will update today instead of tomorrow. main reason for early update is milestone account value Account value: $70,015 Today was a very nice relief rally I was waiting for. I've been selling puts on KO and taking some pretty serious heat until the last week and I'm finally nicely green on all my ko puts. ARCP and DLR which combined make up about 20% of my account have also been rally'ing pretty nicely. Between puts and common im finally green on DLR..I took serious heat on DLR at one point. The only thing really holding me back from pushing to a great final quarter is IBM. I added more shares today and hoping for a rally into the end of the year. I'm watching AFL and OXY very closely. Having a difficult time deciding my exit strategy. Im currently up 24.5% on AFL and 19% on OXY.
i'm out of OXY at 97.50. I see serious resistance for OXY at the $100 level. this is good for a 19% gain i'm out of AFL at 65.60. I don't really see any resistance for AFL which is why I'm out of it. No way for me to analyze the stock on a technical basis, and on a fundamental basis I feel AFL has now gone from undervalued to fairly valued, thus no more reason for me to be in it. 24% gain.
Sold ARCP @13.47 was planning on longer holding but got 8.3% in 4 days ill take it. I also bought to close 2 KO 40 strike Nov puts @1.45 for a 27% gain. I Originally intended to hold this until expiration but I have high doubts of KO closing over 40 by Nov. I still have a KO 37 strike Dec put sold that I'm up about 50% on at the moment. I do intend to hold this until December. I think I'm for the day. Obviously I am taking a lot of risk off the table here between these and my AFL and OXY sales this morning.
back in to ARCP @13.10 I also got back into CSCO yesterday at like 22.65. bought to close my KO 37 dec put. I was going to hold this til close but I was already up about 80% on it and holding for another 2 months to get the last extra 20% didn't seem worth it to me.
just sold to open 2 jan 18 2014 AFL puts 65 strike @2.05 credit. I decided to do this because I sold AFL recently at 65.50 and am still actually kind of bullish on the stock. Here is kind of a win win situation in my mind because worst case scenario I get to buy AFL in January for $63 and I sold it for 65.50 and best case scenario I pocket $410. I sold these puts on margin.
My ARCP trades have been working out near flawlessly. I am now up another 3.5% on the stock for a total of 12% in just under 2 weeks on this stock. I am going to hold this time a little longer term than I did last time. I think this stock is worth at least 15.5-16 and plan to hold to at least that point.
account value: $71,326 no new deposits Somehow things have been humming right along. CAT and IBM continue to be a huge disappoint and a big drag on the portfolio. Combined they represent about 20-25% of my portfolio. They both had disappointed earnings and dropped about 7% each. If I could ever get things working in unison I could maybe start to get some decent returns going here. I was pretty active in the last couple of weeks but have been pretty active on the forums as well and i dont think any trades have been left out. I did add to my CSCO at 22.35 yesterday but didn't add much. CSCO is now my largest position. I can't remember if I posted on here but I also added to IBM at 175.30 after the earnings disappointment
I just read through my journal and found that I have changed my underlying strategy 3 times. One could argue I should have started another journal but I think adapting is obviously important. When I originally started this journal I would sell monthly calls swing trading them. My thesis with this strategy is that we would mostly be range bound for a couple years with high volatility. I found about 1 to 1 on the downside and 2-1 on the upside during the high volatility times (namely august 2011) Soon after I changed into swing trading thinking the market would be very directional but still in a range, just a wider range. and I somehow picked 3 tops nearly to the day and 3 bottoms nearly to the day. I chalk that up mostly to luck but the strategy was in place for me to be able to do that. Then in about oct/nov of 2012, about one year ago, I switched to a more long term buy and hold, which was one of the smartest things I could have done at the time as the market is straight up ever since. I think all 3 phases have proved the best option at the time, given my skillset. I started this journal my first post was $23,000ish and today it stands at $71,800. The reason I mention all this is because I think an underlying shift is about to happen again in my portfolio...
sold KMB for 107.49. That's two nice KMB trades now this year. Made about 23% total in 2 trades over the span of about 3 months combined.