Stock Trading

[Del]

Boy, am I happy with my habit of expiring my options on Wednesday! Yesterday's condor expired safely, but I would be in big trouble today.

The latest employment news indicates that the job market is even tighter than the market expected. And the minutes from last week's FED meeting were published, indicating that tight labor was pushing the FED to consider another rate hike in July. So BOOM, BOOM!

Both SPX and RUT dropped hard this morning to touch support, and then slowly up rebound. I set up a new condor on RUT yesterday to expire next Wednesday, with the lower bound right at support. So I'm watching that support very closely now.

I sold some more credit spreads well below support while the opportunity presented itself. More income, or else some buffer to mitigate costs in case I have to adjust my position.

Tomorrow is more employment data... hopefully Mr. Market has reset his expectations and won't be double-shocked.
Next Wednesday is CPI inflation data for Q2. Hopefully not bad enough to spook the market below support.

Earnings season starts week of July 17, with the first 200 or so corporations reporting. Generally, the early reporters are of the banking/financial sector.

XOM Exxon and CVX Chevron both report on July 28. Huge impact on my XLE.

[sweetandsour]

I had a mind to put in a buy order for AMZN at 127.9 yesterday, just to catch it in case the price dropped below 128. Unfortunately I had these thoughts while on the golf course, and got distracted. Still, I may buy some this morning at 128. Also looking at Walmart.

[sweetandsour]

I had a mind to put in a buy order for AMZN at 127.9 yesterday, just to catch it in case the price dropped below 128. Unfortunately I had these thoughts while on the golf course, and got distracted. Still, I may buy some this morning at 128. Also looking at Walmart.

Edit: I put in a limit buy this morning for 128, but it won't get there I think. I'm going to a late breakfast, and then clean my office.

[Del]

I had a mind to put in a buy order for AMZN at 127.9 yesterday, just to catch it in case the price dropped below 128. Unfortunately I had these thoughts while on the golf course, and got distracted. Still, I may buy some this morning at 128. Also looking at Walmart.

Edit: I put in a limit buy this morning for 128, but it won't get there I think. I'm going to a late breakfast, and then clean my office.

Yesterday's advance employment data from ADP came in very hot, reporting 500k new workers against the market expectation of just 225k. Market got scared that America is running out of workers, triggering inflation and rate hikes.

But today the "official" number from Bureau of Labor was much more realistic: 209k new workers v. 224k expected. Unemployment and average earning also came in line with expectations, and the market recovered some of what it lost yesterday.

In short: yesterday was the moment to go bargain hunting. Not today.

Meanwhile, I got my JEPI dividend today. $72! Hoody-Hoo!

I kinda went nuts with the condors this week. My risk graph looks like an Aztec pyramid. I am betting heavily that the RUT will trade nervously between recent support and resistance as we await the CPI data on Wed, July 12, and for earnings season to kick off in earnest on July 17.

[sweetandsour]

I had a mind to put in a buy order for AMZN at 127.9 yesterday, just to catch it in case the price dropped below 128. Unfortunately I had these thoughts while on the golf course, and got distracted. Still, I may buy some this morning at 128. Also looking at Walmart.

Edit: I put in a limit buy this morning for 128, but it won't get there I think. I'm going to a late breakfast, and then clean my office.

Yesterday's advance employment data from ADP came in very hot, reporting 500k new workers against the market expectation of just 225k. Market got scared that America is running out of workers, triggering inflation and rate hikes.

But today the "official" number from Bureau of Labor was much more realistic: 209k new workers v. 224k expected. Unemployment and average earning also came in line with expectations, and the market recovered some of what it lost yesterday.

In short: yesterday was the moment to go bargain hunting. Not today.

Meanwhile, I got my JEPI dividend today. $72! Hoody-Hoo!

I kinda went nuts with the condors this week. My risk graph looks like an Aztec pyramid. I am betting heavily that the RUT will trade nervously between recent support and resistance as we await the CPI data on Wed, July 12, and for earnings season to kick off in earnest on July 17.

