Option to Profit
Week in Review
APRIL 25 – 29, 2016
| NEW POSITIONS/STO | NEW STO | ROLLOVERS | CALLS ASSIGNED/PUTS EXPIRED | CALLS EXPIRED/PUTS ASSIGNED | CLOSED | EX-DIVIDEND |
| 0 / 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 / 0 | 0 / 0 | 0 | 3 |
Weekly Up to Date Performance
April 25 – 29, 2016
Last week was one of the best weeks that I can remember in a long, long time.< /s pan>
This week was alright, but it’s all very relative.
For the market it was a bad week, but, once again, on a personal note, it wasn’t too bad.
It wasn’t good enough, though, to want to spend any money on new positions.
When it was all done, it was probably a good week to not spend much, if any money, as the S&P 500 was 1.2% lower on the week.
Existing positions, however, continued to find strength in energy, commodities and 1.3% higher than the S&P 500. But with that said, those positions were only 0.1% higher on the week.
Again, though, no positions were assigned, but at least there was the opportunity to get a rollover, sell calls on an uncovered position and have 3 ex-dividend positions.
The only negatives were that there were no assignments and one short position got assigned.
With no assignments, closed positions continue to be 7.8% higher, while the comparable performance for the S&P 500 during the same holding periods has been 2.7% higher. That represents a 189.2% difference in return on closed positions. Unfortunately, though, there are very few closed positions on the year.
There wasn’t too much of a theme this week, other than caution heading into the FOMC meeting and then the GDP release the following day.
Even with those 2 bits of news, the real impetus for the week, outside of some earnings, which were mostly disappointments, came Carl Icahn’s pronouncements.
Clearly, his opinion holds more weight than that of Warren Buffett.
It’s hard, however, to find 2 so very, very different investors.
This week, it was the less likable of the two who moved things.
Next week? Who knows?
More earnings and maybe more reason to believe that the economy really is taking its sweet time about doing anything to warrant an interest rate increase, although so many now believe that June will be the time for the FOMC’s announcement.
That gives plenty of time for some data to start suggesting that things are looking better, but earnings don’t really seem to be painting a really optimistic picture.
With no assignments this week and no positions set to expire next week, I’d really like to do something with what little cash I have in reserve.
With a couple of ex-dividend positions for the week there is at least something, but I would love to continue adding cover to more uncovered positions.
That has been a really, really slow process.
Another really, really slow process has been seeing some minimal recovery in energy and commodity names and those have been the saving grace, just as they had previously been the Achilles heel.
With retail earnings beginning to crop up the week after the next week, we may get some more direct idea of what the consumer is up to.
In a consumer led economy, that tends to be important, but that’s still more than a week away.
That’s just another reason to not be terribly antsy about spending cash next week, but I really wouldn’t mind some further declines, especially if commodities can balance those declines to some reasonable degree.
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
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: STX
Put contracts expired: none
Put contracts rolled over: none
Long term call contracts sold: none
Calls Assigned: MAT, MRO
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: F (2/27 $0.15), MS (2/27 $0.15), KMI (2/28 $0.125)
Ex-dividend Positions Next Week: BP (5/4 $0.595), INTC (5/4 $0.26)
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.