Option to Profit
Week in Review
MARCH 14 – 18, 2016
| NEW POSITIONS/STO | NEW STO | ROLLOVERS | CALLS ASSIGNED/PUTS EXPIRED | CALLS EXPIRED/PUTS ASSIGNED | CLOSED | EX-DIVIDEND |
| 0 / 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 / 0 | 0 / 0 | 0 | 3 |
Weekly Up to Date Performance
March 14 – 18, 2016
At least this week it wasn’t all about oil.
For the first time in about 2 months we had a minor diversion from oil, thanks to an FOMC meeting.
There were no new positions opened this week.
Existing positions were able to match the performance of the S&P 500 for the week as it was 1.3% higher, as the market finally undid the losses of the first 6 weeks of 2016.
There was finally another assignment this week to join the solitary other assignment of 2016, marking the slowest start to a year that I can recall since 2008 and certainly the slowest for OTP.
To date, with only 2 assigned positions on the year, they are out-performing the S&P 500 for their holding periods by 3.2%, as the closed positions are 3.1% higher and the S&P 500 for the same periods of time is 3.0% higher.
Still, with such little activity, it does continue to feel good to seeing portfolio values, especially when that performance exceeds the market, as it did again this week and continues to build on its relative out-performance for all of 2016.
The market finished nicely higher for the week, following the trend that began at 2016’s low point on February 11th.
Oil continued higher, but despite some thought that maybe stocks were thinking about going their own way, by the latter part of the week any idea like that was thrown out.
What the week offered wa
s news from the FOMC that interest rates will not likely be increased as often as they may have originally planned.
Even though that reflects poorly on the economy, investors took that as being good news for them.
More cheap money is clearly more important than more economic expansion.
Just as with stocks following oil higher, at some point there has to be a realization that it’s the economy that should really matter and not being able to avoid a 0.25% increase in rates.
But that’s a realization for some other time.
It was nice to have a rollover this week and especially nice to have an assignment.
Although there were 3 ex-dividend positions this week, I still would have liked to have seen some more income opportunities. While Best Buy also had a Special Dividend, in addition to its regular dividend, I don’t really count those as the option strike prices are adjusted lower to account for those special dividends.
I had hoped to be able to sell some calls on uncovered positions, but simply couldn’t get what I thought were fair prices, as volatility started to decline across the board.
Nest week is a trading shortened week as markets will be closed on Friday.
There isn’t too much in the way of economic news next week, although the GDP will be released on Fridays as markets are closed.
Since the FOMC has already guided down on their GDP projection for 2016 there shouldn’t be too many surprises, although we won’t really know until the following Monday rolls along.
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: M (4/1)
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: none
Put contracts expired: none
Put contracts rolled over: none
Long term call contracts sold: none
Calls Assigned: GM
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: BBY (3/15 $0.28), BBY (3/15 $0.45 Special Dividend), JOY (3/16 $0.01), LVS (3/18 $0.72)
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.