Weekly Wrap-Up

Well that was fun!

We had a great week taking profits as we took our lumps last week, when we closed out many positions that weren't working along with some of our Google callers who were killing us, leading to a 5% loss on the positions closed.  This week, we allowed our positions to drift higher and took some winners off the table, closing just 42 positions but with a fantastic average gain of 118% and a gain on cash of 53% thanks to Google and POT (which sounds like some kind of grad student's dream statement)…

That puts us back to 70% cash in our Complex Spreads virtual portfolio with a 24% gain on the week (245% for the year, thank you Google, thank you Apple) our smaller virtual portfolios are mainly invested as we let our positions run this week but we lost ground in the $10KP (11%) and the $25KP (19%), which got pummeled by TASR's poor earnings, but otherwise is in decent shape if the market holds up.

We made very few moves in our small virtual portfolios but it was a good week for day trading with the DTP picking up 20% on the week with nice gains from our Applefly and a mild comeback in our oil puts.  That virtual portfolio is up 234% in less than 2 months and we are going to close it on this expiration and start with a fresh $100K virtual portfolio.  Hopefully we can get the $10KP up to $25K by then (need $9,000) and we can roll that over too.  Another one I said I'd roll back to cash is our Stocks Virtual Portfolio, they are down 4% for the week on a nasty hit to ABK but still up 54% for the year so far and we're back to 75% cash with nothing we'll miss if we go back to all cash and reset.  That should give new members a nice variety of ways to follow along at home…

The Short-Term Virtual Portfolio picked up 9% (237% for the year), also thanks to a small break from the energy sector.  We are actually quite bearish there but only 20% invested so we will NEED that SPY play if the markets decide to take off on Monday to give us some balance.  The Long-Term Virtual Portfolio is much more bullish and picked up 5% on the week (121% for the year), not at all bad for our fairly well hedged group.   In the LTP, getting through earnings without losses is our primary goal.

Our Stock Club Portflio is down $20,000 in its third week.  This is also following our LTP strategy and this is actually quite good since we've put nearly $1M to work, paid our spreads, paid the spreads on our callers, paid our commissions and made it through 2 weeks of earnings.  If we survive next week's economic data and earnings the fun will begin as we cruise into expiration week!  We should have the Stock Club Members section up and running next weekend. 

As I mentioned in last week's wrap-up, we went into the weekend well-protected and we followed through on our LTP covers this week as we began a new period.  This ended up being a good thing because, really, we only gained 150 points for the week – nothing to get too excited about yet but very nice coming off 500-point gain last week.  We held all of our Monday levels (Russell 800 was a typo, 720 is just fine!) and finished the week strong but still below our breakout targets. 

Both Monday night and Tuesday morning we were commenting on the trend of clueless analysts not seeing the bigger picture and by Tuesday night I was just sick of the non-stop media onslaught of doom and gloom saying: "Cramer’s TheStreet.com and lots of technical traders are still growling that we are in a Bear market and there is a lot of work being put in by the MSM telling you NOT to buy at this bottom and people listen to them, even though these are THE EXACT SAME GUYS who told you to BUYBUYBUY at 14,000, prior to the recent 10% correction.  How are you ever going to make any money if you let clueless trend followers tell you what to do?"

Wednesday I noted that $117 oil was the only thing left keeping me from getting more bullish but our faith in Apple paid off Wednesday night as their earnings overcame some other disappointments and gave us the late-week boost we were looking for.  On Thursday I think I started something as the MSM suddenly became concerned about food after my morning post and our levels once again held on that morning's little dip and again on Friday as we once again tested 12,750 before heading back to 12,891 to finish the week.

All in all it was a good consolidation week but next week we get a ton of economic data that is very likely to fuel the bears for a new round of market bashing so le'ts look forward to a real test and hope we pass it!