• Sean Broderick: dividends. Claymore/SWM Canadian Energy Income Index ETF, symbol ENY.
• Bespoke. Perhaps the start of a further 3% decline.

One of the things I fouled up was my spreadsheet of results. I had set it up so that it strung out to the right. But when I duplicated rows in the current month as a way to insert a new position, I inadvertently duplicated rows in a past month, fouling everything up. I bought Quicken hoping it would provide a better way to keep track of my positions. So far I’m disappointed. It doesn’t seem very well set up for options.

DOW. Also ran right past my top straddle at 16. Didn’t get my trade up, either. This time will trade the short 14 straddle for a short 17 straddle.

FCX. Really got killed here. Again ran above my top straddle. This time by 2 points! Will sell three 50 Puts to balance three short calls. Will also sell a 50 Call and roll the 42 and 43 calls up to 46 calls.

FXI. Same story once again. Will sell two 38 Puts and roll the 32 and 33 call to 34 calls.

IBM. Still ok, but will close it if I can for <= $0.5.

IWM. Will build more or less the same structure as in RUT. Sell 500 Put, buy 490 Put, Sell 450 Put. Sell 550 Put. Also reduce leverage from 7 to 3.

SLB. Same thing again. Will roll the 45 straddle up to a 55 straddle.

SPY. Trying a daily market timing strategy. Using both long and short positions to see which works better—if either. Today I took two bearish position, a long 88 Put and a short 93 Call.

AAPL. OK.

AKAM. OK for watch 22.5 short call.

AMZN. OK for now.

CAT. (June positions.)  37 and 40 straddles. Pretty close together. Now close to 37. Watch.

DOW. 14 and 16 straddles. Close to 16, but can it continue to go up without pause? Will roll the short 14 straddle up to a short 15 straddle for the extra premium.

FAS. An old (Jul) position. Wait it out.

FAZ. An even older position. Hope it might be worth something before it expires next summer and fall.

FCX. Somewhat precariously balanced around current value with short puts one and two points below and short calls 2.5 points above. OK for the moment, but watch.

FDX. (June). OK for now.

FXI. Short straddle around current price with additional short strangles a bit further out. Watch.

GLD. Short 85/89 strangle around current price of 87. Watch.

GS. OK.

IBM. OK.

IWM. The short call spread at 50 is dangerously close. Watch carefully.

MSFT. A failed experiment in long options.

PALM. Keeps going up presumably in anticipation of the PRE. Ride and watch. Current action is a 10/11 short strangle with price at 10.92. Pretty close to 11, but also a recent rise. Also, instead of holding a long Aug 12.5 call, I’ll switch to a short Aug 20 Put.

RUT. Lots of legs as a result of scrambling when RUT rose about 500. My position analyzer says it will be quite profitable (starting at today’s prices) if RUT expires between 455 and 535. That sounds pretty good. It’s amazing that this position is so apparently successful. It’s an iron butterfly at 500 with a short outside strangle at 460/530. It takes a lot of legs, but it has an amazingly broad profit area. I should look into doing it on purpose sometime. If I were to open the position now with the puts moved down 20 and the calls moved down 10, it would be quite profitable between 440 and 520. That’s pretty good a nice 10% buffer on either side. That would be an iron condor at 470/480-490/500 along with a short strangle at 440/520.

SLB. Short straddles at 45 and 50. But SLB is at 51. Will it turn around? Watch very carefully. Or put in another straddle at 55? Will wait a day or two.

TLT. Currently short one 97/100 strangle and  two 98/100 strangles — in two different accounts. With TLT at 97.24, will convert the two short 100 Puts into a short 95 straddle and convert the two short 98 Calls into a 98 straddle . That will leave a short 97/100 strangle, a short 95 straddle, and a short 98 straddle.  The two short 95/98 straddles are effectively two short 95/98 strangles.

That along with the jump in DOW (which I was basically long in, but not long enough!) pretty much wiped out my profit for the month.

