Glad someone else is still out there and on this side of the sod.
FWIW I bought to close the I HOT put and the remaining MRK puts, for a net of around $100. Also sold 1 QCOM May 65 covered call.
I'm not wed to the near month, I tend to look at 2 or 3 strikes over 1-4 months to see if anything stands out. Selling OTM and longer expiration gives me time if I'm wrong in the short term, but since I tend to trade in and out relatively quickly they work well enough as a vehicle.
With the MRK, I sold for a premium of $251 net of commission on 2/22 and bought the five back at various prices on 3/1 and 3/3, net gain of $77. Roughly 30% of the possible gain in 1 week. I'm more than willing to sell them again and actually tried to sell more yesterday at just above the original price (.53). While my order ended up being the market part of the day, no one took me up on it.
The HOT I sold 3/1 and covered today for a $25 gain (big deal), but that is on a May expiration (which will tend to move more slowly than the near month), so I made roughly 24% of the premium in 2% of the time to expiration. Again, more than willing to sell this again, although my history with HOT has been to sell a naked call (or short the stock outright) for small scalps. Started when it was at $42 in June of last year, so this is a new vehicle for me. I've done roughly 20 trades for a net of around $1450.
For all these years I've traded options without charts but have started using them the last few months. Bollinger bands,
volume, RSI and yesterday I added something called the Williams R%, using a 48 period interval. Don't even really know what that is yet, but it seems to give the same information as RSI, but quicker. So I'm watching that to see if I like it.
That's about where I'm at with all of this. I did play with spreads a little last month but find that buying options is a waste of time and money. If it's down a lot I sell a put. If it's up a lot I sell a call. Keep it simple.
ARS |
