Option to Profit
Week in Review
August 8 – 12, 2016
| NEW POSITIONS/STO | NEW STO | ROLLOVERS | CALLS ASSIGNED/PUTS EXPIRED | CALLS EXPIRED/PUTS ASSIGNED | CLOSED | EX-DIVIDEND |
| 0 / 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 / 0 | 0 / 0 | 0 | 2 |
Weekly Up to Date Performance
August 8 – 12, 2016
When I thought that this week had the makings of a flat one, I didn’t realize just how flat it might be.
Despite all major indexes hitting a record high on the week, it wasn’t very exciting other than for some good retailer price action, even as the retail numbers themselves weren’t overly impressive.
Maybe not even impressive in the slightest.
This was another week of no new purchases and so there wasn’t too much to think or talk about.
That’s not exciting, either.
The S&P 500 was actually up 0.1% for the week after looking as if it would close perfectly flat until the final 20 minutes or so for the week.
Still it was a good week.
There were 2 ex-dividend positions and 2 rollovers, including a rare rollover of a short put position that was going to expire.
On top of that, even as the market was flat, existing positions again beat the S&P 500, this time by an additional 0.6%.
With no new closed positions on the week closed positions in 2016 are still 6.8% higher, while the comparable performance for the S&P 500 during the same holding periods has been 1.9% higher. That represents a 267% difference in return on closed positions. As with every week in 2016, I’d be much more impressed if there were far more of those closed positions to point toward. With such few closed positions for the year, the differential could just as easily have been in the other direction and of a similar magnitude, yet also signifying little.
I could get used to seeing 2017 being a repeat of 2016, at least year to date.
I definitely like seeing the increase in net asset value and would certainly like to see more in the way of trading activity, but there was enough this week to keep me from hitting the streets.
There was an opportunity to rollover the position in International Paper a week early in order to have a better chance of holding onto the very nice dividend.
Additionally, I found reason to want to rollover the short put position in Marathon Oil, despite it heading for an expiration.
The reason for that was the same as the reason for rolling over short call some positions that are likely to otherwise be assigned.
That’s because volatility makes the forward week premiums a bit richer than the expiring premium which ends up basically representing only intrinsic value.
Even with Marathon Oil being ex-dividend on Monday, the ROI for the additional week was another 1.3% and keeps the position alive and accumulating premiums.
At this point, that’s good enough for me.
If I can’t make it up in the volume of trades, maybe I can make it up in the lack of variety in the positions.
Marathon Oil has been just about the only play over the past 2 months or so.
But that works, too.
In fact, it almost totally takes the thought process out of the process, which makes it even better.
With 2 ex-dividend positions this week and another 2 next week and now 2 potential rollovers, there should be some cash coming in, but I would still love to be able to open some new positions.
Maybe even a single new position would be enough, given the paucity of trades lately.
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: IP (9/2016)
Calls Rolled Up, taking net profits into same cycle: none
New STO: none
Put contracts expired: none
Put contracts rolled over: MRO (8/19)
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: AZN (8/10 $0.44), IP (8/11 $0.44)
Ex-dividend Positions Next Week: MRO (8/15 $0.05), HFC (8/19 $0.33)
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.