<p>Sadly, I was not in VNQ this month. The pattern of market movements has not been kind for trend following/relative strength strategies.</p>
<p>“By the way, if the money was taken out in Sept and you thought it was going to be paid out today … You have almost. $9,000 more in your account than you thought”</p>
<p>I wish. Looking back at my account, it definitely shows I had a dividend charge of $8921 on September 24th. The account is somewhat difficult to follow because the reported value of the options are all over the place when the expiration is far out especially on volatile stocks like twtr. I have spreads that are ditm on stocks that are going up and my accounts are showing that I’m losing money. </p>
<p>You arent really losing money…
You could temporarily lose money if the volatility rises but that isn’t the case. You are trading options that arent that active and the options arent all trading at the same time. Also, long options may be priced on the bid while short options may be priced on the offer so the closing prices are out of line with with where you can close out the spread. I wouldn’t worry about this. </p>
<p>What are you doing with that aapl spread? I tried to buy some appl spreads to try and capture the div but I did not get filled.</p>
<p>Yeah I know. I sold them a while back - giving up between .02 for 21 contracts and .07 for 20 contracts vs .47 for the dividend. I figured I shouldn’t wait until 11/6 (I think?) because I’d probably forget.</p>
<p>That is great. :)</p>
<p>I want to sell a bit of my equity-heavy portfolio and diversify a bit. I understand what I need to do with bonds, but I am looking for advice on how to move money into things like oil. </p>
<p>I looked at oil ETFs such as USO, DIG, and a few others, and they seem to be fraught with “contango” issues that eat so much out of it that it’s even possible oil prices go up while the ETFs go down over the same period. I looked at futures such as CLxyy.NYM, and if I am interpreting the explanation correctly, the minimum dollars to do a trade are huge, like in chunks of close to a hundred grand, and I don’t really understand how the pricing varies across time (very little) and large bid/ask spreads. I saw a fair number of mutual funds but they seem to focus n energy related companies rather than tracking actual oil prices. Any thoughts on options for individual investors who want an instrument to track oil prices?</p>
<p>DBO and dbe appear to have fewer contango issues. There could still be some contango issues if the futures dated later than what the etf holds are in contango.</p>
<p>The etfs well…here…</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.etf.com/DBO”>http://www.etf.com/DBO</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.etf.com/DBE”>http://www.etf.com/DBE</a></p>
<p>You can compare dbo’s and dbe’s performance to uso’s.</p>
<p><a href=“DBO Interactive Stock Chart | Invesco DB Oil Fund Stock - Yahoo Finance”>DBO Interactive Stock Chart | Invesco DB Oil Fund Stock - Yahoo Finance;
<p>^^ I had looked at others such as direct oil plays like DBO and USL, and others like DBE; it appears DBO typically has futures for one period while something like USL has a basket of futures for each month for the next 12. So apparently it has to do with which one is more into “backwardation” versus contango, and there’s no fixed answer. So perhaps I’ll just skip this sector.
Thanks for your info.</p>
<p>I’ve made a few trades over the last few days: sold 16 aapl 11/7 107 puts = .27; sold 10 iwm 11/7 113.5 puts = .18; Bought 10 spy 11/14 199 -198 puts, sold 194 - 180 puts for a net gain of $1.42; bought 10 xle 1/17 83 - 80 puts, sold 76 - 50 puts for a net gain = $58.55 and for protection on my long xle positions. I also couldn’t help myself with baba today: bought 10 baba 1/17 100 -110 calls for 5.8; bought a 110 - 115 - 120 call butterfly for .60.</p>
<p>Doct, you are trading quite a bit. </p>
<p>I will probably trade a ratio put speead or just sell puts in spy tomorrow. </p>
<p>You just reminded be indirectly. Aapl is ex div tomorrow? I will check.</p>
<p>Oops. It is today. Good thing I did not have anything going on in aapl. :). </p>
<p>I wanted to see if there was large volume in ditm call options in aapl the day before the dividend.</p>
<p>Hmmmm…I wonder what the open interest is in various strikes.</p>
<p>Now that I look at my trading book, I also bought 16 bac 1/17 14 calls = 3.3.</p>
<p>I bought some tax free zero coupon bonds today. They are like savings bonds. Paid 47.00 and should receive 100 in 16 years. So, this is a 4.75 compounded return But it is tax free. </p>
<p>I don’t see any taxable bonds with this after tax return. </p>
<p>This does not work if you need a steady income stream. You get paid in 16 years.
Zero coupon bonds have slightly higher yields to compensate for the fact you dont get a steady income stream and you have slightly more risk. If the bond falters in year 10, you can end up with very little or nothing.</p>
<p>I paid $9400 and I get back $20,000. I am not getting rich with this. </p>
<p>Why are my xle calls increasing in value today when oil has been dropping like a rock?</p>
<p>Have you looked at the change of volatility pricing of the options?</p>
<p>Plus, xle is up today.</p>
<p><a href=“Last dance for options trading strategy around dividends”>Last dance for options trading strategy around dividends;
<p>I am not sure quite how this is going to work out. </p>
<p>When S was an infant and before D existed, we bought some zero coupon bonds @ 9% that we saved to help pay for their college. It wasn’t sexy, but it helped us sleep better at night. It was $15K to be worth $60K when they were in college, which would have paid for them to have 4 years each of our public U + dorming. Of course they attended a school where it didn’t even cover a full year’s worth of tuition, room & board, but the concept was attractive to us. Of course if we had bought a good plain index fund, we would have made MUCH, much more!</p>
<p>What year did you buy those bonds? Do you remember?</p>
<p>I believe I bought them in 1987 or 1988 or so because S was already born but D wasn’t. They were issued by Hawaii and fortunately weren’t ever called early, even when interest rates dropped to way below 9%.</p>