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Today it was a massacre in my account

Wow, today’s broad sell off was a blood bath in my account. Everything was losing – dividend stocks as well as options trades. My account lost a whopping 5% today. Mostly thanks to one stock – TASR.

Although I was able roll TASR down and collect premium by doing so, I am dangerously running low on reserves. It is because many of my options positions were gaining in IV (implied volatility) and that put higher requirements on margin maintenance.

Since all my positions are still safely OTM (yet), I can consider this blood bath a temporary drop of my portfolio value. If however this sell off continues at such magnitude I may be in trouble and will have to liquidate some positions.

The plan is to close all winning positions. I have four contracts deep OTM making 90% of gains, which can be closed for profit to raise cash. If that doesn’t help and I still will need more cash I will have to transfer cash reserves from savings account and if even that won’t help I will be forced to start closing some positions with a loss.

I hope this will not be the case.

Tomorrow, we will see if we get some relief.

Happy trading and good luck!

 





4 responses to “Today it was a massacre in my account”

  1. Scott says:

    Hopefully you were able to recover some of your positions. How much time was left on the 90% of max profit OTM options? Can’t get much better than 90% of max profits. I’d have closed those for sure to free up additional BP.

    • Martin says:

      Well, I actually haven’t lost anything yet. I got a margin call so I closed all my profitable trades and raised cash. There was a lot of time left, but since the stocks marched up significantly the options lost value so I could buy them back for cheap (like 10 – 16 bucks each) and preserve the gains (in case the market continues in sell offs). and now only have options against troubled stocks hoping to manage it over and turn the trades into profitable ones. If that won’t materialize then I will start seeing the real loses.

  2. Sorry to hear that, HS.

    I guess thats the risk we take by investing and trading on the stock market. Kudos to you for sharing it though :)

    Best wishes

    R2R

    • Martin says:

      R2R,
      yes it is a part of the game and loses are part of it. I had a long winning strike for almost two years without a single loss, so some loses are needed to put me back into a humble part of the trading range, so to say :)
      I will be reporting all this mess as soon as it is over. Now I am pissed off.

      Thanks for stopping by!

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