Wyatt, you are quite right about the danger of naked put. I have experienced that when I was on a cruise and Dept of Justice slapped Microsoft with huge lawsuit several years back. I was not even aware and there was no trade triggers that you'll have on Ameritrade. There was no stop buy/sell on options, thus every thing was risky. No one cared about Greenspan irrational exuberance, the internet stock was going up and up and up, no way it could come down. Walter Piecyk predicted Qualcomm to $ 1,000/share. My 2,000 shares of Onsale.com gained $ 70,000 in one day. When I came back from the cruise, the bottom had fallen. A big damage at that time. A very expensive tuition. I would now take decent profit instead of waiting to get the last dollar at expiration.
Now I am very conservative in playing options. Notice that in the synthetic long my strike price for the put was $ 100 while it was $ 120 for the call. This play is just for mad money, therefore, only 10 contracts.
I also do several short straddle and strangle on my Valero holdings, like Jan 08 65 straddle, and Jan 08 60 put and 65 call strangle. At that time they were made Valero was not going anywhere, thus I was trying to enhance the return.
My trade yesterday and today was predicated on a combination of luck when I read the tea leaves of what Baidu was going to report and an analyst opinion that Baidu June 130 call was severely undervalued. Definitely that type good fortune would not happen again any time soon.
I just thank my good Lord Jesus for blessing.
Thanks again Wyatt. You gave me better perspective of how to gage the retun on investment.
Paul |
