Option to Profit
Week in Review
JANUARY 11 – 15, 2016
| NEW POSITIONS/STO | NEW STO | ROLLOVERS | CALLS ASSIGNED/PUTS EXPIRED | CALLS EXPIRED/PUTS ASSIGNED | CLOSED | EX-DIVIDEND |
| 1 / 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 / 0 | 10 / 1 | 0 | 1 |
Weekly Up to Date Performance
January 11 – 15, 2016
Last week I said that It doesn’t get much worse than this past week.
Welcome to this week.
While last week was the worst start ever to a year, now it’s just simply the worst 2 week start to any year.
There was again just one new position opened on the week and that was one position too many, even as it looked as if it may have been a good decision for just a few hours, as had been the case last week..
That position ended the week 4.8% lower while the adjusted and unadjusted S&P 500 were both 2.2% lower.
The only shred of good news was that as bad as the week was, the existing positions still fared better than the overall market, but that is rarely any real solace.
Maybe the fact that the second week of the year wasn’t as bad as the first week of the year could also be a shred of good news.
Existing positions under-performed the S&P 500 by 0.4% on the week, adding to the disappointment.
Last week they out-performed, but still finished lower.
A loss is still a loss, even if not a loss in relative terms.
There were no assignments on the week. No surprise, there and none yet for 2016.
The loss for this week was less than it could have been, if not for a partial bounce back on Thursday that brought the S&P 500 almost back to a breakeven for the week, if only for day.
Once again, there was absolutely nothing of virtue to report upon for the week. With lots of expiring positions for the week as the January 2016 option cycle came to its end, there was even less to crow about.
With only one new purchase and 1 ex-dividend position, there was no generation of meaningful income, despite getting a brief opportunity to sell some calls on an uncovered position. Any hope of rollovers was dashed early in the week.
Unlike last week when there was some news that could account for market nervousness, this week had no real news other than the continued and accelerating weakness in the price of oil.
The market has completely embraced an irrational response to what should be good news.
Blackrock’s Larry Fink, who is widely agreed to be a pretty smart guy said what we all should know.
He said that the price of oil is being completely driven by over-supply and not being depressed due to diminished demand.
You can understand why markets wouldn’t like decreased demand, but it’s very hard to understand the reaction to stable or growing demand in the face of decreasing energy prices.
Whatever.
It is a big “whatever” though and at some point the market will be returning to a more rational response.
For next week, with no cash being added to the tiny cash reserve pile, I’m not overly enthused about spending any money.
I dipped my toes in each of the past 2 weeks and can better understand why no one has really been rushing in to buy stocks, even as prices seem ridiculously low.
Next week has only one position set to expire and it’s not too likely that anything good will happen in that regard, so it’s looking like another fallow week.
.
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: BAC
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: none
Calls Rolled Up, taking net profits into same cycle: none
New STO: M (3/18)
Put contracts expired: TWTR
Put contracts rolled over: none
Long term call contracts sold: none
Calls Assigned: none
Calls Expired: BAC, BBY, CSCO, CY, DOW, GDX, GM, HFC, INTC, WY
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: WFM (1/13 $0.135)
Ex-dividend Positions Next Week: none
For the coming week the existing positions have lots that still require the sale of contracts: AGQ, ANF, AZN, BBBY, BBY, CHK, CLF, COH, CSCO, CY, DOW, FAST, FCX, GDX, GM, GPS, HAL, HFC, HPQ, INTC, IP, JCP, JOY, KMI, KSS, LVS, MCPIQ, MOS, NEM, RIG, WFM, WLTGQ, 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.