Most of my time is spent working on getting the site up and rolling but I am finding some time to get a trade done here and there.
I am capturing a DSW dividend that is coming up. So I bought the stock and sold the covered call to hedge it. i will update with the prices tomorrow as my trading system is shut down.
I am also long GA $7.50 Sept puts at .20 each. I have a few more than I really need so I covered about 20% of my position today at .25 This could be the home-run of the year if GA fails to make the dividend payment they claim they will (possibly a 40-1 payoff). I would guess they probably will make it but I still think the stock tanks post ex-dividend.
I looked at shorting DEER but was a little late to the party so I walked.
MCD fell today, I was going to short it if it moved higher. I will watch tomorrow for a bounce over $90
still long the GA puts. will find out Monday what it looks like. Dividend or no dividend it has the makings of a bloodbath.
I made a ticket in IB asking if the dividend was funded or not. I am not holding my breath for a quality answer.
Still short MCD, long COCO
long covered DSW for dividend capture. Will be looking at quite a few more next week for dividend capture.
I took a look at shorting gold but decided I would be just as well off leaving it alone on this weekend of all weekends.
Have a good weekend
Not much going on today as I spend much of it working on this site and some longer term opportunities that require lots of research. I just finished reading Trading on Target by Adrienne Toghraie. Great book about dealing with the mental aspects of trading. Worth getting and keeping a copy to read more than once.
Shorted PANL during the first afternoon spike. I was busy trying to get some work done so I shorted $60 calls and kept the size micro sized. I didn't want enough of a position to start focusing on it. I closed it out about half an hour later for a .30 gain per option.
I am still long GA puts and GA fell a little bit today. Closed very close to the strike price. A couple more down days and this may turn out ok. Friday is coming fast though. Speaking of Friday, my Intel puts I wrote are worth a penny and a half now. I am liking that. I see COCO managed to make it back to around $2 today. At some point COCO stock is going to jump to $4 and everyone will wonder why they didn't load up the truck with shares.
DSW continues to be a good trade and Thursday I will find out if I get exercised early or not.
Any insight on PANL? Specifically why has PANL doubled since mid August while GLW is dropping big time?
[quote="GEE"]Any insight on PANL? Specifically why has PANL doubled since mid August while GLW is dropping big time?[/quote]
Hello GEE,
I am not sure but I have traded PANL this week. I am going to research both tomorrow and I will report back my findings
Thanks
Robert
Spent much of the day going over RIMM, SVM, PANL and GA
I am still short GA and it is taking it's sweet time falling. At least at the close I am where I really wanted to be if the dividend was paid, back to even. I started to buy some shares to cover and if it jumps up fast tomorrow and moves above 7.50 I can make money and if it falls below 7.30 I will make money. I just dont want it to stay in between (even though the pinning will likely cause that) where I can't make anything
DSW I will find out in the morning if that was called away. If so I get to book a gain of just over a dollar. If not I will have to look at selling an oct option or closing out tomorrow if it is below 45.
I bought RIMM in after hours for 24.06. Depending on how it opens up I am looking at selling a $24 strike or less at the open and try to capture the expiration day time decay.
I keep hearing that SVM may be a fraud or at least the books might be cooked.
My sleep over with RIMM worked out well. I added in premarket and at the open I sold $24 strike calls expiring today. I had an average of under $24 by this point and believed the stock would pin that price. As it turns out that is what happened. Nice when a plan works. I covered before the close though so I ended up buying back the calls at a net loss but the stock was up enough to close out the whole trade with a gain.
DSW option dividend capture plan worked out ok. I ended up with just a little more than I would have received if I would have been exercised. The annualized yield is great and so no complaints. I will roll over the capital into another dividend capture next week.
GA gave me problems today. Actually not GA but rather Interactive brokers. In one of my accounts that does not have a lot of money in I bought GA puts and instead of selling I bought GA stock to use to exercise with. With about a minute to go in the trading day, Interactive brokers decides its a good idea to close out the puts and sends me an email after closing to let me know. After being on hold for over 10 minutes I am told that there was not enough margin in the account to cover the short position if the options are exercised. I had to explain to the support person that no short would be created as that account had enough stock to fully cover it. After several times of being put on hold "to check into it" I was told that there was nothing he could do, but he would put a ticket in to the risk department to see if it was a valid liquidation. I asked to speak with the risk department and was told I could not. I asked to speak with a supervisor and was told I could not. He did tell me he would take down my number and a supervisor would call me back. I did not receive a call back. I advised him that the account now has 900 shares left that are not going to be put as a result of the liquidation. At this point it was after hours and about an hour after the close so the bid ask was huge. I advised the rep that I understood nothing can be done about the options but the account holder is not going to take a loss because of a wrong liquidation and my goal was to simply get it made whole. I then said I was willing to close out the position but the price would not be as favorable as if the stock was put to the writer of the option. He said I should talk to the risk department on Monday. I asked who was going to take the weekend risk of the stock falling in price. Of course he didn't have an answer for that anymore than he had an answer for anything else.
