Option to Profit
Week in Review
May 2 – 6, 2016
| NEW POSITIONS/STO | NEW STO | ROLLOVERS | CALLS ASSIGNED/PUTS EXPIRED | CALLS EXPIRED/PUTS ASSIGNED | CLOSED | EX-DIVIDEND |
| 0 / 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 / 0 | 0 / 0 | 0 | 3 |
Weekly Up to Date Performance
May 2 – 6, 2016
Two weeks ago was one of the best weeks that I could remember in a long, long time.
Last week was alright, but it’s all very relative, especially as compared to this week, last week would have been great.
For the market it was a mediocre week, at best, with lots of ambivalence and indecision.
It was another week where I had a very hard time justifying parting with any money.
When it was all done, following Friday’s decision to move higher after a few hours of real indecision, the S&P 500 finished the week 0.4% lower.
Existing positions, having taken advantage the past couple of months of the strength in oil and commodities, gave lots of the gains back the past 2-3 weeks of gains back this week.
There was absolutely no trading this week and other than the 3 ex-dividend positions, there was no ability to generate any income.
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 was absolutely no theme to the week.
Stocks didn’t really follow oil and they didn’t really follow earnings.
They also didn’t really follow the ADP report nor the Employment Situation Report.
With those numbers being on the weak side it has to raise questions about whether much is going to happen between now and the June FOMC meeting to warrant an interest rate increase.
That leaves traders to ponder whether that’s good or bad for them and whether that’s good or bad for the economy.
The latter is probably easier to answer, but traders don’t really care about the economy.
This week I did absolutely nothing other than to wait for something to happen and nothing really happened.
There was no compelling reason to buy anything and no real opportunity to sell anything on existing positions.
If not for 3 ex-dividend positions it would have been like being in suspended animation for the week.
Next week is just another chance to ask the same questions:
Next week? Who knows?
What could make next week interesting is that retailers are going to start taking center stage.
While GDP seems to have taken a breather and now oil prices are moving higher and employment growth is slowing down, where is any spending going to come from?
Good question.
You would have to think that the question has already been asked and that a discount in share prices has already been taken.
Who knows?
With no assignments this week and no positions set to expire next week, I’d still really like to do something with what little cash I have in reserve, especially since there are no ex-dividend positions next week.
Since I have a feeling that I may not be reaching too deeply into my pockets next week, i wouldn’t mind a little more of a shave off from the top, as we’re still less than 4% away from those all time highs.
You wouldn’t know it, but we are.
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: none
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: BP (5/4 $0.595), INTC (5/4 $0.26), STX (5/6 $0.63)
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.