Pleasant Surprise

So today was odd. The volatility in my account again highlights that my bullish bias is a liability. It was nice though to see it go from about +500 at it's lowest point to +5900 at its high. My apple options were at one point losing money and then later in the day they were giving me a nice gain. This is why watching stocks all day could really be an issue for those that get very emotional. I got semi-emotional as you'll see below.

I broke my plan and sold my Apple options. The good news is I sold at the high for the day I got 16.60 for my options with the top price being 16.70. They then ended at 15.95. All of this may not matter because for all I know apple could continue its ascent tomorrow or gap up 5 dollars, meaning I missed out on a lot more money(probably about 2500 with my target of 175). However, it never hurts to take a profit and I somewhat regret not taking it on my Q position as well because I was going to sell at the high of the day again but decided to hold. I guess the only consolation is that if apple moves higher tomorrow its likely that the nasdaq will be so I will still profit off my Q's position.

Goldman Sachs FINALLY broke out and in a major way, up to 188 today. The sad thing is I am only slightly up now, of course that is much better than a loss. But it was about an $800 swing to get to that point. This is the problem with GS, had I not held I probably wouldn't be up at all because the move happened pretty much all today and if I didn't buy on the open I would have missed it. That isn't to say it won't come back down and re-test but you can see the dilemma.

I'd like to see a down day for Apple, one of the reasons I took profits is because it was hitting its head on 170 pretty hard and did not want to go above that point so I figured the short term run was done and we could see profit taking the next day.

I am having trouble deciding on what to do in general because I could have held my position(in options, I sold my 50 stock shares) and then added to my position on the next down day. Or I could wait for the pull back and buy in again. The other thing I may do, depending on how the market seems to be going is roll into a cheaper June option. This would lock in some of the profit I have made and could be used to buy into other positions.

I could use all profit to buy into some other options, this would almost be like progressive betting, if I am wrong, obviously I still only want to risk my 2% per trade, although I could get slightly more aggressive knowing that it is all profit I am losing. This would give me the advantage of more leverage while risking no original capital. However, I am obviously still way down overall so risking any more than 2% per trade is still not advisable.


I am looking at getting into some of the high flying names like FSLR and POT, they have had large pull backs, I will have to look into why that may be before I jump in because they did not participate in this rally at all but do seem to be still in an uptrend.

The bigger thing to do will be to look for bearish plays to offset my current and future bullish positions. I'd rather be less delta positive, because I would see less fluctuation that way. I need to get diversified. That's what Wu-Tang financial recommends. :-D

Microsoft's earnings guidance seems to have disappointed and it is off 3.5% afterhours which doesn't bode well for the markets tomorrow. We rallied today due to apparent better economic news, a surprise drop in jobless claims and a nice durable goods number. I don't think there will be much to lift us tomorrow, but you never know.