Week in Review – February 1 – 5, 2016

Depending on how you like to spin things it was either a good jobs number or a bad one, but for now it looks as if the market can’t make up its mind over what it wants.

Does it want slowed growth and a lesser chance for interest rate hikes or does it want good economic news?

This was another week of not having initiated any new positions and it was another week of being happy to not have done so.

The S&P 500 fell 3.1% on the week, although existing positions ended the week absolutely flat

At least that was good.

It actually wasn’t all that bad of a week as long as you didn’t open any new positions,

The real surprise of the week was the opportunity to actually sell some calls on uncovered positions and to generate some income for a change.

There were absolutely no trades the previous 2 weeks and if not for a number of ex-dividend positions last week, it would have been 2 weeks with no income generation at all.

This week, not only was there finally some option related income, but even an ex-dividend position.

Next week, at least has more ex-dividend positions, but I’m hoping for more opportunity to sell some calls on the many uncovered positions on own.

I am still having a really difficult time justifying any consideration of parting with cash to open any new positions and I don’t see what will change that for next although I am beginning to get more intrigued about the possibility of adding some energy positions.

The recent ups and downs are making them much more appealing as the premiums are getting really, really big.

But, with that, of course, comes the risk.

Somewhere, sometime and somehow the tide will turn and that risk will be rewarded, but there have been so many times in the past year when that seemed to so obviously been the case.

And guess what?

That’s not the way it worked out.

I suppose I can be grateful for this past week’s personal portfolio calm, but there’s absolutely no reason to believe that can be sustained, especially if there’s continued weakness in energy.

As in the past couple of weeks I don’t have any positions expiring this coming week and am not too seriously considering adding anything new, so the few ex-dividend positions may be all there is to look forward to, until the following week and the end of the February 2016 cycle.

That’s not much to look forward to, though.

.

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:  none

Calls Rolled Up, taking net profits into same cycle:  none

New STO:  DOW (6/17/16), FAST (5/20/16), MAT (4/15/16)

Put contracts expired: none

Put contracts rolled over: none

Long term call contracts sold:  none

Calls Assigned: none

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:    INTC (2/3 $0.26)

Ex-dividend Positions Next Week:  BP (2/10 $0.595)

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.