I’m quite frustrated with the trade reporting I get from my broker. It is very confusing and inconsistent. So I’m not sure exactly what my positions are or how my orders were filled. What’s below is my best guess. (It’s ridiculous that I have to put it that way.)

Given those positions, here’s what I plan to do.

DOW. (It really jumped and knocked my position from a profit to a loss!) Close the 11 Puts and the 12.5 Calls (because there is virtually no more time premium in either). Sell a 16 Straddle to protect the short 14 Call and to get some additional premium.

FCX. Sell a 40 Put and a 45 Straddle. This will more or less balance that position and attempt to grab some extra premium.

Update (5/1). Saw that FCX was up to 45. So sold two 47 Puts to protect the two short Calls.

FXI. Sell a 32 Call to balance that position and grab extra premium. As I write this (at about 11 pm Pacific time) the Dow futures are flat but the Hang Seng is up 600 points, nearly 4%. Perhaps I’ll sell the 33, 34, or 35 FXI Call instead of the 32. I just changed the order to sell the 34 Call.

Update (5/1). One of the biggest risks in trading (for me at least) is the possibility of making simple errors. Apparently the Hand Seng was closed last night for May day. The report I was looking at was from Thursday morning, which followed the US Markets’ up-day Wednesday.  Now I’ll have to go back and reconsider the trade I want to make. Well, I just sold a 32 Call. So I now have two short 32 straddles and a short 30/33 strangle.

PALM. Jumped up. Decided to open a May 10/11 strangle.

SLB. Sell a 45 straddle to balance the 50 straddle.

DOW. Covered the short 11 Call. Sold the long 12.5 Calls. Sold the 12.5 Calls. Don’t normally day trade. but in the morning I saw that I had sold the long 12.5 Calls and decided to short some.

FCX. Sold the 38 Call. Then bought it back and sold the 40 Call. Don’t normally day trade. But I looked at the result this morning and made that change.  Will close the 40 and 49 Calls and replace them by 42 and 43 short Calls. My broker charges only $1/contract. That makes this back and forth possible.

FXI. Bought three 30 Puts. Similar story to above. Sold and then bought back the 31 Calls. Then sold the 32 Put. Will close the 25 Puts and 38 Calls. Will exchange a 30 and a 32 Put for a 32 Call and a 33 Call.

GLD. Closed the 93 Put. Sold an 85 Call.

MSFT. Sold the 20 Calls.

SLB. Will close the short 40 Puts and exchange a short 50 Call for a short 50 Put.

TLT. Exchanged the short 106 Calls for short 98 Calls. Will sell a 97/100 strangle.

CAT. Will sell a Jun 28/37 strangle. Tight spreads.

DOW. Will sell my 3 long 12.5 Calls. Would also like to sell three of them but my system doesn’t allow it until the long Calls are gone. This will leave my short three 11 Puts, three 12 Puts, and three 14 Calls. In addition, I’m short three 11 Call/14 Put internal strangles. Will roll the 11 Calls up to 12.5 Calls after the long12.5 Calls are sold.

FCX. Will sell a 38 Call. This is an aggressive step in the face of the need to defend the 38 Put. Will then have a 38 straddle and will have to defend one side or the other. The combined premiums will provide some margin.

FXI. Will do a similar maneuver here. This time trade three 30 Puts for three 31 Calls. That will make the FXI position more balanced in terms of Puts and Calls.

GLD. Crashed today. Will close the short 93 Put and open a shot 85 Call to protect the shor 89 Put.

MSFT. Also crashed. Will give up on the 20 Call and sell it.Tomorrow may sell more more of them short.

RUT. Will close the short 500 Call. Too much leverage for my taste. It’s like 10 IWM’s.

TLT. Will roll the short 106 Calls (premium almost gone) down to short 98 Calls to protect the short 100 Puts.

DOW. Sold a May 14 Put.

GLD. Sold a May 95 Put.