A Look At My Holdings

When I first started writing here, I had meant this to be a place where I could track my performance and write down my analysis of my various holdings. Lately, I have been slacking off on that because I have been busy with other things/lazy. This is my attempt to get back on track of my original goal.

Below are my current holdings and those that I have not already explained in this blog have a short explanation with them:

GDX Put Diagonal

SPY Put Diagonal
This is a 103/109 Dec/March put diagonal. Clearly I am bearish on SPY and expect the index to drop to around 100-103 area. This diagonal sets me up perfectly for such a scenario and allows me max profit if SPY drops to $103. The short puts expiring in Dec allow me to keep paying myself dividends and each month reduce my total risk in this trade.

So far this trade has returned about 5% as SPY has dropped approx 2%.

MO Call Diagonal
Altria is a fairly stable company with a low beta and a relatively small trading range. Because of this, I expect the price to remain fairly stable and I am going to capitalize on the dividend-like properties of the diagonal.

Addtionally, this is trade mitigates my risks in SPY. If SPY rises, I can expect MO to rise and the way I have the trade set up, my profits in MO should outweigh my losses in SPY. If SPY falls, I expect MO to fall as well but my losses in MO are lower than my profits in SPY.

The trade itself is a Dec/Mar 19/17 Call with a 4/5 ratio. So far, this trade (which has carried over from previous month) has returned -2%.

WMT Call Diagonal
My thoughts on Wal-Mart are very similar to my thoughts on Altria. Same basic strategy and philosophies apply: dividend play and risk mitigation on the SPY.

The trade is a Dec/Jun 55/47.5 Call Diagonal with a 10/5 ratio. This trade has returned approx 1.3%.

UNG Butterfly
This trade went awry and completely did not do as I expected. However, because I had mitigated my risks well, I am still making profit on this trade.

So far, this trade has returned approx 53%.

PRU Double Calendar
A complicated trade that I entered expecting PRU to trade in a range. Instead PRU took a wild swing up and then down. This lead to me having to readjust this trade repeatedly. Unfortunately this is also one of those trades I entered into without a clear action plan and so I am suffering.

At the moment, the trade has become a Dec/Mar 47.5 Call Calendar spread with a 1/1 ratio and a Dec/Mar Put 50 Calendar spread with a 4/5 ratio. Currently this trade has returned approx -3% including all the transaction costs. I am just trying to work this trade off my books and expect that I am in a good position now and should be able to do so by Dec expiry.

Other trades
There are a couple of trades I had similar to the PRU trade which I have managed to work off by today (Nov expiry). The losses from those trades are offsetting my profits on all the trades I currently hold. If I had done my due diligence as I have with all these trades, I probably would be up around 15% for the month. As of now, it looks like I am breaking even - which is a real shame.