That went fairly well!
We held our levels, even had a tiny advance and made a few fun trades along the way – what else could you ask from a Monday? It was anything but a clean getaway though:
- Dow held 12,400, but tested a bit lower (12,350) than we would have liked
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Transports notched up to 2,692 but were rejected at 2,700.
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S&P must held 1,412, but only after dipping down to 1,405.
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NYSE 9,000 did hold up quite well – but it was rejected from 9,050 so the canary remains trapped in quicksand!
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Nasdaq held 2,425 but still has a long way to go to get on a better path.
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The SOX held 470 but bounced sharply off 475.
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Russell couldn’t retake 780 but wasn’t harshly rejected either. This canary is coming around!
Oil had a wild ride today, opening just over our target at $57.25 early this morning before falling back all the way to $55.10 aroud 11and splitting the difference to close down .22 at $56.09. There are still 297M barrels worth of open contracts and just 8 trading days to decide what to do with them.
OII jumped up 7% today, just daring us to short it and I stopped out of my April $40 puts and picked up some $37.50 puts for just .85, just in case reality attacks. Other than that play, we hung onto our oil puts and picked a few more up later in the day.
Gold went nowhere but recovered off a dip close to $600 while the dollar held flat for the day, just above 84.5. On the whole, as we expected, not much happened today at all.
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It was another busy day of grabbing positions, now we just need for the market to break one way or the other!
AA is our first earnings report tomorrow and we took the April $30s for $1.20, looking to sell the Jan $30s for .40 or better.
We took a DD on our second COP Feb $65 put position at $1.35.
We added another round of CVX Mar $70 puts for $2.15.
DNA should have exciting earnings and we decided it would be worth a gamble to take the Jan ’08 $85s for $10, selling the Jan $85s for $1.75 as we have plenty of room to roll or recover!
EBAY Feb $30s were added for $1.75 assuming it will hold $29.50, otherwise we’re out.
EOG Feb $55 puts seemed very cheap at .65.
GRMN Feb $55s were grabbed ahead of earnings for $2.75, looking to sell the Jans if it has trouble at $54.
We took an entry on the MOT Jan $20s at $1.75, looking to sell calls soon.
MRO made a nice opportunity to take the Apr $85 puts for $4.75, and sold the Feb $85 puts for $3 or better
Both OII $40 put postions were stopped out on the morning gap up at $3.75 (up 200% avg.)
We took the PBR $100 puts off the table for $4.80 (up 269%) and swapped into the Feb $90 puts for $1.60.
It took all day but I finally got rid of my RIMM Jan $130 putter for .75 (up 140%). That leaves us with the naked Mar $130 puts, now $5.20 (down 8%).
The jump in RSH seemed overdone so we took the Apr $17.50 puts for .95, watching out for earnings on 2/27.
SNDK – we swapped our $42.50 caller into the Feb $45s and netted .50 on the move (and pushed the caller $2.50 further away from us in exchange for 30 of our 360 remaining days.
SPY $141s served their purpose after a morning DD was triggered and we didn’t push our luck and closed them out at $1.35 (up 20%).
