Current Trading

We have been waiting for the CME to rise so that we can sell the October $310 calls against the shares we own. Yesterday the stock broke below its 50 day moving average line (at around $285), so I decided to sell the October $290 calls. Needless to say, the stock immediately rallied, so my options were not sold at anything resembling the best price I could have gotten. Fortunately, they expire in just over a week from now. I did get $6.70 a contract for them, even with such a short time to expiration left. The Theta on these calls is currently at 0.49, which means these options will drop almost $0.50 a day due to time decay. If CME does not move substantially by the middle of next week, I should be looking at a reasonable profit on the option side of this trade.

MGM and LVS paused for the past two days,but both are up this morning. We still anticipate selling these shares higher than they are at now.

The Research in Motion covered write we have on is working well, with a small loss in the stock being more than covered by the profit on the calls we wrote. This is no barn burner, but if I did this trade once a month for a year it would add up to some nice money.

In today's news, earnings announcements (AA, PEP, etc.) have been better than expected and same store sales for the major retailers came in mixed, to a bit better than expected, so there is a positive tone to the market today. Also, VIX, which had risen a bit last week, has fallen back 24.42, which is right at its 50 day moving average.