OptionPundit

Tag: diagonal spread

  • OPNewsletter : May’09 (+11.2%), Jun’09 (Opening Shortly)

    It feels great when a single covered call option spread (done only @ 7.3% of 10K portfolio) can deliver OPNewsletter monthly subscription fee, cover commissions and still deliver profits, without making adjustments throughout the holding period. And what if the newsletter doesn’t get a single cent if doesn’t deliver profits? Welcome to OPNewsletter (A “No Profit, No Fee” Newsletter)! It is up +11.2% (x-brokerage) and +8.5% including commissions for May’09 alone (a 16th positive month out of 17 months.).

    As I stated earlier, after many months of waiting, we crossed our 60% portfolio investment guideline. It’s always an advantage if the trading capital was preserved. Yes, we did have a few months of low positive returns, but that preserved capital is an out performance in itself (vs. general markets) and now we can start using this preserved capital for further gains vs. wasting energy in recouping the losses.

    Maximum investment incurred this month was +64.4% and we are continuing to use that as basis for returns calculation even though we are now in credit generation phase. We have +51.19% in cash (assuming 10 k portfolio) that we can start using for opening June’09 portfolio shortly.

    We are nicely positioned to reap further gains and we still have 2 weeks to go for May expiration. I don’t have to worry so much about the market fall as that will further benefit our portfolios particularly IWM.

    1. USO is up +5.36%
    2. UPS is up +4.8%
    3. IWM is up +7.19%
    4. GDX is up +4.04%
    5. X covered call was rolled after +23.29% gains
    6. HAL was closed for +22.69%
    7. AMZN was closed for +15.83% and
    8. IBM was closed for +23.01%

    OPNewsletter has been using Fundamental, Technical, Greeks’ as well as Market Psychology for trade analysis to create our portfolios and diversified into different sectors (Markets, Gold, Oil, Tech, Retailer, Transports, etc).

    dow-may-1-2009We didn’t do an Iron Condor for the 2nd month as I still don’t feel it is the right environment. Though, in retrospect it may seem that it is/it was but I am not convinced. See attached chart, Dow up almost 45 points in 3minutes before close, manipulations any one?

    I am thankful all the OPN members (old as well as current subscribers). Thanks for advocating OPN to your friends, colleagues and trading buddies. This has been helpful in adding constant stream of new members and still maintain the quality.  I am also thankful to all the members for participating in the forum and expanding knowledge horizon of other members.

    If you would like to sign-up or benefit from Jun’09 portfolios of OPNewsletter, pls click here to sign-up for the waitlist.

    Looking forward to opening June’09 income portfolios,

    Profitable Trading, OP

  • OPNewsletter (Outperformance)- May’09 +6.1%

    Option Trading is equally useful to retail traders and can generate consistent income if used properly. Hope you enjoyed the free trade alerts for some earnings play (You may sign-up for the Basic membership that is free till Dec 2009)

    A Fantastic week for OPNewsletter! We played HAL, IBM, UPS and AMZN for earnings and all these one day players nicely added value to the portfolio. We chose to close HAL and AMZN and to keep IBM and UPS for further gains. These were special circumstantial opportunities and we took full advantage without having to worry which direction stocks will move post earnings.

    After many months of waiting, we crossed our 60% portfolio investment guideline. Maximum investment incurred was +64.4% and we shall continue to use that as basis for returns calculation even though we are now in credit generation phase. We have 42.5% in cash (assuming 10 k portfolio). The capital preservation strategy worked nicely. We moved out of markets in early when OPN subscribers were clearly warned of the upcoming market meltdown when I shared the need to stay away should Dow slips below 10,697. That was on Sept 15th, well in advance before the real disaster struck. As I always say, if you know how to preserve trading capital, you can always make it back to market. At OPNewsletter, Capital preservation is always a higher priority than missing a potential investment opportunity.

    Net, overall OPNewsletter is up +8.62% (x- brokerage commissions) and +6.13% (including commissions). We are nicely positioned to reap further gains and we still have 3 weeks to go for May expiration. I don’t have to worry so much about the market fall as that will further benefit our portfolios.

