This amateur novice is sitting on some new ventures this week. Got a bunch of straight directionals A CONDOR A CALENDAR Planning on a straddle later in the week. Tomorrow maybe. Curious to see how they work out? First time for a CASH CONDOR, second time for a CALENDAR.
Seems if I enter TRADING LONG STRADDLES and then switch by using my private emails, I can post on here again. Wierd.
Alright, so I thought I'd be getting a great risk opportunity on Visa this morning especially after the price action in MA on its report. I think Visa is in a much better position than MA, and the nubers on MA were solid. Of course, the shares had to slow down somewhere. As for Visa, the shares had actually flatlined for 2 months and this earning could pull a surprise. No guarantees of course. So I went with 2 Visa May 4, 2012 120 call at $3.70 and short 2 Visa May 4, 2012 $125 call at $1.25. I paid separate comm, (stupid of me) so cost came to $515.90. I'd expect the options to trade on par with V shares after earnings with time value at 1 day left by tomorrow morning. Feeling a little rusty, but playing it pretty safe in my books, of course I'm using a good chunk of the $1220 I have left.
June options on SPX, looks like you've got a 1290-1310 target for SP500 by mid June? That sounds pretty bearish in that time frame. I'd at least see the SPX find some kind of support around 1350 first....there must be some bad econ news coming up within this time frame? I guess we'll see what happens on Friday first.
I'd fly it off Ryan. May 4 vol's gonna drop 3300 bp at least. If you're wrong, you'll lose quite a large chunk of the $500 So sell 2 each of the $125 and $130 for credit? I like your outlook on the stock though.
On the other hand, since we're concerned with a one day event here, and given how the market sort of b!c# slapped MA for operating expenses (not because it was poised for a correction or anything), we might see Visa get slapped for the same reasons here's a little snippet: MasterCard said operating expenses increased 14% to $758 million , driven primarily by higher general and administrative expenses. The company also said it paid more in rebates and incentives that it uses to attract business from card-issuing banks and merchants. Such costs increased 23.5% to $589 million because of higher transaction volume and new and renewed contracts. Investors are watching rebates and incentives closely in light of a new regulation that requires banks to add multiple processing networks to their cards, potentially creating new opportunities for MasterCard to steal share in the debit-card market from its larger rival, Visa Inc. (V).
Well I was trying to close some of my trade experiments out this morning. Think I should have made + $78 net on my 6 straight options, but when I tried to close the Calendar I ran into trouble. Back and forth. Trying to figure out how to close it in TOS. Couldn´t tell which was which month, being they were both MAY. Ended up finally doing it, only to find out, with my bouncing back and forth, I inadvertintly did 10 contracts trying to close 2. So, ended up trying to close up 8 of those on two sides. That ended up even worse. So many entries I couldn´t understand what I´d done and where I was. So chatted with Kevin at HELP TOS and he said I was short 4 contracts either side. ( How the devil that could happen I have no clue at all. ) Told him to please close all those CALLS whatever the devil they were now. Which he did, as I couldn´t make head nor tail of it. Then he told me, like a cat I´d used up my nine lives, or in this case, my two allowable day trades. So I skipped on my CONDOR and will close it tomorrow and hope I make something off it. My account balance is only up a few dollars after all that messing around. Commissions I guess? At least I haven´t lost for the week, so far. Back in again though for some straight long simple CALLS. Those I understand.
Yep, that's what I figured brought down MA and V. I believe V's price point has already included the potential operating expense. Now, as for the surprise, if V holds it steady in EPS and revs, along with everything else showing the same amount or less as MA, then traders should be more likely to jump in V shares. I'm looking for $124-$125 max, about 2-3% pop. I also added 2 WFM May 19, 2012 $85/$90 call spreads at $1.55, At best I'm getting 3:1 risk/reward. I think WFM has found $80 level as support and any drop there should push shares back higher. There's support right at current levels with WFM's 50-day ma, and I think traders will use that as a buy if the numbers beat. Technically, everything is aligned with WFM shares. On the fundamental side, I'd like to see solid numbers with EPS around $0.61 or higher to show a 20% growth. Last year this time, WFM had a 10% surprise above estimates, so I think that's doable again given momentum. The options volume are also very even and that tells me those speculators don't really have a direction on WFM. That's it, I'm all in from this point with $385.78 cash left. It would have been much easier start at the beginning of a quarter. Looks like I missed out on some big trades too, but I'll do what I can here up to mid June, and see if I can get something going.
Wow, that looked like you were putting in some heavy work there falcon. I would have ended up closing everything and settling it out tomorrow.