Stock Investment » ITRI

Stocks Investments :Options Expiration – August 2011

admin — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 12:59:52 +0000

Not that it’s a surprise to anyone, but this is not a good options expiration Friday for my account. All of my naked puts finished in the money and all of my covered calls finished out of the money. These are the 11 options I was short going into the day. CSX – 1 August [...]

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Not that it’s a surprise to anyone, but this is not a good options expiration Friday for my account. All of my naked puts finished in the money and all of my covered calls finished out of the money.

These are the 11 options I was short going into the day.

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Stock Market Investment :Sold ITRI June Covered Call

admin — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 10:23:36 +0000

On Friday I pointed out my regret for not closing out my ITRI position when I had a chance to exit for a few bucks. That bit me a little harder this morning as ITRI fell deeper than Friday’s close. I didn’t wait very long this morning before trying to sell a covered call on [...]

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On Friday I pointed out my regret for not closing out my ITRI position when I had a chance to exit for a few bucks. That bit me a little harder this morning as ITRI fell deeper than Friday’s close. I didn’t wait very long this morning before trying to sell a covered call on my new 100 shares. My first limit order didn’t hit as ITRI was still on its slide. I only waited a little more than 30 minutes into the trading day before deciding to sell my call while I could get a decent price. While ITRI was trading at .97 I sold one ITRI June covered call for .25 and received 3.99 after commissions. I’m still not sure if I’ll add another put to go with my 100 shares and covered call. The June strike puts don’t look too bad. Leaving a high limit order in place could be a decent move to try to catch a dip (like today’s).

I considered selling a May call on Friday since the June contracts weren’t posted yet and even debated it again this morning, but decided June worked well for my needs. If ITRI ends in June at the exact same price as where it is now I’ll still have an annualized return of 24.01% based on the premium alone. If it gets back to , where I bought it and where my strike is, I’ll have a 35.03% return from the price where it was when my trade hit. ITRI can fall 4.08% more before I take a loss on it and that doesn’t even include the premium I took in for the naked put that was assigned. Although I was thinking about the May contract for its better annualized return I like the bigger cushion from the June contract along with the longer horizon to allow some of the excess funk to work itself out. With what seems like less time on my hands lately, selling the extra month out helps to take one thing off my plate for May at least.

I was planning to sell some new UCO puts today, but am going to wait at least until tomorrow. I might regret not getting an order in today, but didn’t want to try to catch that falling knife. UCO is down big from its highs of the past couple of weeks and until it starts to find more sure footing I have a hard time getting in at these elevated prices. At some point (probably soon) I’ll change my mind and at least take a new partial position. I didn’t get around to selling new calls on VXX either. I want to give it a little more time to see if we can get a better spike before I make my trade. Instead of selling a call, I’ve thought about selling my shares and keeping the long puts to try to make more on further deterioration.

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Stock Market Investment :Options Expiration – April 2011

admin — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 10:23:36 +0000

I had short options on four different stocks/ETFs that expired today. All were profitable and I plan to work with all of them again for either May or June expiration options. My only April option that wasn’t profitable was QCOM and it was assigned a couple of days ago and

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I had short options on four different stocks/ETFs that expired today. All were profitable and I plan to work with all of them again for either May or June expiration options. My only April option that wasn’t profitable was QCOM and it was assigned a couple of days ago and has gained some ground since then.

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Stock Market Investment :Added VXX Collar and Rolled ITRI Calls

admin — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 02:58:03 +0000

I’ve been trying to decide what to do with my VXX position for weeks, if not months. Finally this weekend I figured out a plan that limited my downside and left a good bit of upside potential. I started off by looking at the cost of just buying puts for protection and then saw that [...]

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I’ve been trying to decide what to do with my VXX position for weeks, if not months. Finally this weekend I figured out a plan that limited my downside and left a good bit of upside potential. I started off by looking at the cost of just buying puts for protection and then saw that the call premiums were still pretty good even far out of the money. While VXX was trading at .53 I bought to open two VXX June (2011) puts for .30 and paid ,861.73 including commissions. I then sold to open two VXX June (2011) covered calls for .80 each and received 8.27 with commissions. This “options collar” protects me to the downside and leaves more than enough upside room than I’ll probably need.