Things like this seem to always occur on Thursdays when I'm golfing. Anyway, the price is back up to 130 now, so I'll wait it out until whenever. But golf didn't fail me entirely, btw, I got a lotto ticket that won $22 last night, so there's that, even if I did shoot a 93.

[Del]

Things like this seem to always occur on Thursdays when I'm golfing. Anyway, the price is back up to 130 now, so I'll wait it out until whenever. But golf didn't fail me entirely, btw, I got a lotto ticket that won $22 last night, so there's that, even if I did shoot a 93.

Speaking of golf.... We are planning a trip down south in early October to visit a friend in the Florida panhandle. One option that I am proposing is that we start in East Texas, eat our way deliciously across Louisiana, and end up in Florida. Then go home by way of coco in Alabama, if his wife is up for visitors.

Do you have an easy and low-key course nearby for my wife to enjoy some duffing? This could influence our plans...
=======================
XLE got up to 81.54 today! I have a short call at 81 that expires today, happy to reduce my holding. I adjusted my spreadsheet and everything, assuming that it would be called out. Then everything pulled back during the final 30 minutes of trading (it's a Friday, you know), and closed at 80.85. So I have to un-adjust my spreadsheet and sell that call again.

All of my positions are behaving very well at close. I have my risk dialed up to 11 on RUT, so here's hoping for a quiet weekend of financial news.

[sweetandsour]

Things like this seem to always occur on Thursdays when I'm golfing. Anyway, the price is back up to 130 now, so I'll wait it out until whenever. But golf didn't fail me entirely, btw, I got a lotto ticket that won $22 last night, so there's that, even if I did shoot a 93.

Speaking of golf.... We are planning a trip down south in early October to visit a friend in the Florida panhandle. One option that I am proposing is that we start in East Texas, eat our way deliciously across Louisiana, and end up in Florida. Then go home by way of coco in Alabama, if his wife is up for visitors.

Do you have an easy and low-key course nearby for my wife to enjoy some duffing? This could influence our plans...
=======================
XLE got up to 81.54 today! I have a short call at 81 that expires today, happy to reduce my holding. I adjusted my spreadsheet and everything, assuming that it would be called out. Then everything pulled back during the final 30 minutes of trading (it's a Friday, you know), and closed at 80.85. So I have to un-adjust my spreadsheet and sell that call again.

All of my positions are behaving very well at close. I have my risk dialed up to 11 on RUT, so here's hoping for a quiet weekend of financial news.

My goal (or I should say one of my goals) this year is to become learned and confident enough to enter an options trade, this year. If I ever get the hang of it I think that I would enjoy it.

Regarding golf courses, around here they're all pretty low-key, and easy enough for me to regularly score in the low 90s. Plenty of hotels too - sorry but my house is full up at the moment with grands and even a great-grand! The timing will have to be precise, though; life is pretty busy around here.

WRT XLE, I saw the price climbing this morning, and the analysts were all over it in the after market reviews.

Anyway, hope we all have a great weekend.

[Del]

Things like this seem to always occur on Thursdays when I'm golfing. Anyway, the price is back up to 130 now, so I'll wait it out until whenever. But golf didn't fail me entirely, btw, I got a lotto ticket that won $22 last night, so there's that, even if I did shoot a 93.

Speaking of golf.... We are planning a trip down south in early October to visit a friend in the Florida panhandle. One option that I am proposing is that we start in East Texas, eat our way deliciously across Louisiana, and end up in Florida. Then go home by way of coco in Alabama, if his wife is up for visitors.

Do you have an easy and low-key course nearby for my wife to enjoy some duffing? This could influence our plans...
=======================
XLE got up to 81.54 today! I have a short call at 81 that expires today, happy to reduce my holding. I adjusted my spreadsheet and everything, assuming that it would be called out. Then everything pulled back during the final 30 minutes of trading (it's a Friday, you know), and closed at 80.85. So I have to un-adjust my spreadsheet and sell that call again.

