John Wheeler

It’s the first Friday expiration and it’s been excellent for selling premium – not so good for holding a deep ITM Call.

Long Stock

Had I held 100 shares of long stock, I would have lost $402 (Purchase Price: $323.10 – Closing Price: $319.08 = 4.02 x 100 shares = <$402>)

Loss on 85 Delta Call

I bought the 85 Delta Call for $35.50 and it is currently worth $31.87 or a loss of <$363.20>.

Gain Selling Premium

Here’s where I did pretty good. I originally sold a short call for $1.04. The stock dropped and closed that option for $0.11 then sold another option for $0.76. Then I closed that option and sold an option expiring May 14 for $1.21 that was worth $1.02 at close of business on Friday. This made my profit on the shorts $188.00

If you take the loss of $363.20 on the long option and add the gain of $188,00a that came from selling premium, I netted a loss of <-175.20>. Half of the loss I would have hand holding long stock.

The market gives and the market taketh away. Today, it taketh away.

Janet Yellen started to warn that Monetary and Fiscal Policy cannot both be running flat out for the foreseeable future without overheating the economy. The U.S. didn’t even spend this percentage of GDP throughout World War II, when government expenditures reached the highest point in U.S. history. So the markets, especially the NASDAQ (Down 1.88%) reacted poorly and Facebook only had one way to go, which was down.

Since I’m being very cautious as the market figures out where it’s going next, I didn’t add any additional positions, but I do expect somewhat of a rebound later in the week since many stocks hit the lower edge of this week’s expected move and I expect they to adjust upward. However, it could be that the market could continue correcting for a couple more days, so caution seemed appropriate.

My Long Call Takes Pain to the tune of <$380.70>

Yesterday when I opened my long option position, Facebook was at $323.10 and today closed at $318.36 (Down about 1.46%), so my long CALL option took some pain and lost $380.70.

Closed my Short Call

To offset the loss, I closed my short $330 Call and made $73.00

And re-established it at a lower level

Then I sold a $222.50 CALL for $107. According to ThinkOrSwim, I’m currently down $479.00 in the trade since the $222.50 CALL increased in value since I purchased it.

I can breakeven for the week if the stock closes above $321.85

The good news is that I can break even in the trade if Facebook returns to $321.85 by the end of the week, that’s the nice thing about selling premium against my long position.

Facebook – Deep ITM Call Option Expiring June 18, 2021 – John Wheeler

Blogging is tougher than people think. It’s hard to come up with content that people will actually read, and it’s even harder to get people to visit your blog.

My answer? In this blog, I’m using it a bit like a Pinterest account – a place to store ideas (especially investing ideas).

Here is the Option Strategies Quick Guide from the the Options Industry Council. To be frank, I’ve paid good money for beginning options books on Amazon that didn’t have this much information. Here are some of  the strategies that are covered in the book.

Long Call

Bull Call Spread

Bull Put Spread

Bear Put Spread

Bear Call Spread

Covered Call/Buy Write

Protective/Married Put

Cash-Secured Short Put

Long Put

Here’s a great video from Mike Butler of TastyTrade about Delta, so that I don’t have to try to explain Delta in this post.

The Evolution of my Trading

Buy and Hold Long Stock

Like everybody, I started my investing career by buying and holding long stock.  I’ve always been able to pick good stocks and managed to stay close to the growth of the S&P 500.  But I was looking for something better.

Weekly Covered Calls

Somewhere I saw one of those Traders (that is selling their program that will change your life and improve your retirement), who was selling the idea of buying weekly covered calls.  I liked the idea because it seemed like it was leveraged to the upside, so bring on Weekly Covered Calls.

It was actually a pretty cool way to invest.  Most months, I was able to beat the S&P (barely).

What I hated about this strategy was that at earnings, when volatility was high and the option premiums were high, it was a crap shoot. Sometimes the stock stayed at the same price or went up after earnings; but at other times the stock dropped like a Chinese Space Station and no amount of option premium covered the loss in the stock.

Using Long Options as a Proxy for Long Stock

I got this idea from the great Jim Cramer.  In one of his books he talks about how you can use options to replace stocks and thereby leverage your portfolio to the upside.

This strategy used to be awesome for me.

For between 10 to 15% of the price of the stock you can control 100 shares of stock.  During the raging Bull Market, this strategy was like printing money.

The problem with this very high-delta strategy was the downside.  Being highly levered to the upside meant that you were leveraged to the downside.  It was too expensive to completely hedge all those deltas or the wild beta.  During the market collapse of February, 2018, you couldn’t sell options quick enough to stop losing thousands of dollars because of the high deltas of the portfolio.  Yikes.

Weekly Covered Calls on LEAPS

In Excel, this seemed like a really great trading strategy.  Buy a LEAP option that was about 9 months in the future and sell weekly calls against it.  Some LEAP’s can be purchased for about $10.00 and have a very low Theta because of how far they are in the future.  I tried to hold the LEAP until expiration.

Some of the weekly options brought in about 10% premium on the LEAP.  It seemed like a really great strategy.

First I got the Trader’s version of the gambler’s fallacy.  I figured if I could get 10% return on weekly basis, then on an annual basis – 520%!  I started shopping for my island in the Caribbean.

Sadly, in downturns in the market, this is a really painful strategy as you watch the LEAP lose value.  Trust me on this.

Directional Put Spreads

I’m always bullish on the market over time.  So what could be better than buying an out of the money put spread?

In my mind, it was almost like printing money.  I put this strategy in play and started shopping for my island in the Caribbean again.

The problem with directional trades is that you have to be able to predict which way the underlying was going to move.  Sadly, the market humbled me and showed that I can’t predict direction.

A couple weeks ago, Facebook had dropped to about $168.  I was sure that there was no possible way that Facebook could possibly drop further, I sold a 150/160 put spread, knowing that it was impossible that Facebook to drop further.

Uh, ouch.  Facebook is trading around $155 today.  So much for my ability to predict direction.

Delta Neutral

Enter Delta Neutral.  With Delta Neutral Strategies, I don’t have to worry about normal moves in the underlying.

So now I’m trading volatility and time decay.

Stay tuned for how this strategy works for me.

via Learning to Trade Options on Tastyworks