A Few Updates

I had described three trades: a DG bull put spread, an AAPL straddle, and a MSFT straddle. Below are my updates on the three trades.

DG Bull put

The trade worked out quite well. The earnings were somewhat disappointing and DG briefly gapped down. But the overall momentum of the market had the stock rebounding back up in no time and the combination of the positive deltas, high thetas, and dramatically falling implied volatility has made all the options worthless at this point and so I have achieved my maximum profit (unfortunately I am unable to get rid of the trade because there is no market for it. I guess I just have to let the options exprire in May).

Profit realized: 200% ($160) on cost and 8% on margin.

AAPL and MSFT Straddles
This trade is not going as well as I had hoped. My trade's premise was based on the theory that IV would rise. I think the IV was so much higher than HV that it could not go further up quickly enough to counter the negative theta.

The puts were doing especially bad because the stocks kept going upwards. So, I have traded the puts away for a small loss. However, the calls that I kept have been doing quite well. Because today is a down day, my current overall position on both trades is pretty much breaking even. Hopefully moving forward, the stocks make positive jump and I can realize profit on both these trades.


Additionally, I have been slacking off on my QQQQ analysis. I actually accidently ended up deleting my charts and I have just been too lazy to recreate them. One of these weekends I will get time to do that.

Finally, I have been REALLY slacking off on posting my month-to-month performance so I will try to get back on track with that:

Mar-April profit: 3.58%
Most of my profit comes from bull put spreads as I ride the rally higher. Today worries me quite a bit actually because I am down across the board and lost 2% today. Perhaps it is time to consider exiting some of my position prematurely because a correction may be on the way.
Biggest loser was actually one of my long-term investments in BRIC countries. So I am not too worried about that one.

-Wown
stockjockz.blogspot.com