At the time of my trade the bid/ask spreads were fairly wide so I aimed somewhat close to the ends that would makes sure my orders hit, even with the risk of leaving some on cash on the table. I considered going for the strike calls, but they only offered about .50 more than the strike calls and cut my profit off sooner. Although I am starting to doubt VXX has a big chance of making it back to the s in the near term I decided to leave that chance of an extra ,700 (.50 x 200 shares) out there for me. Based on the price I could’ve sold for at the time and exited the position I have only .05 downside .95 upside per share. In full terms, that’s only 0 I can lose before June expiration, but ,190 upside I can still make. I ran the math like this:

I hated to add to my cost per share rather than just reduce it with covered calls further, but decided I didn’t want to take the chance of a correction hitting and seeing VXX take off. As the day has dragged on I’m more confident in my position and think I could’ve even gone in the money on my covered calls and not had a great deal of risk in having the shares assigned. I’ve seen the VIX go up today, but VXX go down. That’s not what I like to see on a day that the markets have been down decently most of the time.

In other trading news… I’m trying to be more proactive about closing short puts and calls that are close to worthless and opening new ones farther out and closer to the stock’s current trading price. I had that opportunity with ITRI today. While ITRI was trading at .54 I bought to close one ITRI December .00 call for $content.15 and paid .01 with commissions. I waited a minute as I saw it starting to recover and then while it was trading at .66 I decided not to push my luck and sold one ITRI January covered call for .00 and received 8.99 with commissions.

My cost per share is now down to .73 after starting off up at .00. After the initial slide ITRI has spent most of its time in the – range with a few ventures out on either side of that range. I still think ITRI’s day will come again when it can return to its old highs, but that might not be for more than a few months and I’m quite content selling covered calls in the meantime. Based on the belief that ITRI will return to its upper side of this range I could’ve waited to sell new calls, but I prefer to lock in the premiums when I can get them rather than risk losing more to the downside. If ITRI takes off above my strike then I’ll be able to plan on selling my 100 shares and can start allocating the cash used to hold the shares towards a new position. If it drops much more I’ll have to consider adding a new naked put, maybe at the strike.

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Stocks Investment :Sold ITRI December Covered Calls

admin — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 09:41:54 +0000

I bought back my Itron, Inc. (ITRI) October 60 covered calls on Friday, but waited until today to have access to the December options to sell new calls. I think ITRI is on the come back and so this time I aimed higher with my strike. While ITRI was trading at .46 this morning I sold [...]

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I bought back my Itron, Inc. (ITRI) October 60 covered calls on Friday, but waited until today to have access to the December options to sell new calls. I think ITRI is on the come back and so this time I aimed higher with my strike. While ITRI was trading at .46 this morning I sold one ITRI December 65 covered call at .60 and received 9.29 after commissions. With more the strike being more than .50 out of the money and taking in over .50 per share I am giving myself more than 8% of upside potential with this trade. I also cushion my fall by 4% to the downside.

ITRI is due to announce earnings next week which helps the premiums perk up some. Although the have a trailing P/E ratio of 45.36, their forward P/E is only 15.28 with a PEG of only 0.59. That gives a slight leeway for their earnings to miss and not cause the stock price to plummet. Any slight dip will probably be bought. I see the downside limited to around .00 which wouldn’t be a small drop, but also wouldn’t be the end of the world. I based this on what I see as a reasonable P/E for their growth prospects and ITRI’s historical performance in that range. I see key upside hurdles at .00, .50 and .00. I don’t see ITRI getting back to my original purchase price of in the near term, but as long as I can continue to sell rich premiums I’ll be fine. If ITRI does shoot up above my strike plus premium in the next nine weeks I’ll probably let it go and will wait for it to drop back down before getting in again.

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Stock Investments :Options Expiration – October 2010

admin — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 09:41:54 +0000

I only have a few options expiring today with mixed results. The rest of my portfolio is weighted to November’s expiration. If nothing drastic happens in the next few trading days, I’ll start working towards building up my options for December’s expiration and

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I only have a few options expiring today with mixed results. The rest of my portfolio is weighted to November’s expiration. If nothing drastic happens in the next few trading days, I’ll start working towards building up my options for December’s expiration and move deeper into potential margin, all the while hoping that any correction is swift and causes the VIX (and VXX) to spike. On the other hand, a slow correction will give me time to chase my positions with new option legs. The way I see it (maybe with rose colored glasses) I’m in a good position right now to profit in either direction.

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Stock Investments :Options Expiration – August 2010

admin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 03:43:30 +0000

Today’s option expiration finished somewhat differently than I thought it was going to as of a week ago. Here’s the breakdown of how it went down:

VXX, two August 24 Puts – I’ll be assigned 200 shares of VXX on Monday morning. Instead of trying to roll

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Today’s option expiration finished somewhat differently than I thought it was going to as of a week ago. Here’s the breakdown of how it went down:

I have a lot of options expiring in September, so any other new options I write in the coming weeks will probably be for October so I can continue to spread out my risk into different expiries.

