I wasn’t really expecting to spend much money this week.
What I really wanted was to replicate last week and to do that for the remaining 51 weeks of 2017.
Back in the days when I did initiate lots of new positions, if you go all the way back to 2015, it always seemed as if money was burning a hole in my pockets or that maybe I believed that cash was only good to wipe one’s butt.
That’s pretty far from the truth, but that’s what it looked like and that’s what it felt like, even though I know myself pretty well.
So no one was more surprised than me, after having toiled hard to raise cash reserves for about a year and finally getting to a point that I felt was good enough to be prepared for whatever awaited, that within 30 minutes of the opening bell I had already opened 2 new positions.
I’m still of the mindset that I would like to see my existing positions get used on a much more frequent and regular basis through the sale of calls, but I just couldn’t resist this morning.
What I don’t know is what I want to see happen to these new positions in Whole Foods and Hewlett Packard.
Over the past 5 years both stocks have been pretty much disappointments to me.
When it comes to people, I’ve done reasonably well by staying away from the ones that have been disappointments, although my threshold for disappointment is pretty high.
With stocks, the threshold is lower, but my patience is higher.
Still, I think that I would like to see these positions turn back into cash by next week.
Hewlett Packard didn’t have much to offer this morning, other than being back to the price level at which my last lot of shares were assigned.
That’s not really a glowing recommendation.
Whole Foods on the other hand has a paltry dividend and is ex-dividend this week.
Come to think of it, that’s not a glowing recommendation, either.
But this year, I feel like everything will work out and the best way to see that become is the case is to very actively work positions.
For now, I’m especially enjoying doing that on what have been long under-performing positions and I’m looking forward to keeping my eye on them and rewarding my suffering patience.
But, just for good measure, and despite my wish that 2017 would be guided by some common sense, why not add to the suffering and sell some weekly puts on GameStop?
Good idea, apparently.