Booyah! Yes I just have to give myself a self serving shout out for today’s calls!
I said get out of gold and gold collapsed. I said housing was bad and it was awful. I said stocks are bad and they were bad. I said oil was going down (for a week now) and people were awed by the devastation today.
Best of all, I said to trade the following:
XOM $62.50 puts entered at $1.60, up $1.05 (60% profit)
OIS March $35 puts entered at .60 up .80 (130%profit)
SLB Mar $120 puts entered at $4 up $3.20 (80% profit)
WHQ Mar $35 puts entered at $1.35 up $2.15 (65% profit)
OII Mar $60 puts entered at $3.70 up $2.70 (66% profit)
SU Mar $80 puts entered at $4 up $2.60 (up55%) – sorry about that one!
If you are still in these after the close you are amazingly greedy but I will admit I held a few too (XOM, SU and COP) but only in so far as I am letting profits ride. We should still be playing the market for 20% gains and keeping at least 75% in cash at the end of each day.
You have to expect at least a bounce back tomorrow, which is why, other than XOM, we stuck to the March puts – lest we get killed by a pipeline explosion or some such.
Okay, I’m done loving myself for the moment (sorry but you have to imagine how great of a day I had 100% listening to my own advice) so let’s see if we can figure out what happened today…
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On the whole it was a pretty good day considering the devastating drop in the oil sector, commodities and home builders.
There was tech strength including SYMC (told you so!) and CSCO, who reported a very nice quarter this evening but, on the whole, not enough to get me to commit my cash at the moment.
TM did well but nothing like what it should,the Jul $100s are still attractive at $10.20.
You would have thought that builders were pumping gas the way they were hit today, I will take a look tomorrow for laggards but the whole sector looks wasted.
Monday’s feature DIS spread let us out of the March $25 put at .40 for a .30 loss but the March $25 call ended the day at $1.90 for a $1.25 (65%) profit! I halfed out of the position so it’s all free money from here but I am out at $1.75 if it pulls back a lot. You can always retake this position later as the stock is usually not volatile at all.
GM held up well considering they took away half the dividend. That still leaves them as a 4.5% annuity and it looks a lot safer to me with the painful changes they are making.
SBUX did not go up today (sorry) but it didn’t go down much, I still like the March $35s, now at .85.
SIRI is going up for the same I don’t know why that they went down. We hit the bottom on the money on Monday and the $6 calls have doubled, all the way to .20! It’s still a huge risk but now that Sirius has committed to the 17th for earnings, I say move to the March $6s for .40 and sell the current ones at .30 (so you end up owning the March for half price).
Let’s hear it for principles! I shorted LVS in outrage way back on the 1st with the Jun $50 puts for $4 – after a rocky start they are a very safe looking $5.80!
Cramer featured OXPS tonight, that puts him less than 3 weeks behind me – I must be slacking! Still with today’s pullback I think we may be getting a rare second chance to go back to the well on this one but we’ll wait until the Cramerites get bored with it later this week.
Speaking of Cramer stocks, remember how excited everyone was about UARM? It took a 25% hit today – Boo youch! Another example of how p/e’s over 80 and actual earnings rarely mix.
PFE looks like it was a good call on Friday Mar $25s should be back to $1 tomorrow, still time to get in.
PD was shocking in the scope of its drop, sheddig 7.6% in one day. In a real copper pullback, PCU is still much pricier (plus that Chavez is blowing off steam again).
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=PD&t=3m&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=pcu
Friday’s BA Mar $75s are a double at .60, like I said – how could you not buy them for .30? After bucking the market today, I still like them.
I gave up on Google at 12:30 when it made a bottoming move on volume and I had to head out to a meeting anyway – turned out to be great timing anyway although I may play another put if it goes up tomorrow.
Another exciting day ahead!
