Conservative option strategies, what did you buy or sell today?

[Otter]

(04-22-2020, 07:49 AM)fenders53 Wrote:

(04-21-2020, 12:54 PM)vbin Wrote:

(04-21-2020, 11:45 AM)fenders53 Wrote:

(04-21-2020, 11:17 AM)vbin Wrote: I closed a spy put for profit today. Still have too many of them.

I would do that methodically because you know what will happen if you dump them all at once right?   I intend to take my own advice but mine are longer dated so I can wait awhile longer for mayhem lol.

Mine are September puts but still I think it's better to close them slowly. Not sure what u mean by not closing them all at once?

I mean exactly what it sounds like you are doing.  I was joking but not really.  If I sell all mine the same day, you can bet the SPY will crash the day after lol.  Did you see me crash the whole oil market by buying back my USO puts a couple days ago lol?  Otter bought his SPY puts way early on for cheap.  It's a little different when you are up 200-300%.   He was more patient than I likely would have been.

Yes. I was buying SPY 308/305 puts expiring in October 20 or March 21 when SPY was at 330-337. VIX was near all-time lows at that point and put option premiums were laughably low. I could have made more selling all of them when SPY was at 220 rather than 270, but no one can ever time a market perfectly, and one of my rules I try to live by is to never regret making a profit. 

I lost ~$2,200 selling my USO LEAPs purchased Monday at market open on Tuesday. Rolled those funds into XOP $43 LEAPs the same day, sold today to recoup that loss, plus some profit. Learned that those options are highly illiquid with massive bid/ask spreads. Done with just buying options for the moment. Keeping some cash to deploy if the other half of the market that is within 10% of all-time-highs decides to head down to where Consumer Discretionary/Financials/Industrials/Materials/REITs are trading.