All of my positions are behaving very well at close. I have my risk dialed up to 11 on RUT, so here's hoping for a quiet weekend of financial news.

My goal (or I should say one of my goals) this year is to become learned and confident enough to enter an options trade, this year. If I ever get the hang of it I think that I would enjoy it.

Regarding golf courses, around here they're all pretty low-key, and easy enough for me to regularly score in the low 90s. Plenty of hotels too - sorry but my house is full up at the moment with grands and even a great-grand! The timing will have to be precise, though; life is pretty busy around here.

WRT XLE, I saw the price climbing this morning, and the analysts were all over it in the after market reviews.

Anyway, hope we all have a great weekend.

We'll stay in touch. One option has us traveling to NOLA with a friend so she can visit her daughter and grandchild. So plans are in flux.... A hotel is fine, if we can make it. Maybe we just get to share a few hours and take your family out to dinner. Or maybe even a golf outing.
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Learning options: Do any of your friends trade options? Having a friendly mentor close by is a big help. I had to teach myself (by paying for some quality online courses). It was still a slow and expensive trail without a living mentor.

Of course, I would love to help you as much as I can. We can chat on the phone and look at charts together.

But nothing beats practicing on your own. The most vital tool is a paper-trading platform, where you can make real trades in real time with pretend money. You can learn and make mistakes without any risk. And hopefully develop a style that you are comfortable with.

I like selling credit spreads (an iron condor just two credit spreads: a "bullish put spread" and a "bearish call spread"). This is a good strategy for a guy who doesn't have much confidence on predicting whether a stock is going to go up or down over a short span of time (e.g., one week to one month). The one thing I know for sure is that time will pass, day after day. And I'm fairly confident at recognizing zones of strong support and resistance. So I sell credit spreads with borders set below support and above resistance, and let time pass. My average profit is $1400/week (after 28 weeks) using this strategy. It is worth learning.

The complicated part is making adjustments to the trade -- to squeeze more profit when conditions are favorable. And most of all, how and when to move out of the way when the trade goes against me so I take less than the full loss.

I just checked my records. It's actually scary to admit this:

I started this year with $55,000.

$75,169 total premium sold on condors
-32,131 in defensive adjustments
-3750 in loan payments (because I borrowed $20k from home equity to leverage my position size)
$39,288 net profit

43% of my sales go to defensive costs. (YIKES! I did not realize this until doing this exercise.) And that's doing everything I can to keep defensive costs down. Without adequate defensive skills, I could easy be in big loss territory. Now I have the feeling that I could make more profit by taking on less risk.

I clobbered myself pretty hard in June. Since Memorial Day, my overall net profit on condors is just $1300. I am just now climbing out of the hole I dug.

[Del]

ping

TECH TALK:

I'm looking at SPX and RUT, and the candles from last Thursday and Friday.

On Thursday, the market indexes dropped fast, hitting hard support. Then recovered quite a bit in the afternoon. This is the market showing us where the hard support is.

On Friday, the market rose steadily, hitting hard resistance. Then pulled back sharply in the afternoon. This is the market showing us where the hard resistance is.

I've seen candles with long tails before, and it is extremely telling about future market trading.... sometimes for a very long time. (Remember the "mattress" on SPX at 3800?) But I've never seen the market show its hand on both upside and downside like this. This is one to remember.

We've got CPI coming on Wednesday morning, and earnings season is upon us. So I don't expect these hard lines will hold for long. The band is very narrow. But it's there, while it lasts. And I only need it to last until Wednesday afternoon.

[Del]

TECH TALK Update:

Well, phooey. RUT already busted through the upper "hard resistance" (Friday's high of 1879). I called that one wrong.

Trading at 1888 at this moment, it looks like it wants to test the established resistance at 1900. 1900 also happens to be the upper boundary on my closest condor leg. So I am hoping it doesn't push through and pulls back by Wednesday's close.