<p>I did put on the trade, and kind of botched the execution. .01 on 100 options is $100, and the commission on 100 options is $85! And of course if the market edges up slowly I can lose on both sides of the trade. We shall see. Honestly what this trade is doing is calming my fear of missing a big move in either direction. </p>
<p>I did a Q1 portfolio review last night. The indices sure had a great quarter. Not counting dividends, The Dow +11.25%, NASDAQ 100 +8.2%, S&P 500 10%, Russell 2000 +12%. Does anyone think this can continue? Will we be up 40% on the Dow in 2013? </p>
<p>I of course did much worse than the indices mainly because I am not fully invested in stocks. Bonds went down slightly. TLT (proxy for the long bond, I don’t own it) was -2.8%.</p>
<p>But also, I am overweighted in some poor performers, CAT -2.95% and DE -.5%, also own CTL -10%
My best performing stocks were PIP +52% (misleading; very small position that I own from higher price, so position is a loser even though it gained 52% for the quarter) USAT +51% (same story as PIP) DEMBF +34%, mostly due to buyout offer yesterday, NCT +29% not including a great dividend, BMY +26%, HSH +25% sold the small position recently, LEG +24%, WEN +21%, MDLZ 20%.</p>
<p>It’s weird that my portfolio this quarter was sustained by so much “garbage” while most of the bigger names had single digit returns.</p>
<p>I’m up 11.9% for the first quarter which I think is decent. I have a fair amount of cash in some accounts and my percentage would be higher if I excluded those accounts but my investment spreadsheet has my brokerage and bank accounts.</p>
<p>I don’t have a strategy for Q2 other than watching and acting based on the technicals.</p>
<p>I don’t think the stock market is going to be up 40 percent but it can be a very large year. Plus over 20 percent. If the market is up 40 percent, we are back in the bubbles. Then we should get rid of the Fed.</p>
<p>NJres, I am impressed with your trade. That trade is a little more complicated than the trades we talk about here. </p>
<p>You bought 100 options in the spy? What was the delta of those calls? You are delta neural right now?</p>
<p>I hope you saw what I wrote about aapl. That 700,000 share print at the close. I am teasing you… Lol</p>
<p>I am not teasing you about your trade. I am impressed. Plus you usually sell some premium on other isuues so that covers some or all of your decay.</p>
<p>Buying sds or sds options? I like KISS - keep it simple stupid as much as possible. I’m an old guy who is beginning to lose his marbles and have to always look up straddle and strangle since I get the two mixed up.</p>
<p>NJres, can explain…looks like he owns otm spy calls and just a small amt of sds…he is playing for a big move he said. NJres, how far out in time did u go?</p>
<p>His stock list looks interesting. I don’t recognize many of those symbols. Lol. Nice moves though. It is interesting that those major cyclicals didn’t do well. Europe sucks. China sucks. One explanation. Or is that two. Lol</p>
<p>Part of my underperformance this year is due to large holdings in Asian mutual funds and etfs. I owned aaxj which is asia not including Japan - that was a mistake!</p>
<p>Yes I know. I like selling puts to generate income. I see two problems. If the market keeps going up faster than the profits I generate, I’ll be selling less of them. Also I like trading a limited safe group such as spy, iwm etc. I don’t know how easy it is to roll out 100’s of contracts every week if I have to. How easy is it to buy and sell 200 iwm contracts for example?</p>
<p>You want to go from selling 5 to 10 puts to 200?</p>
<p>Psychologically, that is difficult. The mechanics… Your fills will probably be 1 to 2 cents worse on each order. A penny lost on each side is 200 bucks each. </p>
<p>I don’t want to give BCEagle91 too much credit because he didn’t acknowledge that I was right on aapl… Lol But you could use more leverage in your trades. There is more risk, but you will have a chance to match the market and still be in cash. If BCEagle91 was long qqq and iwm instead of qld and tna he would have returned less. You will make more in up markets using leverage. NJres trade is similar. He is going to use leverage. I would be shocked if he uses anything close to BCEagle91’s leverage.
Having said this, tna is going to drop 30 percent , more than 30 percent someday. That is a 100 percent chance. It is just a matter of when and how fast.</p>
<p>You were on the Ssi thread. If you read my posts on that thread, you can see why I don’t want to trade like that anymore.</p>
<p>Well as I said before, you can use calls for leverage, and with the money you didn’t spend on stock, buy put spreads etc. or if you’re confident that the market is going up, don’t buy so much protection. In 2011, I was 10% behind the market until it dropped, in the end I beat it by around 10%. I didn’t really get going last year until November or so either. This is why I’m hoping for a good pullback which almost always happens.</p>