    • USO is down -1.34%
    • UPS is up +3.67%
    • IWM is up +6.08%
    • GDX is up +8.46%
    • X is up +13.01%
    • IBM is up +19.88%
    • HAL was closed for +22.69% and
    • AMZN was closed for +15.83%

    (If you would like to join for “No Profit, No Fee” OPNewsletter, pls click here to sign-up for the waitlist)

    We have reached our investment capital deployment goal for the month and I am not planning to add any more investment capital unless there are opportunity that I don’t want to miss at all. I am not expecting any major adjustments except in IWM if markets make strong move up. The probability favors downside.

    Looking forward to 16th positive month for OPNewsletter.

    Profitable Trading, OP

  • Bank of America (BAC) : A Speculative Trade

    Before I start the post, let me warn that trading into financial is full of risks and you may lose your capital. You should make sure that you have a proper risk management plan in place to handle this and should only invest what you might be willing to lose 100%. And this particular trade you should not try if you think BAC is headed for bankruptcy/ nationalization, wiping out shareholder’s equity. (As a general suggestion, one should never invest more than 2-3% into any speculative trade. A good money management is extremely important as these have high risk for losing capital.)

    There are some bearish news on BAC. According to Oppenheimer & Co,  Bank of America Corp., the largest U.S. bank, needs to raise $36.6 billion in equity to bring capital ratios in line with its peers. The news has driven IV higher. In any case IVs were already high on BAC and other financial stocks.

    (You may want to sign-up for the Basic Membership (Free until Dec 2009) that I use to share free trade alerts for registered members)

    So how to play a possible speculative trade on this-

    bac-75-long-calendarI am opening a LEAP calendar spread on this. Which is BUY TO OPEN Jan 11 7.5 calls for $3.5 and SELL TO OPEN May 7.5 ATM calls for 1.13, netting only $2.35/spread. I am treating it as covered call which means I shall continue to write ATM/OTM calls against my leap. I need to roll it only almost 2-3 more times to get back my cost. If however by May expiration, BAC continues to hover around 7.5, the returns will be > +40%. However the chances of staying flat are very dim. The trade has $5.8 and 12.4 as break even points by May expiration as per current IV profile. After 2-3months, LEAPS are free for remainder of the life assuming BAC doesn’t file for bankruptcy or for nationalization and hence the risk.

    So the chance of making money for this trade is only under “No Nationalization” or any other ” Significantly Bad News” thus causing the stock to drop to peanuts; even if it drops to the levels we saw earlier i.e. $2.5 or so, I expect near month ATM to generate $0.30 to $0.50 thus breaking even in a few months. It will be free thereafter.

    Net, if the conditions remains either as now or better, this trade may make money (If it does deliver +20% or so quickly, I may just get out completely). If conditions are bad, this may still make money, but if conditions are worst i.e. nationalization/Bankruptcy etc, it will lose money. You may also want to stress test for various IV profiles.

    Disclaimer– As of this writing I own this spread. I may change my position anytime without notice.

  • OPNewsletter- Mar’09 +8.8%, Apr +2.4% (Open)

    March’09 portfolios were closed +8.8% (excluding commissions) and +5.6% (including commissions). I used up about +46.7% of the assumed 10K capital for OPNewsletter. This result doesn’t include excellent results from bonus trade alerts.

    market-movement-mar09-opn-portfolio When compared with broader markets, this was probably one of the best months for OPNewsletter. Look at the major market movements since we opened the Mar (Mid Feb’09) portfolio. RUT traveled almost -20% south; and DOW, S&P500 and Nasdaq ranging from -14% to -16%. All this was followed by sharp snap back rallies. Isn’t this amazing, almost 20% back and forth move in one month. I have not researched to find if this is one of its kinds or has happened before. But whatever be case, this is not income trader’s best friend. This was surely not an easy period. In fact one of the toughest and most volatile periods, at least of my lifetime (leaving aside Oct 1987 crash). Hence preserving capital and delivering just positive results itself is good enough. One of the strategy I used was to focus only what was opened and keep cash free to make adjustments as needed. This served nicely without really triggering panic due to shortage of capital. For Option Trading Strategies, We used multiple strategies i.e. Calendars, Credit Spreads, Digonal Spreads and so on. I however, decided not to open an Iron Condor this month anticipating extreme movements which also served nicely (There is not a single losing Iron Condor since re-opening of OPNewsletter).

