Option to Profit
Week in Review
August 15 – 19, 2016
| NEW POSITIONS/STO | NEW STO | ROLLOVERS | CALLS ASSIGNED/PUTS EXPIRED | CALLS EXPIRED/PUTS ASSIGNED | CLOSED | EX-DIVIDEND |
| 0 / 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 / 1 | 1 / 0 | 0 | 2 |
Weekly Up to Date Performance
August 15 – 19, 2016
This was yet another in a series of flat weeks, but it was another in which my complaints may fall on deaf ears.
This was another week of no new purchases and so again there wasn’t too much to think or talk about.
The S&P 500 was down 0.3% for the week and other than a little bit of action following the release of FOMC minutes, there was nothing of any interest for the rest of the week.
Still it was a good week.
There were 2 ex-dividend positions and the expiration of those puts that had been serially rolled over, after having gone out on a little bit of a limb by having rolled them over the previous week even though they were 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 0.4%. even though that meant that the only finished 0.1% higher for the week.
With the expiration of those puts that added one additional position to the paltry list of closed lots for 2016. Those positions closed in 2016 are still 6.8% higher, while the comparable performance for the S&P 500 during the same holding periods has been 1.8% higher. That represents a 279% difference in return on closed positions. Once again, 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.
With this week’s small advance. it does at least add to the nice performance thus far in 2016.
That’s better than the alternative, although this past week wasn’t one for generating very much in the way of income.
It wasn’t really a week for generating much of anything, including anything of interest.
While there may be some more signs that the FOMC is going to be able to find reason to increase interest rates, no one is really getting excited or getting frightened
.
For the most part earnings season is now over and for the most part is was fairly disappointing.
What may have been most disappointing is that no one seemed to offer anything positive for the rest of 2016.
On the one hand that could set us up for some positive surprises three months from now, but for now it didn’t really offer any kind of catalyst to move higher.
Still, we’re just a hair from those all time closing highs, so something must be going right.
With the expiration of those puts I do have some additional cash that I wouldn’t mind putting to use, although it’s not likely to get any easier next week, just as the past couple of weeks have been difficult to really identify anything with a reward worth the risk.
With no ex-dividend positions next week and the likelihood of the assignment of a short call position, it would be really nice to find something to invest in, but that likely share assignment makes me think that together with the expiration of puts this week, it might e a good time to collect some cash.
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: MRO
Put contracts rolled over: none
Long term call contracts sold: none
Calls Assigned: 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: MRO (8/15 $0.05), HFC (8/19 $0.33)
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.