There’s really no reason to be surprised, but I woke up this morning realizing that earnings season has to be starting soon.
As if it ever really ended.
What really makes things different this quarter is that Alcoa, even though it has now been out of the DJIA for a little while, is no longer the official/unofficial start to earnings season.
The official start of earnings season honors went to JP Morgan after Alcoa left the DJIA, but Alcoa still came first.
No more.
This week, earnings start for real on Friday morning, with JP Morgan getting things started and Alcoa doesn’t announce until a full 11 days later.
It’s a whole new world order.
I was greeted this fine snowy Sunday morning with a very nice Tweet.
What was also very nice was not having to write an article in a rush to meet an unclear deadline in order to get potentially time sensitive material posted.
Or, for that matter, writing it at all.
My response to the Tweet was that 300 of those articles was enough and so I then did what was the only seemingly natural thing.
I got out of bed, made coffee and instead of writing something with “Shark Tank” in the background on a Friday evening, I’ve got the drone of Sunday morning CNN in the background, as I pound keys.
Or don’t pound keys.
Just like Alcoa, I’ve drifted into the background. The difference is that I can and will rust.
What I do know, or at least think I know, is that I won’t be opening as many new positions as in past years, not counting 2016.
Not that I don’t want to, it’s just that I’m looking at plenty of income earning opportunities with non-performing positions that I was just too reluctant to put to work at a time when there was a self-imposed unwritten obligation to keep my personal trades in as high concordance as possible with what I publicly recommended.
I also know that I’ll be writing about things on a different schedule and definitely with far fewer readers accorded to me by Seeking Alpha. What I will do, as I did during the original iteration of TheAcsMan.com and its predecessor, Szelhamos.com is to write something whenever the whim was there, which was pretty much every trading day.
While I’ll miss that regular weekly column, what I’ll really miss are the monthly subscription payments.
So, that means more time for trading and definitely a greater need, because you do get addicted to money.
I’m not certain or sold yet on a format to do these things, so for anyone actually reading these pages, look around and feel free to let me know.
Tweet, email, post a comment.
As far as the format goes, the most recent trades will appear in the upper right hand corner of the page and if this past week is any guide, they are posted within a minute of the trades being made.
The ticker below the masthead is of those stocks in my portfolio, which still represents all of the positions that were in the “Option to Profit” portfolio.
Scroll down a bit and there will be a summary of the month’s trades on a day by day basis.
On the menu bar is a “Results” section that has links to every position opened in the 5 years of “Option to Profit” and will also indicate those trades made after its close.
I will have a side column of “Positions in Play,” which means positions expiring this week and a potential source of recurring income or additions to cash reserves.
There’s also a “Positions in Focus” which are potential new positions for the week.
What I may not do is write very much about those positions in focus for the coming week, unless there’s something that I find interesting.
Otherwise, it’s always, “buy shares and sell calls” or “sell puts.”
The real difference will be that I hope to keep more and more of those positions rolled over, rather than assigned.
Part of that reason is that I have a suitable cash reserve at the moment and don’t really feel a need to add to it. The other part is that if you have a good thing going, why not keep it going, through thick and thin?
That worked very well for me from 2007-20011, but from 2012-2014 it was better to re-invent the wheel and kep looking for new positions, week in and out.
2015 was just a year to forget, but 2016 made up for that and did so with the same stocks that made 2015 a dog.
So, with cash in hand next week and a few positions in position to make me some more money and an ex-dividend position, just a few weeks ago I would have been content (at least in 2016) to just watch.
Now, I’m ready to trade again, but first things first.
Put laggards to work and keep cash ready to exploit any opportunities.
Happy Sunday.