Do you do a.  deep call <3 months out with high  OTM covered call, spread?

So did you do a spread on SCTY? I almost bought some more to average down but we may have a dead cat bounce.

My momentums sank. Flushing out the weak investors.

IBD says Uptrend Confirmed. Pretty short market correction.

Only -2% on index. -5% on momentums

IBD says Market in Correction.

I use a variety of strategies.  Sometimes I buy a itm and sell an atm call spread.  Sometime I buy an itm and sell another itm that has a higher strike price but lower than the stock price. This may seem strange but what happens is that the cost difference between the two strikes is less than the delta when you go out in time.  As they near the expiration date, and if the price is at or above the price of the higher strike price, you make the delta in the strikes - the price you paid which can be a 100% gain.

Much of the time, I do what you suggested but I use the sale of the higher call to help pay for the protective put spread that also includes the gain from selling a lower price put spread, so the bearish put spread costs me virtually nothing.  If the call that I sold is exceeded, I'll roll out the whole spread to a later date and higher strike price.

I also do some other things with put spreads.  Today, I bought a spy 185 put, a 171 put and sold a 184.5, 181 put that expires on the 28th.  I made $61.31 on that trade and if the spy trades below 184 and above 181, I make another $500.  If near expiration and still has time value , near the 185 strike price, I can sell the 185 - 184.5 put spread and make some more money but less than the $500.

Bad this morning. I was thinking about buying more but got burned on Friday when prices dropped through my floor buy price. I am going to hold to the my speculatives. 

JD, on your spreads, you buy deep ITM calls and sell high OTM calls? is that the strategy?

-- Edited by longprime on Monday 24th of March 2014 01:11:09 PM

The only "covered" calls that I sell are in a call spread.  It doesn't make any sense to me to own the underlying stock, particularly in a tax deferred account, unless it has a good dividend.  Why would I risk more money owning the stock?

If you are selling covered calls or buying covered puts, and if you consistently make $$ and do allot of trades, think about doing them in a tax qualified account. 

SCTY's chart looks terrible right here. The stock will need to form some sort of a base soon or it will keep going lower.

I think I read a stat saying that you make money 70 percent of the time selling options and 30 percent buying options. I sell naked calls or covered calls often when the market is stable. I sell naked puts if I want to buy the stock but want a lower price. I sold the KSU 100 strike puts for over $4 that recently expired. I did another sale for April 100 puts on KSU for $3.60. If I get suck with the stock at a strike of 100, my actual cost will be below $93. I can live with that. If I don't get stuck with the stock, I like the extra cash in my account.

The only time I buy options is options on futures such as the crude oil contract. It is so volatile that I fear the risk of a bad move against me.

I first read a book on "Futures and Options for Dummies".  I guess I was too dumb for it since I couldn't really understand it.  I bought a book called:"Get rich with options:  four winning strategies from the exchange floor"  It was a great book.  Since then I've learned new tricks that I haven't really seen anywhere but surely others are aware of.  

 

Doesn't look too bad. I am only down $210. I got 400 shares @3.55 with the last purchase afterhours for @2.96.  

Out of VSAT for a 200 profit.  Put in buys for FCEL and PLUG close to closing, 10 basis below last trades.  with extended hours.  They hit at 16:02 and 18:02hrs. About the latest I have ever seen a trade happen and surprised that someone was desperate enough to sell. 

VSAT @70.07 on thin trading as of 1100hr EDT. This stock hasn't caught on yet. If MH370 had VSAT, there would be a good chance that someone would be  wifi surfing-independent of the pilots/airpl;ane. unless power was cutoff. Could  be a redundant safety feature since this is a satellite system rather than a ground system.

This guy says vsat is better than gogo, but I don't know know.

seekingalpha.com/article/2028271-viasat-looks-to-fly-higher

When I'm bored, which is most of the time, I love to read the cnbc and especially the marke****ch articles particularly the comments afterwards.  They are very entertaining.

My GOGO didn't went went. Earning beat and revenue up 45% but stock went down. I should have sold a few days ago, but I really expected a big pop. Oh well.

BTW, sax on CC rocks.

If I did my income tax form by hand, I could just put the end totals for the transactions in schedule D.  For some reason turbo tax won't let me put it in this way even though it seems to imply that I can.  My taxes are far too complex to do this by hand however.

Another question for you gurus.  Does anybody use turbo tax and how do you put in just total of stock transactions and not each individual transaction?  I have a ton of them and am going crazy.

It's decaying nicely at about 50cents for every $1.00 drop. I still got a little more than $2.00 intrinsic value. Original cost is $76.5. Today's close $77.8 If lucky this call will go to $0 before 28march. 

I have another 100 shares of scty, un-optioned. 

Picked up RGSE and PLUG. I was in RGSE last year and made 1.5x. PLUG was featured this morn on CNBC. I was also into this some years ago. I think I lost a little then but today I got in as they were beginning the interview. Had orders for some more but I priced them too low for execution. 

-- Edited by longprime on Friday 7th of March 2014 07:54:53 PM

The trouble with biogenetics is that they can be real big winners or losers in half a heartbeat. Last year I was looking to diversify and I remembered this company next to the I-5 viaduct, in Seattle. Went by it once on my bicycle and again when ds took me to an people's park under the viaduct.I was in/out couple of times in 2013, making a couple of hundred but missing the run up from 40 to 50.   In 28feb @52. Out 06Mar @53. Risk was getting too high for a couple of bucks, near it's high, didn't like the option, and I want to in cash for that 10% drop.  So I guess I used the Sharpie (I had to google it).

sold this AM in the need to adjust my risk to the market: SGEN . lucky me. financial today.