Option to Profit
Week in Review
MARCH 28 – APRIL 1, 2016
| NEW POSITIONS/STO | NEW STO | ROLLOVERS | CALLS ASSIGNED/PUTS EXPIRED | CALLS EXPIRED/PUTS ASSIGNED | CLOSED | EX-DIVIDEND |
| 0 / 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 / 0 | 0 / 0 | 0 | 3 |
Weekly Up to Date Performance
March 28 – April 1, 2016
This week was one that had very little of fundamental value going for it, until Friday’s Employment Situation Report.
Until that point, it was all Janet Yellen inspired.
Once again, no new positions were opened this week as there really was no reason to believe that anything of substance would occur or have any kind of sustaining impact.
By “sustaining” I mean more than a day or two.
For what was mostly a week of watching, the S&P 500 ended the week 1.8% higher.
Existing positions weren’t able to match the performance of the S&P 500 for the week as they were hobbled by oil reacting to Saudi Arabia’s line in the sand over production cuts.
Still, as energy wavered, the market closed the book on the first quarter of 2016, which was truly a tale of two very different halves and which worked out nicely from a more global strategic perspective.
After coming off a rare week lower since the market turned on February 11th, Janet Yellen gave doves a reason to smile.
Even the more hawkish Federal Reserve Governors couldn’t upset the optimistic tone that had come back to the market as we headed into the Employment Situation Report.
Despite an initial negative reaction to another 200,000+ monthly increase in new jobs, the market quickly reversed itself and closed up nicely higher for the week.
As the first quarter of 2016 came to its end, it’s amazing how it has really been a tale of two halves.
There was the world before February 11th and the world after.
Nothing of any kind of substance has changed, but the world is so very, very different for traders.
For now, though, it does seem that traders are still more likely to look at news the opposite way in which a normal person would interpret the news.
Good is bad and bad is good.
For the most part no news is also good news.
This week at least had some ex-dividend positions and a chance to roll over some uncovered positions, in addition to getting an opportunity
to roll over the single expiring position.
In keeping with the theme of 2016 and the latter part of 2015, where possible, there’s been some reason to use longer term expiration dates.
Sometimes the reason is to accumulate some more dividends and sometimes it’s to take advantage of some volatility and maybe even to capitalize on some gains in the shares themselves.
That was the case this week as the process of gaining cover for uncovered positions is still progressing far too slowly, for my tastes.
It remains, however, a long term outlook and I don’t mind using short term, mid-term and long term approaches all in the name of boosting return and waiting out some of the ups and downs that every market seems to have.
With no assignments this week, I’m still scraping the bottom of the barrel for some cash, but wouldn’t be overly hesitant to borrow from myself, as a form of margin, if anything looks appealing.
At the moment, some positions do look appealing, despite the market’s second half of the first quarter story.
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: CY, CY
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: CY (3/29 $0.11), DOW (3/29 $0.48), EMC (3/30 $0.11)
Ex-dividend Positions Next Week: CSCO (4/4 $0.26), GPS (4/4 $0.23), WFM (4/6 $0.135)
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.