Monday 7/28 Recap

Current Positions

Closed Trades:

MU -- Micron Technology Inc. -- sold the August expiration 32.50/32 Put vertical -- Well, I was hoping this would have just one down day and bounce back, but that didn't happen.  It opened today at $33.35 per share and closed at $31.98.  Straight through our strike prices.  Net result:  Loss of $6, unfavorable close.  Sigh.  Not exactly what I enjoy seeing, but you can't win them all.  Plus side -- a loss of $6 isn't going to break the bank.  

Overall running total since new tracking tool in paper money:  50/50, gross +$1, net -$3.

Not too shabby -- almost breaking even on 2 closed trades.  And I'm shooting for a better win percentage than 50/50.  Well, we'll see how it goes this week and next, as next Thursday the 7th is the absolute last day to put closing orders on the August expirations.  Though if we get out of them this week (preferably positive), I'll be happy with that too.

Current Positions:

AAPL -- Apple -- sold the August expiration 95/94.29 Put vertical -- Apple hit another new high today since the split. Seems like it's just going to keep going up. I hope.  And now, official good news.  Since I put the trail stop on, we are now at a point where we cannot lose money on this trade.  If it were to crash and burn tomorrow (I hope not!), we would still come out net positive $1.  Not too bad, if I do say so myself.  So this one worked out for us.  Now we just need to see what the market is going to do with Apple for the rest of the week.

IWM -- iShares Russell 2000 ETF -- sold the August 117/116.50 Call vertical -- IWM continued to fall today, which is good for us.  If it goes down another day or two, we might pull out with a win on this one.  not bad for being in a position 2 days.  Right now the mark price is still to close to our loss-side stop to change it to a trail stop, but I'll keep watching it.  

TWTR -- Twitter -- sol the August 36/35 Put vertical --  Unfortunately, this is getting down to our loss-side close.  Unless the stock turns around tomorrow and has a good up day, we're probably going to get closed out on it.  I do have my stop orders in, so we'll see what happens.

New Positions:

QQQ -- Powershares QQQ -- Well, after Nick's research we got into 2 trades on the QQQs today:    

1. Sold a September expiration Iron Condor with 99.63/100.63 on the call side and 92.63/91.63 on the put side.  I put the stops on per our rules tonight to go into tomorrow, and we'll see what happens.
2. Sold the September expiration Put vertical 94.63/93.63 -- Put the stops on per rules, and will patiently wait and see.

Side note:  having a split position like this is a bit harder to manage in terms of putting on the closings.  I had to do a bit of maneuvering to get it to work properly.  Luckily, it's easy to cancel an order when the markets are not open.  

So this will be interesting. 

GLD - Spider Gold ETF (shorthand name) -- Sold the September expiration 129/128 Call vertical.  As I mentioned yesterday, it's the September version of the August position that closed favorably for us.  This actually opened higher but closed lower than yesterday.  Still not close to our strikes, so that's good.  We've got a watching game on this one as well.  

Recap:

Overall unrealized gain in positions today -- $11.50.  Realized loss $6.  If things go the way we're thinking they will, we'll come up out ahead.  

As always, until tomorrow!