I overlooked that...but plenty happy with with the risk even with it. The %IV didn't lead me to believe there was anything newsworthy. Ideally, I'll buy and exercise tomorrow anyway and moot the point.
Left NKE at .17 for a 23% gain...don't care for that doji sitting at SMA20. Yesterday was f-ing awful. AIG and MU blew past stops on Friday and yesterday respectively. So I stayed in them with nothing to lose. Both are showing beautiful bearish chart patterns at the moment--so we'll wait these out. CAT has looked good from day 1 and also showing that bearish chart pattern. So we'll wait these out. And actually the market wasn't what made yesterday suck--I found a mistake at work (not even mine) that's going to hit my bonus to the tune of $10k...so, obviously really unhappy about that. But today was a nice vindication of holding firm yesterday in the market. Who's ready for a drop tomorrow?
...and that's why I don't trade SPX or SPY. This week was gruesome. There's no other way to say it. I'll spare the details of the closing trades on MU, CAT, and AIG. I'll just say, going forward, I'm hedging exclusively with long puts--this would have been a good week but for my hedges going wrong in the worst possible way (gapped past my stops on AIG and MU early, and missed the CAT stop today while I was on my bike). I did have a reasonably good week day trading (mostly SNAP), and that picked up about half the losses from the options mess--so still plus for the year, but flat on options strategy.
So of course, I end up hedging with SPXW this week... I tweaked my trading strategy a bit to address those devilish 0.5 - 1.0% moves that kill me (in both directions). Now, I have a bullish portfolio with hedges that cover about 75% if there's a downward move of 1%, vs. a 40% hit to max profit if everything moved up 1%. That said, if we're flat and my tend calls are accurate, I can still hit 100% of max profit if debit spread hedge moves favorably to offset the SPXW. This weeks positions (all put spreads and 6/9 expiry--except FITB): BABA 120-122 for .42 credit FITB 23-24 for .29 credit NFLX 160-162.50 for .53 credit PM 120-121 for .29 credit MSFT 71-72.50 for .41 debit (hedge) SPXW 2420-2430 for 2.15 debit (hedge) That should provide systemic protection without the upwards systemic risks that killed me last week--though at a fairly substantial cost (somewhere in the neighborhood of 19-26% of probable profit margin). The hedge positions represent approximately 35% of other position sizes. You might also note a slight preference for international exposure this week before Comey testifies to congress.