.