November kept the trend going for me and added to may gains for the year. The bounce back in QQQ was a big help and more than made up for the paper losses on my short TLT shares. I remained too timid after the election and missed some upside, but didn’t want to blow my gains for the year if I was correct in my hesitation. I’d love to see a solid 10% correction so I could dive in deeper, but that might not come for a few months based on the euphoria that’s still out there on election finality and vaccine expectations. My account ended November with a Net Asset Value (NAV) of $111,798.00 according to Interactive Brokers (IB) after ending October with … [Read More...]

September wasn’t a good month for my account, but wasn’t as bad as the major indexes, so that’s something. In another rare move, I made no trades in this account in September, as I missed the opportunity to sell a QQQ covered call before the sell-off in Tech. The silver lining on QQQ is that I didn’t panic at the bottom of the correction and sell a covered call then, more than $20 below the current trading price. Before long, I’ll take the risk of capping my gains to lock in some profit. I’m still working my TLT position, but might not replace my naked calls immediately when they expire in October. I’m expecting bonds to push higher with … [Read More...]

The chart below shows the daily prices for SPY, an ETF that tracks the S&P 500 Index, after closing the week at $312.23 on July 2, 2020. SPY is up more than 43% from its intraday low on March 23, but has struggled since hitting a three-month high on June 8, nearly a month ago. The Williams %R technical indicator gave a false positive buy signal at the beginning of March, but was accurate on the second signal. This misleading signal is common when a stock or index falls deeply over a short period. In Wall Street’s unique jargon, this is called a “dead cat bounce” and most market veterans know to look for it before buying. On June 8, Williams %R gave the reverse signal and buyers backed … [Read More...]

I picked a great time to be under-invested this time. The trick will be getting fully invested before the fall has reversed itself. My QQQ April $225 naked put doesn’t worry me long-term, even though it finished February almost $20 in the money. It’s less than a quarter of my account value, which leaves a lot of dry powder on the side if the weakness continues and stocks fall much deeper. The same goes for my TLT April naked calls that finished February more than $6 in the money. Both will reverse over time and I’ll work a profit. Call it luck or skill, but being under-invested makes the paper losses on these two positions easy to digest. My account ended … [Read More...]

January was a blah month by the end. It began with what appeared to be a missed opportunity for me, but I remained cautious and waited for a better entry point. The result was that my account barely moved and is in between the losses of the Dow and S&P 500, which is not much. I’m still wary of what might cause the market to move in either direction. The coronavirus is developing still and we don’t know how much of an economic impact it will have. I expect a few more rough days in the near-term and then maybe the market will reset after a solid consolidation phase. If we have a relatively calm week, I might start dipping my toe deeper into … [Read More...]

March was a pretty good month for my account, although I’m still not too close to being fully invested like I should’ve been after the recent small price dip for stocks. While I’m still nervous about when (not if) we will have another meaningful correction, I need to stick with my trading to stay up with the good times while we have them. My account ended March with a Net Asset Value (NAV) of $90,005.66 according to Interactive Brokers (IB) after ending February with a NAV of $89,304.93. I had a gain of $700.73 (~0.78%) on paper for March (ahead of the Dow’s 0.05% gain and below the S&P 500’s 1.79% gain for the month). I had $113.70 in net … [Read More...]

Like most investors with a broadly bullish allocation, my account got spanked in December to put an exclamation point on a terrible year of investment choices for me. Actually, I only made three real mistakes and they cost me big. The culprits for me in 2018 were GS, FB, and AAPL. I took the losses on GS and FB where I had a realized loss of over $11,000 combined, but AAPL was the biggest single troublemaker for me. After selling an extra naked put by mistake and leaving it in place, I turned a small loss into more than a $10,000 loss. I haven’t taken the AAPL loss yet and expect AAPL to recover in 2019, but for now, it’s ugly. I would’ve had a profit … [Read More...]