    For OPNewsletter, The best performing portfolio was USO which delivered +22.8% and it was also rolled over to Apr. I expect this portfolio to deliver +50% by July. The worst portfolio was ABT which was almost break-even (+0.89%). MCD delivered +5.5%. A tough month though, it required greek’s analysis, technical analysis, gut feel and past experiences with similar situation (VISA, May 2008) helped sail through this month.

    Some of the excellent intraday trades, results not included in OPN tracking, were +42% on SRS, +58% on VIX, CF arbitrage of $6, DECK for +220%, AZO (+27%, +39%, +73%), SKF +20% to +50%, FDS lost to break-even, NKE earnings +22%, DELL earnings amongst others. As mentioned, These results are not part of OPN tracking.

    We are nicely positioned for Apr’09 portfolios as well and so far invested only +19.7% of assumed 10K capital. I shall be opening a few more portfolios next week, if you would like to join, pls sign-up for the OPN waitlist.

    Those who could trade intra-day, markets offered wonderful trading opportunities, specially on the Expiration day. A smiling butterfly was shared with all the free members as well, that resulted into >+100% gains. Hope folks who followed invescafe/speculative trade alerts (some of those listed above), probably had some good opportunities that I played for intraday trades.

    (You may want to sign-up for the Basic Membership (Free until Dec 2009) that I use to share free trade alerts for registered members).

    I have been experimenting with several underlying/strategy combos over past 3-4 months, with real money. I think I am ready for opening new Portfolios/newsletter(s) to take advantage from current environment. I shall share more on this later.

    One final message, markets are not out of woods yet, pls don’t let complacency set-in, these are extraordinary time and it requires one to be taking extraordinary steps.

    Trade Carefully, Trade Profitably, OP

  • Option Business aka Insurance Business

    A bounce is due, no, I think overdue. We have all realized that Mr. Market can remain irrational longer than one can remain solvent. So though the probability of bounce is high, don’t count on it for long term bull market till there are sign of economic improvement. The primary trend is bearish, as clear as that could be.

    However, this market is bringing its own unique rewards. I would like to compare it with insurance business and let’s apply their business model to option trading.

    As the risk is rising, Options’ premium is rising as well and as an option seller it is to our advantage. So why not start building positions that are going to give regular income stream. An example of that strategy is called Covered call (Covered Call is an option strategy in which a call option is written against long stock on a share-for-share basis).

    I earlier shared a real trade example of covered call on SRS, where I was able to keep full 17% of profits for 4wks. I again opened it this month and have done a few changes to maximize my yield. Of course I can’t expect to have 17% month after month, but even 5-7%, month after month via credit generation from short roll over, can result into substantial gains. Alright, Ultrashorts are not for weak heart. Let’s move on to a company like Caterpillar (CAT).

    (more…)

  • Outperformance Continues at OPNewsletter

    When compared with broader markets, Feb was an excellent month for OPNewsletter coupled with a few good learnings (kinda reinforcement, been there done that, but forget that). Overall, OPNewsletter for Feb closed up +5.6% x-commissions and +2.6% including commissions. Capital preservtion and thus allocation was higher priority vs missing an opportunity.

    These results doesn’t include the speculative directional trade which were shared here (only OPN subscribers can see this thread) and here at my profile on InvesCafe (Free) which includes likes of RIMM +40%, V +7.8%, BIDU +5.2%, BAC +10% to +40%, ESI + 33%, SRS, STT, WHR, BTU, AXP, CAT, ISRG, BLK and many more. I opened multiple positions where some won some lost (due to inability to fill on time as I was away and didn’t want to autotrade). Hardly any of those missed the expectations except the VXX which I intentionally closed.

    Above all, this doesn’t include future opportunities via capital preservation due to early warnings. Hope you have been reading OptionPundit and thus were aware of the Bear Market Signal that was reconfirmed recently. And of course, at least one assett class probably would have been shining in your diversified portfolio.

    I have already started investing for March’09 portfolios. if you would to sign-up, pls click here.

    Cheers and profitable trading, OP