Options - 20 February Expirations

Options - 20 February Expirations

     My latest round of Options has expired and frankly it has been a massive loss for me at the beginning of the year. My initial fears about Credit Spreads were realized when despite my usual margin for error and strong overall indicators for the stocks I had 5 spreads go the wrong way on me to the tune of 17% losses. This is a massive loss not easily recovered from for me so I've retreated back to my original Put/Call strategy. Time to go over them and see what happened.

Credit Spreads Sunk

     There isn't much to say about the Credit Spreads except that one month does not a strategy make. I had a good December to January. I had a miserable January to February.  I'm heading back to what I have more experience and comfort with and I'll be doing more research on Credit Spreads and will re-introduce it into the EAF portfolio in the future (possibly).

February to March Plays

     I'm being very conservative this month following the sting of the credit spread losses. I've bought a large (for me) portion of Pepsi [PEP] stock on good technical indicators and sold another put on equity for Cintas Corp [CTAS] after the one from last month expired allowing me to keep the upfront premium. So far so good with these two trades. Next month marks the end of the first quarter so I will post an update on the EAF portfolio which has been incredibly positive except for the Credit Spread blunders. Luckily my Options plays are a smaller part of the portfolio so the overall gains look to cover up those losses.

Pages and Site Improvements

     In an effort to collect information in a more accessible fashion than running through all of my posts, I've published a few Pages that you should see on the right hand side of my blog. I'm obviously no web page developer but I try to keep EAF a well structured and easy to read location. there also will be some colors coming soon. I know lots of people find financial topics a bit dry to begin with and the black and white palette isn't helping that. Any suggestions or comments are appreciated.