Sorry but I was away for the weekend and got back later than expected so just the facts here real quick!
My take on the week was is was a good test of market willpower with lots of bad news and some shaky earnings that still didn’t seem to really matter. We held most of our levels which amazed me but what really amazed me is how few positions ended up stopping out on us despite the market gyrations. That indicates to me that the market is still pretty bullish and our "Go with the Flow" virtual portfolio is still pretty bullish too.
I can’t even discuss the 39 positions we closed without explaining them as most of them were positions we sold, so the net "invested" on the group was -$162K, meaning we were paid that much to sell the calls and puts above the positions we added for ourselves. When those positions were closed out we ended up collecting another $27K (this is just the STP and LTP, not the $10KP or Google or "yawn" Stock virtual portfolio). So the net gain on cash is infinity as we never laid any out to make the money but it worked out as a great buffer for the positions we did leave on the table.
The average gain of the positions closed for the week as 159% but that includes 1,000%+ gains from no-basis TASR and CEGE calls and without those the average is 66% on 18 average days open. Our biggest losers were AAPL and COF calls we sold and that’s not too bad because our longer positions benefited from those gains.
That leaves us with our Short-Term Virtual Portfolio with 74 open positions that are much more hedged with an average gain of 19% on 27 average days open. The Long-Term virtual portfolio has 49 open positions with a ridiculous average gain of 309% as we have, this far into the year, run the basis on many of our positions down to zero (of course that’s the whole point, it means everything else is profit!). The more important gain on capital is up to 45% on 69 average days open, up from 36% last week indicating we have a pretty strong group there.
Our $10,000 Virtual Portfolio lost $4 for the week to $18,258, which is great considering the beating we took on our DNDN positions, and I will be closing this group out this week and starting a new $10KP next week. Remaining positions will still be tracked in the STP. We now have 21 positions in our Stock Virtual Portfolio but that’s because we sold a bunch of calls and the average gain there is 27% on 65 average days held.
All in all it was a really fun week trading. I think we are getting into a really good groove as a group and making much better decisions and our healthy dose of skepticism has kept us from getting too giddy and overbuying as well as getting too worried and overselling as the market gave us plenty of everything last week. I still want to pare down the STP but we are slowly but surely rebalancing back to the LTP, which means that, deep down inside, I’m expecting us to have a choppy summer.
Until we get a real confirmation from the market thought, we maintain our bullish but hedged stance in the STP.
