My Trading > My Trading Journal > January 18, 2012

My Trading Journal

January 18, 2012

7:30 pm (PST)

ORCL and FSLR were both up a lot today and I tried to get out of both of my spreads since there is not too much premium left in them. I got out of 420 out of the 500 ORCL spread (which I wrote at .22) at .03. I left on the other 80 since I wrote a call spread on those earlier so it wouldn't free up any margin to take off the other 80. I got out of my FSLR spread (which I wrote at .68) at .08.

ANF was up a lot today (2 points to 47.40), which is good because my mom's credit spread was written at 43, which was only 2 points away before today's jump.

XHB was up about 65 cents today to 19.12. I have written 19/20 call spread for both my account and my mom's account. My spread is in the February options, but my mom's is in the January options which expire on Friday, so it will be good if XHB will drop below 19 by Friday's close. If I have to take a loss then it won't be a big deal because both trades are only medium-sizd trades.

TLT was down about a point and a half today to 120, which was very good. I have some breathing room between the market and the 123 strike price.

While the market was down, I wrote 600 of the 113/112 TLT put spread at .09 and turned my call credit spread into an iron condor I also wrote 60 of the TLT out spread at 0.08 for my mom's account. Interestingly, I started to get filled on my spread at 0.09 before my mom got filled at 0.08 (see the picture below).



I wanted to write out spreads on NYX, NTAP, and EA about an hour before the close but they all jumped before I had the chance.

My trades for today for my account:

  • Bought to close 420 ORCL 23/22 out spread at 0.03
  • Bought to close 100 FSLR 26/23 put spread at 0.08
  • Sold to open 600 TLT 113/112 out spread at 0.09
Looking at it now, I think I should have waited about 2 or 3 more days for the market to drop before writing the put spread. I got in trouble last year when I wrote a call spread at the top of the silver market (when silver was at about 47 cents) and immediately wrote a put spread at about 37, assuming that silver wouldn't drop 25% in a month, which it did of course. In this case, I think that the economy will be weak enough to keep the bond market from crashing within the next 1 to 2 months. I also think the global demand for Treasuries will kept high for at least a few months while there is a flight-to-quality into low-risk yields.

VNM has been up a lot lately - about 10% in a week and a half. I was right about that market even though I didn't make money. My VNM trade is a great example of a really bad trade. I had a correct hypothetsis but bad execution (although I made about 3% on my mom's account in 1 week, which is decent).

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