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Stock Investment :Options Expiration – May 2010

admin — Sat, 22 May 2010 12:28:10 +0000

What started just a couple of weeks ago as an easy ride into expiration turned around on me very quickly, especially in the last few days before today’s relief. I’m still not sure what to think with where the markets are heading over the next week/month and so I started

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What started just a couple of weeks ago as an easy ride into expiration turned around on me very quickly, especially in the last few days before today’s relief. I’m still not sure what to think with where the markets are heading over the next week/month and so I started adjusting some of my positions today to remove some risk.

Based on how the underlying stocks moved after my trades today it looks like I might have picked the wrong ones to exit as soon as I did, but that’s how it works. Not every trade can be profitable and made at the right time. I’m moving on with minimal realized losses for now and live to trade another day. I’ll probably sell a few more covered calls on Monday or maybe even another naked put or two if we appear to be heading higher again.

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Stocks Investment :Sold New Naked Puts on ITRI & GES

admin — Tue, 04 May 2010 10:13:22 +0000

After the markets closed yesterday I spent some time checking my exposure and noticed that although I was technically fully invested (if every naked put I’m short is assigned), I had some good cushions on a few of my naked put positions which made me feel like I could extend

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After the markets closed yesterday I spent some time checking my exposure and noticed that although I was technically fully invested (if every naked put I’m short is assigned), I had some good cushions on a few of my naked put positions which made me feel like I could extend my resources a little farther. I checked my balance between May and June options expirations and saw I was somewhat light for June. This got me on the hunt again, especially since the markets don’t seem to want to give up this bull run yet.

In March I sold ITRI May 70 naked puts at the money expecting Itron Inc (ITRI) to continue its upward momentum. Little did I know it would add another before my puts expired. Today they announced earnings that beat estimates and the shares shot up. I still think there’s some upside left in ITRI or worst case some sideways price action from here. So I started trying to pick another strike to roll my puts out. By 9:45 ITRI was already at its high of the day at .00. I waited to see if it would recoil some from its opening launch. It did and I started placing limit orders good for 10 minutes. Each time one expired I’d lower my ask price and finally it hit.

I decided not to roll out my May 70 naked put since it was out of the money and to just sell another naked put on top of it. While ITRI was trading at .99 I sold one ITRI June naked put at .40 and received 8.99 after commissions. I could’ve gotten .50 with a little more patience, but the wasn’t worth the risk of missing the trade. ITRI finished the day up at .66 and the price of the options has already dropped to .65/2.90 bid/ask. I’m not as confident there won’t be some profit taking before the June expiry, but with a .40 premium I like my chances of this turning into a profitable trade. I like ITRI on the smart grid play, so I probably wouldn’t roll this put, but would consider taking ownership of the shares. We’ll see what I think in seven weeks and a day from now.

Barron’s had a bullish article on Guess? Inc. (GES) in the Monday print edition and I’ve been watching it all week trying to decide if I should open a position on it. Minyanville agreed with Barron’s bullish outlook and I couldn’t find anything that made me doubt their stances. The one thing that made me question it more than anything else was that the premiums seemed higher than they should be for a company doing so well. It’s as if someone on the other side believes GES is ready for some profit taking more than the bulls believe in GES’ ability to keep climbing. Since GES was trading down more than .00 from its high on Monday and then found support at its 20 day moving average yesterday and today I decided some of the profit taking was done and this might be a good entry point. With just a few minutes to go in the trading day, while GES was trading at 47.93 I sold two GES June 45 naked puts at .60 each and received 8.57 after commissions. I almost sold one put at the strike at .00, but decided to reduce my risk, especially since I’d now be on margin if everything was assigned.

By selling these puts so far out of the money and getting .60 for the option contracts I have close to a 9.5% cushion before this turns into a losing position. That would be a fall of almost 15% from the highs on Monday. Of course that could happen, but a fall like that might make GES a great buy, especially as it would put the stock just above its longer term trend line of higher lows. GES doesn’t announce earnings until June 7th, so this has a while to move around before we have some concrete reasons to see it change direction outside of the technicals.

I didn’t do any stupid covered call/dividend chasing today. I had to break my streak. I put some limit orders out for buy/writes below the strikes, but they didn’t hit.

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