Today is an options expiration day. That means I had to take care about some of my holdings:
I hold long term SLV January 2012 Put contract. Against this contract I was selling covered calls and this month I sold one SLV Bear put Spread contract. This contract was as follows:
-2 SLV Nov19 2011 31 Put
1 SLV Nov19 2011 33 Put
Looking at this contract it landed at the ideal spot (well at the time of this writing it is still traded and it could change a lot, but I decided to take profits now). The ideal spot would be that the stock price lands slightly above $31 strike price. It happened today several times and if the market runs sharply down by the end of the day the stock may drop lower below 31 and I would be giving my gain back.
So I decided to close SLV bear put spread and take profit $1.48 (or $148) per contract. With my original cost 0.23 per the contract I collected 1.25 (or $125) per contract.
This trade along with my previous covered calls lowers the cost of my original long term SLV position from 2.78 to 0.78 per contract.
This trade was a disaster and all options will expire worthless (most likely) I am not going to take any action and take 100% loss or $38 per contract. Before the end of the trading I may close the trade to recover some of the money back.
This Bull Put Spread acted well over last few days, but today (at expiration day) turned bad. I owned:
-1 GDX Nov19 2011 58 put
1 GDX Nov19 2011 55 put
I closed my short 58 strike put, paid 0.23 per contract and let 55 strike put expire worthless. The profit is 0.57 per contract.
This put butterfly ended upside down (well, not that bad) so I had to close it. I had
1 APA Nov19 2011 100 puts
-2 APA Nov19 2011 95 puts
1 APA Nov19 2011 90 puts
The 100 strike puts were jumping around 100 dollar level, so I tried to sell the whole contract when the 100 strike put was In-the-Money to collect the most out of this position and recover as much as possible. I was able to do so and limit my loss to 5% only.
Overall, this month was quite successful. Let’s see what the next month will bring.
Happy Trading!
Hi, just asking, will you do your options review for December? It is a great learning experience. I found your website and it is good reading about stock and options trading.
Nice insight into your options review. Will you do it next time? Just wondering, since it helps me to learn from your description how you are making the trade and how you are exiting it. Thanks again.
Thanks for sharing your trading strategies. Can you however be providing more details so we can learn? I would like to follow your trades if it is OK.