To me it was obvious that there was a computer error due to the special dividend that was paid out last week and the programmers didn't figure it out. Pretty much par for the course from my years with IB. I have seen countless bugs and problems as well as heard about others with TWS. I hate calling up IB and have never had a phone call end where I thought they give a damn about customers. As a result I have generally gone to the chat. Not any better customer service (except at night when you get someone from Hong Kong as they actually do seem to know whats going on and care), but at least I do not have to devote exclusive attention to a phone call and can do other things while waiting for the chat. I have already been doing more trading at Tradestation and I think its time to make a move from IB if they screw this up. I have also looked at hold brothers and they seem to have a good program and prices but no options so that's a tough call.
For my other accounts with GA the trade was pretty much a wash. I consider that a win as the bet was really about if the company would pay the dividend or not.
The INTC puts I wrote expired today out of the money. I always like that.
I am still short Oct COCO puts that have dropped in value about 50% so far from time decay and coco moving higher in price. As long as COCO can stay above $2 it will work out well.
Wow what a day. NFLX demonstrated very loud and clear that YES WE CAN fall for a hard core fourth day in a row. Some traders in the chat room made some and lost some but I ended up breaking about even with NFLX but then I bet Rocco another trader in the room and friend a million dollars that NFLX would trade at $140 before it trades at $120. I also traded MCP which I really don't care for highly but the option IV was so sky high that I just held my nose while I sold the $42.50 put expiring this Friday for $1.50 each. This was while it was around $43.something, and it was already down huge with several combo indicators flashing at me. As it turns out, even $1.50 was too cheap as it quickly moved higher, but I was already looking at NFLX so I did not get big with it.
IB made good with the error with GA. The account that had the issue was made whole and all is happy in the northwoods. I can't say much for their customer service, but I put the service ticket in and it was taken care of. I am not sure what the customer service reps are there for beyond making me wonder why I do business with the company every time I contact them but at least the person handling the tickets has a clue.
Ok, don't tell anyone but the actual bet with Rocco is not for a million dollars, but rather a bottle of beer. Of course pride and bragging rights go along with the beer, and how does one put a price on pride that is less than a million dollars??? Sorry Rocco, you’re going to lose this one and I am going to enjoy an ice cold diet Bud on you!!
I still have a bet with friend and fellow Seeking Alpha author Rocco Pendola.
Three days ago while Netflix was at $130 I bet Rocco that NFLX would reach $140 before it would trade at $120. As soon as we placed the bet NFLX which previously gyrated with huge moves has stayed in about a $11 range with $130 as the center.
There is a bottle of beer riding on this, so yeah, its serious.
Today was a good day trading options. After hearing SVL called out in the chat I took a look and it was giving several buy signals including William and Laurel signals. Knowing that SVL has weekly options I pulled up the options and sure enough with just a few hours to go in the trading day the $30 $SVL put options still had a huge premium and I calculated the loss of value to be about 12 cents per hour. I scaled into the position as SLV went down to about $29 with an average of around 0.875 per contract. Silver bounced as expected and the prmium decayed quickly as expected also.
I also traded the 30 year tres to the short side but bailed on it from a combination of trying to focus on dividend capturing and $PCS which appears to be once again a good put option trade. Earnings is about to come out though so if I do write some puts I will cover before earnings.
$COCO came back from the dead today nicely. I am short puts and while they are green, I liked the green on the other side of $2.00 fence. My $HPQ dropped to new multi year low. No big surprise when the board named Meg Witman as new CEO. There is an old saying on Wall St."don't confuse brains with a bull market", it looks like the HPQ board just did. The former CEO was at the right place at the right time and while she did guide the company from the basement to the largest auction site, she also demonstrated her skills at running a large company by running it right back into the ground. All I think I want for this holiday is a new CEO for HPQ. Of course there is always the possibility that she has learned from the past and may use the experiences to be successful. Time will tell and hopefully one way or another soon.
Today was quite the turn-around for the market. I watched as $HPQ dropped towards the recent lows. The PE ratio is now under $5, which is totally crazy. I did a write up in an article on SA that should hit the wire by the end of day tomorrow. I expect Hewlett-Packard to be basing in this area. No one would accuse me of supporting Meg Witman, but all HP needs is to find an effective leader. A company the size of HP will have no trouble finding people willing to fill out their job application.
COCO continues to trade below $2 a share and I continue to be short puts. The nice thing about going through 2008-2009 so recently is I have a very clear memory of the thoughts I was having while my GE, LVS, and others traded below my cost. I also remember how I sold out of LVS before it went over $14 a share. Needless to say, I am not real happy about selling when I did, even if it was for a gain.
I will be watching $MU and $RMBS closely tomorrow. The jury in the lawsuit Rambus has against Micron is likely to come back with a verdict tomorrow.
$HRBN stock fell hard shortly after large $18 put option positions traded. Over 10,500 contracts traded in the backdrop of open interest of 12600 contracts. Also, and this is interesting, over 11300 put contracts with a strike price of $10.00 traded. Both are October expiration dates. For the $10 puts to be profitable, Harbin Electric will have to trade below $8.90 by the third Friday in October. Someone is betting HRBN drops in half by the expiration date and the most they can gain is about 8 X their investment. If wrong they lose $11000. This should be more than interesting to watch play out.
PCS continues to be on my radar. I will be watching it again tomorrow to look for an entry. The IV on the puts are not as high as I would like. People were a lot more scared the first time it feel down to this area.
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