Option to Profit
Week in Review
NOVEMBER 14 – 18, 2016
| NEW POSITIONS/STO | NEW STO | ROLLOVERS | CALLS ASSIGNED/PUTS EXPIRED | CALLS EXPIRED/PUTS ASSIGNED | CLOSED | EX-DIVIDEND |
| 0 / 0 | 2 | 2 | 2 / 1 | 3 / 0 | 0 | 1 |
Weekly Up to Date Performance
November 14 – 18, 2016
Well this week was pretty much the antithesis to last week.
Probably a good thing, though.
I was pretty happy with this week, even though I didn’t open any new positions.
The S&P 500 finished the week 0.9% higher and existing positions did well.
More importantly, there was again opportunity to put some idle positions to work and there were opportunities to add to the cash reserves thanks to some assignments and the expiration of some short puts.
There were also a couple of rollovers.
The only negative was that there were some expirations, as well, but as has been the case all through 2016, a little patience may pay off.
With 3 new closed positions this week, there are now 27 on the year.
That’s nothing compared to past years, especially when you consider that 11 of those closed positions were a single stock.
The average closed position in 2016 is 7.3% higher, as long as you conveniently omit MolyCorp. That compares to 2.0% for the S&P 500 during the various time periods of holding, representing a 256.6% differential.
There really wasn’t too much going on this week, other than more data to suggest that the FOMC will have an easy decision in a few weeks.
That’s because retail sales have been better than expected, as long as you don’t think too much about specialty retailers.
It’s also because the bond market has been doing the FOMC’s work for it as interest rates continue moving higher since the Presidential election.
I was very happy to have a nice combination of assignments, rollovers and call sales this week.
Mostly, I don’t mind getting more into cash as we look forward a few weeks to the FOMC meeting.
While we all expect action this time around, the expectation continues to be for just a 0.25% increase.
That’s probably what it will be, but in the back of my mind I think about the possibility of a 0.50% increase.
That would probably decimate traders.
Not likely to happen, but I don’t mind having some more cash than has been the case for quite some time.
Next week is a holiday shortened one and while I won’t mind dipping into cash, the premiums aren’t likely to be very enticing for just 4 days of trading.
I’m looking forward to a quiet week, but we all know that these light volume weeks can also bring some surprises, so even if there are few if any trades to be made, there will be reason to watch with some interest.
As earnings are now almost complete, the rest of 2016 will be an FOMC watch and thoughts about strategic selling.
While there haven’t been too many gains in 2016 for the overall market, even as we are at new highs, it has been a very good year, but I’ll still be happy to see it go.
.Happy Thanksgiving to all.
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: IP
Calls Rolled Over, taking profits, into a future monthly cycle: none
Calls Rolled Up, taking net profits into same cycle: none
New STO: CY, GM
Put contracts expired: MRO
Put contracts rolled over: none
Long term call contracts sold: none
Calls Assig
ned: MRO, MS
Calls Expired: COH, GME, INTC
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 (11/14 $0.05)
Ex-dividend Positions Next Week: HFC (11/23 $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.