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What Did You Buy Today?
Added SO to the wife's portfolio today with a limit order I'd put in a week ago. It's her first ute and this was the first chunk. It's about 13% off its high and liked the idea of compounding that cash at 4.6% yield versus 0.02% yield.
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“While the dividend itself is merely a rearrangement of equity, over time it's more like owning an apple tree. The tree grows the apples back again and again and again, and the theoretical value of the tree doesn't change just because of when the apples are about to fall.” - earthtodan


(02-27-2015, 02:21 PM)rapidacid Wrote: 3) I sell options on the following indexes: SPX, NDX, RUT. The last 3 months ( post October oil stuff ) have been pretty much printing money when selling something like an Iron Condor, which makes the most money when the price stays in a range.

Do you mind elaborating on this in the option strategies forum?
I tried something similar before with mixed (leaning towards bad) results.
I'm particularly interested in understanding how you pick your strikes and how much time you have between the trade and expiration.
(03-03-2015, 02:59 AM)daat99 Wrote:
(02-27-2015, 02:21 PM)rapidacid Wrote: 3) I sell options on the following indexes: SPX, NDX, RUT. The last 3 months ( post October oil stuff ) have been pretty much printing money when selling something like an Iron Condor, which makes the most money when the price stays in a range.

Do you mind elaborating on this in the option strategies forum?
I tried something similar before with mixed (leaning towards bad) results.
I'm particularly interested in understanding how you pick your strikes and how much time you have between the trade and expiration.

I'll just reply here as its not too long.

I sell options on SPX, NDX and RUT because they're European style, which means they cannot be exercised early and I am in complete control of my post initiation strategy.

As you know, the delta of an option is a proxy for the percent chance the market is stating that strike will end up ITM. A delta of 1.00 means the option is already ITM, a delta of 0.1 means the market is stating there's only about a 10% chance the strike will end up ITM. A bit confusingly, when you read about options and delta you'll often see verbiage of "Delta 10", which actually means Delta 0.1, not Delta 10.00, which would be impossible.

For the most part, I sell my Iron Condors 6-8 weeks before expiration. So right now I'm selling April 15s. I do sell some 6m+ stuff as the premiums are huge, but mostly I keep it short.

I want super low risk when I sell these but still enough juice to get paid, so for an Iron Condor I look to sell the Delta 10 put and the Delta 10 call. By definition this means I'm usually buying something like a Delta 8 / 9 call / put. When analyzing the trade you usually see a profit zone that is quite wide, with about 77-80% chance of finishing completely worthless, which is exactly what I want ( ie. just collect the premium from selling )

As soon as I sell the IC, I immediately put in a GTC order to buy back the options for a smaller percentage of my sell price. For example, something like the RUT or SPX which recently has been a bit lethargic I'll immediately put in a GTC buy-to-close order of 50% or $0.50 if I sold the option for $1.00. For something like the NDX which has been a bit freaky lately I'll put the order in at ~66-70% of the value I sold it for. This strategy takes a lot of the emotion out of the transaction. For the 6m+ stuff I'll sell at like 80% value as the premiums were much larger to begin with so the premium captured is usually more than the 6-8 week stuff even though I'm capturing a smaller percentage.

Paying attention to VIX is super important. You want to sell on the days when VIX spikes ( ie. on down days ). If the VIX spikes like 5%+ and you sell something, you may find your GTC buy-to-close order triggering within a week or so as the volatility juice decays. Easy money. Whole books are written just on that so I won't say more.

Looking at the deltas this morning I'd put on something like the SPX 2200 / 2205 / 1945 / 1940, but I'd wait until the VIX was way higher than right now as there's no juice available. By the time VIX ramps back up the deltas / strikes would probably change so its important to re-evaluate at all times.
Added 50% to ITC
Adding to PSX. I know that dividends and dividend growth is more important than buybacks, but since spinning off from COP a couple years ago, PSX has really been retiring shares at a fast rate. I hope that this trend continues for the next few years, while some of PSX's non-refining divisions pick up steam. Their dividend growth rate has also been double-digits, and I think that might continue for a couple more years until it slows to the high single digits. I think that in a few years, I won't regret sticking with PSX. Any thoughts?
Added to FAST on the dip today
+46% more ROK
rapidacid,

Enjoy monitoring your posts. I see several analysts opinions are a "buy" for ROK. Is this a stock you hold long term? Do you write options on your holdings? What made you pull the trigger today?
Bought Gilead (GILD) today at $103.

Opens a new position in my dividend growth portfolio. Also have a position in my investment club.
My website: DGI For The DIY
Also on: Facebook - Twitter - Seeking Alpha
(03-04-2015, 02:31 PM)EricL Wrote: Bought Gilead (GILD) today at $103.

Opens a new position in my dividend growth portfolio. Also have a position in my investment club.

Such an awesome company IMO. While I'm not a fan of buying companies that rely on patents and RandD to stay ahead, GILD's is IMO extremely well positioned for the future. It's an FCF machine.
(03-04-2015, 01:00 PM)Main Street Stock Investor Wrote: rapidacid,

Enjoy monitoring your posts. I see several analysts opinions are a "buy" for ROK. Is this a stock you hold long term? Do you write options on your holdings? What made you pull the trigger today?

Any purchase I post here is intended to be held long term -> forever.

I will sometimes write covered calls on my individual equities, but one of the pillars of covered call writing is to be prepared to have the position to get called away, which flies in the face of my long term intentions. I write very few CCs these days save for some on KO, T, CLX, PG, KMB and other low beta names.

About 50% of the holdings in my portfolio are at full weight. The purchases I've posted here in the last few weeks / months have been holdings ( or initiations ) that I am working on bringing up to full weight.

I bought ROK today because it is in the bottom half of my holdings, but ranks as my 9th best idea according to my criteria.

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