10/17 Day/swingtrades

Expiration day definitely lived up to its reputation today. There was a great opportunity to buy ATM/OTM calls at the open and then switch to puts mid-day as the market makers started squaring their positions and trying to "pin" stocks. I mainly stayed with GS and GOOG in the first half. OIH and basically all the energy/Ags were great options plays on the early morning dip as well. Too bad I didn't trade them.


GS - In addition to yesterday's Oct 100's, I picked up some 115's for only $1.00 as GS broke out of the 112 area. I sold the Oct 100's @ 118.00 for $9.00 profit and the Oct 115's for $2.50 profit as GS formed an intraday double-top @ 118.50.

GOOG - I picked up some Oct 380's around 376.00 for $2.80 as it broke out of the 370.00 narrow range. The premiums were still a bit high early in the day and GOOG had trouble breaking the 20-SMA on the daily at 385+(this level also coincided with the 20-SMA on the daily chart...see below) so I sold the calls @ $6.00 for $3.20 profit.

AAPL - What a loser stock today. I'm going to short this on the next leg down. I let my calls get stopped out at break-even in the morning.

Lastly, just to tie up some loose ends this month, I had a bunch of speculative positions expire on me. Each one was within my risk parameters except for OIH/UNG:

AIG (Oct 4 Calls) - I had locked in some profits and rolled the rest into Oct 4 Calls. The stock tanked along with the market after the rescue bill was signed. -$1.25 loss on Calls

C (Oct 25 Calls) - I had picked these up on the bullish looking daily chart. The Wells Fargo bid the following day derailed this trade. -$1.00 loss on Calls

FNM (Oct 2.5 Calls) - This trade also got derailed by the rescue bill sell-off. Loss - $0.25

OIH (Oct 165 Calls) - Damn, I forgot I even had these (Oct 165 Calls). I picked these up on a Monday or Friday just to see a gap open lower the next trading day. Obviously, they didn't recover. Loss - $3.90 on Calls

SMH (Oct 26 Calls) - Same thing here as for AIG/FNM. I had taken 1/2 off when it started fading. Loss - $0.65

UNG (Oct 33 Calls) - Apparently 33.00 wasn't the bottom. Loss - $3.40