Cleaning house

Today I did a little house cleaning in the option position department. I had a few oversized positions that I wanted to pare but they were languishing in the "Gee, look how much I will lose" zone. One $4 option was down near $1 for a while, today it made it just over $3. Seeing as I take a wait and see approach to judging where the market may head next I decided to drop a few while the dropping was not so painful. Some of the expirations were nearing as well, December and January...one November but it has zeroed and I MAY actually see a jump, although I really doubt it. It was a leftover from a previous service trial but I will count it in with my general trading numbers.

I did close another for a small profit as well.

Now, I cannot take full credit for these as the service I am using also pegged them for house cleaning but they were ripe regardless. I have been watching them closely and aiming for a small bounce. The winners I took out yesterday I did before the advisory and for more than they suggested I could get. That just reminds me that nothing is completely brainless...or cannot be improved upon by thinking things through and monitoring the situation.

My spreadsheet certainly helps in this department as I have the expiry count down colour coded by number of days left so the near term options get flagged as they hit 90, then again at 60 and once more at 30 days out. Under 30 days they are in serious need of some hands on monitoring and should already have been exited if they were in a profit position. The only reason to hold a position in the last thirty days is if I sold the option, not if I bought it.

I still have a few that have zeroed out but they are not the largish ones, thankfully.

My realized loss today was $175 including commission costs. The main point of getting rid of these, other than to cut some losers loose is to free up some capital as I was all in up to yesterday and had to use some of my margin account to add a couple of positions lately...that is not a problem but does mean possible taxation, something I am trying to not have to deal with in this trade setup. That loss was for four losers and one small winner.

Meanwhile, over at Optioneer, no trade set for today, the target was under my minimum but I learned a few things while emailing back and forth with my broker...something that is hard to accomplish with a discount online broker.

Plan M is still in the back of my mind...my Stockcharts.com subscription had expired so I need to sign back up for that before I can do any substantial work on that plan. I might look at switching my charting back over to Esignal for delayed information as they have some better tools to work with that might be advantageous for me...even if the charts are not wuite as nice looking. Scaling the chart to allow head room is a bonus as that has always been a bit of an issue for me.

Jeff.