Option to Profit
Week in Review
NOVEMBER 23 – 27, 2015
| NEW POSITIONS/STO | NEW STO | ROLLOVERS | CALLS ASSIGNED/PUTS EXPIRED | CALLS EXPIRED/PUTS ASSIGNED | CLOSED | EX-DIVIDEND |
| 2 / 2 | 0 | 3 | 3 / 0 | 1 / 0 | 0 | 2 |
Weekly Up to Date Performance
November 23 – 27, 2015
< strong>This was a week that may as well not even happened.
After 3 trading days in which the market didn’t move the needle and then a little break for Thanksgiving, the week closed on Friday without ever getting that needle to budge even the slightest bit.
There were 2 new positions for the week and they beat both the adjusted and undadjusted S&P 500 by 1.6%
Those positions were up 1.6% while the S&P 500 was unchanged.
Despite some continuing weakness in energy and commodities, existing positions out-performed the S&P 500 by 0.3% after a couple of weeks of having lagged, as those particular sectors were weak.
For the year the 74 closed lots in 2015 continue to outperform the market. They are an average of 4.6% higher, while the comparable time adjusted S&P 500 average performance has been 1.1% higher. That difference represents a 327.1% performance differential.
While this was yet another week in which there wasn’t too much in the way of real economic news, the market did get to test the resolve of traders.
That test came when the revised GDP was released and it showed even stronger growth. That likely means that the FOMC will be in a better position to justify an announcement of an interest rate hike in about 12 days from today.
Instead of a big sell off, which would have indicated an about face by traders who seem to have come to accept an upcoming increase and instead of a big rally, the market did nothing.
That was the story for the week, although if fine tuning the reaction, there was some initial disappointment and then that, too, got appropriately resolved.
Without the ups and downs that have characterized so many of the past weeks over the last 3 months, there wasn’t any real bouncing around, but it still turned out to be a decent week.
With 2 new positions opened, 3 rollovers, 2 ex-dividend positions and 3 assignments, there was a little for everyone.
I especially like those occasions when I can rollover the same position twice, as was the case this week.
Unfortunately, there was also a position that expired without assignment, nor rollover and that gets added to a much too long of a list of similar positions.
WIth a decent amount of cash getting added to reserves, I’m willing to use some or even all of it next week in the pursuit of generating some new income flow.
On the other hand, there are 2 positions set for expiration next week which could potentially be the source of some income, but more importantly, there are 6 positions going ex-dividend next week, include some that have multiple lots.
That means that there may be a little bit less of a need to look for income producing trades for the week.
Next week does have an Employment SItuation Report to end the week, but there’s not very much before then, other than lots of Federal Reserve Governors who are willing to share their opinions and will be doing so in the week prior to their next meeting.
The expectation has to be that the Employment Situation Report will deliver a solid number. With that comes the additional expectation that traders will take that number in a rational way and bid the market even higher.
It’s not too likely that there will be a disappointing number, but if there was
one, you could probably look for a marked sell-off, unless those FOMC Governors give strong reason to believe that the FOMC is now hell bent on getting that rate increase decussion made prior to 2016.
For me, the likelihood is that if the market doesn’t go down to open the week or at least not move much higher, it will be a very slow trading week for me. As we sit only about 2% below all time highs, the market is within easy striking distance of more new highs or a technical correction point.
Guessing where things go is really like flipping coin, but despite knowing that none of the previous flips has any predictive value for an upcoming flip, I’d still rather know that the market has come off of a decline before putting any new money at risk.
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: BBY, PFE
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: HFC (12/24)
Calls Rolled over, taking profits, into the monthly cycle: none
Calls Rolled Over, taking profits, into a future monthly cycle: HFC (1/15/16)
Calls Rolled Up, taking net profits into same cycle: none
New STO: none
Put contracts expired: none
Put contracts rolled over: STX
Long term call contracts sold: none
Calls Assigned: BBY, KO, PFE
Calls Expired: none
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: MAT (11/23 $0.38), KO (11/27 $0.33)
Ex-dividend Positions Next Week: HAL (12/1 $0.18), MOS (12/1 $0.28), HFC (12/2 $0.33), COH (12/2 $0.34), BAC (12/2 $0.05), WMT (12/2 $0.49)
For the coming week the existing positions have lots that still require the sale of contracts: AGQ, ANF, AZN, BBY, CHK, CLF, COH, CY, FAST, FCX, GDX, GPS, HAL, JCP, JOY, KMI, KSS, LVS, MCPIQ, MOS, NEM, RIG, WFM, WLTGQ (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.