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Ok, I've decided to start a journal here. Part of the reasons are actually listed in the sticky and another part is allow myself to be patient enough to profit from my analysis. Of course I'm also starting this to learn more and to fine tune my own trading which I know can use improvement. Impatience is the larger reason though and I'm hoping that by starting my journal here, where the people are both very knowledgeable and supportive, I'll be able to actually wait out the times when I need to wait instead of feeling like I need to be trading regularly.
With that said, I know that I'm not that patient a person. I also know that I don't really have a huge amount of funds to work with and that my risk tolerance might be too high. I'll mostly be trading options. The lowest expiry date I'm allowing for the options I trade in is to be at least a month away and I've decided (after my recent blunder) that this is the most risk I'm willing to take. I will also be trying not to put more than 50% of my portfolio into one company (I'm very tempted to though).
Now...on to my current holdings:
ALU March 20/2015 $3.00 calls - 30 contracts
BBRY December 2/14 $10.00 puts - 15 contracts
NOK January 17/2015 $8.00 calls - 20 contracts
SCON January 17/2015 $3.00 calls - 20 contracts
I'm mostly using the chart with a 10-day EMA and 20-day EMA to see which way things are going. Might add a 30 or 50 day EMA to it but not sure yet. BBRY is kind of like my experimental company. I'm bullish on the company but I went with puts because at the time, it felt like the trend was going down for a bit. The others, I plan to sit on until December or later.
Not really sure what else to add to my journal. But at least, it's now been started.
Closed my position in Blackberry puts at a loss. I knew it was a bad play but it was something I was experimenting with and in a way, my experiment proved to be a success. It helped me to fine tune my system and now I'll try and sell when the 10 day EMA goes below the 20 day EMA and see how that goes.
Decided to go back to being long on BBRY with calls set to expire in March. I don't know if they'll be trading at the levels I want them to but at least I know for sure that the trend is going to be continuing upwards now with it. I want to buy puts for HLF but...meh...maybe another day.
I had noticed that NOK wasn't moving either up or down yesterday and decided to place a market order to sell my contracts at $0.52 each. They went through and the contracts were sold for a small 6% profit after commissions were paid out. Small but considering the lack of volatility in it, I think it was better than the loss I would've taken if I had sold it today. This is somewhat further support that the system I have in mind will work as long as I stick to it. The rest is all in my psychology.
I decided to put a day order to buy some puts in INVN whom I've noticed have been on a down trend. I don't expect it to get filled though as I'm asking for a much lower price than what most others are asking for. It just felt weird to let my money sit around as cash when there were still movements taking place. I might need to improve my ability to find stocks that are moving well though and are at a good price for me to buy/sell contracts in.
Thanks, I'll try that out. Do that for the same stock or different ones? Also isn't selling calls and buying puts both for trends going in the same direction?
Anyway, I bought 100 shares on FOLD today. Trend direction started going up today. Looked around and saw that their medical product testing was giving out good results. Figured I might as well follow it up a bit.
This journal has definitely helped me with the sitting part of my strategy. I don't feel as impatient as I used to. I did set some exit points to take profits on FOLD, SCON and ALU though. I set the 100 shares of FOLD to sell if it hits $9.00 per share although I'm tempted to sell some covered calls on it to learn how that works. For SCON, since I got them for $0.20 each and it's trend looks to be going sideways, I decided to see if I can sell the contracts for $0.30. Liquidity for it seems to be low too so it's not a position I want to be in for much longer. Might drop it to $0.25 next week if it hasn't been grabbed yet. And for ALU, trend is still going up but just in case, I set it to sell my contracts if people buy it for $0.70. I might get back in if they pass their resistance level, which seems to be around $3.80 per share.
Placed an order to buy some BBRY puts since there seems to be a short term trend going down. Figured there's a fair chance it'll drop down to $10 or under if/when another analyst downgrades it again for whatever reason. Not sure if it'll go through but we'll see.
Edit: The order for buying BBRY puts went through. So I now have 5 contracts for BBRY puts at $10.50 strike and expiring on December 20th.
Sold my shares in FOLD today. Based on it's history, the impression I received of it was that it won't go to a new high again until more solid results for it's products are out now. So I sold it for a small profit and decided to buy a call contract in AAPL. AAPL is still on an uptrend and today feels like a dip in its movement. Whether it's from people taking profits or some other reason, I don't really know but seems like a good time to get in. The call contract has a strike price of $115 and is set to expire on March 20, 2014. I can see it hitting $125 before that.
AAPL has been behaving rather oddly lately. I'm also not hearing a lot of good news about it and its trend direction seems to be changing. I decided to sell the call contract I had and buy some puts instead. I bought 2 contracts with a strike price of $100 that's set to expire in February 20th, 2015. They're ignoring the people that make them money and seem to be more focused on pleasing their shareholders. I might have jumped on the gun on this trade but I'm seeing so many things screaming that it's dangerous to be bullish on it.
It's been a bit busy so I didn't have time to update right away. But some changes in my portfolio have taken place now.
I sold the BBRY put contracts for a small profit and bought 6 call contracts for $10 with expiry date of March 20. Half of my ALU contracts have also sold for a fair bit of profit. The announcement about lower revenues made me decide to buy 1 put contract in BBRY but I don't really expect it to turn a profit since the company is now generating profit instead of losses.
One thing I have decided is to leave the rest of my portfolio as is for now. Next step is to decide where the profit I made from the sale of the ALU contracts are going to go. I'm keeping an eye on INVN and AAPL for now. Tempted to hedge my puts in AAPL but if the trend for INVN changes, it might be more worthwhile to buy some calls/puts there. It's been going somewhat sideways since the huge drop at the end of October.
