Jan 2011 trade

Added my first trade for Jan 2011 expirations:

Jan 2011 GLD 134/133 Bull Put Spread for ROI of 25%


GLD has bounced twice and continues it's upward trend. If GLD closes below 135 I will buy back the calls and hold on to the puts for the potential sell off.

December 2010 Results

Both trades expired successfully.

Dec 2010 GLD 130/129 Bull Put spread for a ROI of 21% for + $1,800

Dec 2010 SPY 116/115 Bull Put spread for a ROI of 9% for + $670

So overall for December 2010 my account finished up ~ $2,600 which is a 12% gain for the month. This puts the account at ~ $23,100.

December 2010 second trade

SPY seems to have set up a nice support level at 117 over the last week. I opened the following credit spread:

Dec 2010 SPY 116/115 Bull Put Spread for ROI of 9%

December 2010 trade

I decided to open a trade on Gold (GLD) as the the 130 level has set up as a nice support level.

Dec 2010 GLD 129/130 Bull Put spread for a ROI of 21%

November Results

The November SPY trade expired successfully last Friday. Didn't get to place the other end of the trade to complete the Iron Condor, but I will take the profits considering this was an election month.
I will be looking to enter another spread after the Thanksgiving holiday. We will have to see if the market decides to make a move either way from its current channel.

November 2010 results:

Nov 2010 SPY 110/109 Bull Put Spread was successful for a ROI of 13% for + $990

This puts the account up 5% for the month of November at $20,790.

Nov update

Decided not to finish the iron condor trade as the market rallied nicely after the elections. The only trade I could enter to finish off the iron condor would be doing a 125/126 Bear call spread, but I don't want to risk it. The 124/125 Spy level should be the next resistance level and if the market rallies up to that level it would leave me with a tough decision over the next 10 days.
My 109/110 Bull put spread should safely expire next week and I'm ok with the results for this month considering there was an election.

Nov 2010 trade

I'm thinking about doing an Iron Condor this month on SPY. I think the market will stay somewhat flat going into elections and I'm hoping we won't have any drastic movements directly following the elections.
With today's pull back in the market I decided to enter my lower position. I feel there is some support around the 111 -112 level in case the market decides to continue to decline.

Nov 2010 110/109 Bull Put Spread for a ROI of  13%

October 2010 Results

I only did one trade in Oct, but it was successfull.


Oct 10 SPY 110/111 Bull Put spread ROI of 16% for ~$1,200

So for the month of Oct I was + $1,200 which is a 6% increase and puts my account at ~$19,800.

October 2010 Trade

I added the following trade for October.

Oct 2010 SPY 111/110 Bull Put Spread for a ROI of 16%

I think the SPY 112 level will hold for the next few weeks as the market figures out what it wants to do.

No Sept 2010 Trades

Decided to take a vacation trip to Hawaii this month, so there are no trades for Sept. :)

Aug 2010 Results

August ended up being a tough month. The GLD trade was successful, but I ended up having to close out of my SPY Spread the last week because it was threatening the 107 level and I didn't want to risk the whole trade.

GLD 112/113 Bull Put Spread was successful for a ROI of 8% for + $1,000.

SPY 106/107 Bull Put Spread had to be closed out for a ROI of -12% for - $1,100.

This left me down $100 for the month of Aug.

Aug 2010 trades

I have decided to open two new trades for Aug 2010 expiration.

Aug 2010 GLD 112/113 Bull Put Spread for a ROI of 8%

Aug 2010 SPY 106/107 Bull Put Spread for a ROI of 11%

July results

July ended up being a negative month as GLD had a huge sell off and I was forced to cover early. The AAPL iron condor trade was successfull.

I ended up down ~ $2000 for the month of July which was a 10% loss for the month. My account is at $18,500.

Exit GLD Trade

Unfortunately GLD went completely the opposite of what I was expecting and I had to exit out of my trade.

I took roughly a ~$4,000 loss on the trade which was about a 40% loss on the trade.

Second July Trade

I decided to open an Iron Condor position on AAPL.

JUL 2010 220/230 Call & 280/290 Put Iron Condor for a ROI of 16%

July Trade

I'm feeling pretty bearish neutral on the market right now, which means I think people will continue to move money into gold. I think we could also just stay where we are for the next few weeks, so I have decided to open:

Jul 2010 GLD 117/116 Bull Put Spread for a ROI of  16%

June 2010 Results

June went very well and both my trades expired successfully.

Jun 2010 SPY 116/117 Bear Call Spread with a ROI of  11% for + $700

Jun 2010 GLD 125/126 Bear Call Spread with a ROI of 12% for + $800

My account was up + $1,500 for the month of June for a + 8% gain.
This puts my account at $20,925.

GLD June Trade

I decided to open a credit spread on GLD today as I saw Gold hit a high this morning and then sell off a little bit as the day moved on. It looks like GLD has probably hit its upper resistance at 122-123 level.
I'm trying to take advantage of these inflated option prices as volatility and fear is pretty high right now.
I opened the following spread which has 8 days left till it expires. I feel pretty confident GLD will not break 125 over the next 8 days, and a possible 12% return for 8 days was too good to pass up.

June 2010 GLD 125/126 Bear Call Spread for a ROI of 12%

June Trade

I decided to open a small credit spread on SPY as I don't think we will go above the 115 level before June expiration.

June 2010 SPY 116/117 Bear Call Spread for a ROI of 11%

My Results vs Market

I decided to take a look back over the last 9 months that I have been trading to see how my result compare to the two indexes where I have been trading.

Since Sept 2009:
S&P 500 is up 7.5%
Gold is up 21%
Goldsmith Investments is up 93%

This calculates to a ~10% gain per month which meets my goal exactly. 

So far I am thrilled to be beating the market hands down. I have definitely had some luck, but have also made big mistakes that cost me money as well. As each month goes by I feel I am getting better and better at making trades. Here is a chart of the progression of my account.

Commissions Correction

I currently use OptionsXpress.com as my virtual trading platform. I will eventually be using OptionsHouse.com for my real account when I start trading with my real money, because they have better commission rates on option contracts. OptionsHouse's virtual trading platform currently has a bug that doesn't refresh the margin availability from options that expire. This caused me difficulties when trying to test out my credit spread trading as I would have to call the company at the end of the month to have them reset my margin. This is why I decided to use OptionsXpress's virtual account platform as it did not have this problem.


I noticed the other day that OptionsXpress actually charges ridiculously high fees for spreads with high amounts of contracts. As my account has gotten bigger I am now trading 100 to 200 contracts per spread. I noticed that OptionsXpress has been charging $200+ per spread trade in my virtual account. The same trade in OptionsHouse is only about $30 - $40. This is a lot of profit being taken away and since I plan to use OptionsHouse in the future I decided to go back and calculate the extra commissions I have spent and then credit my account with that money. I will plan to credit the extra commission each month from here on out.
The total amount of extra commission I have paid since Sept of 2009 is ~$2,500. That is a lot of extra profit. I have credited my account this money and my account is now currently at ~ $19,300.

Jun SPY Call

I decided to close out the Jun SPY call this morning as I'm not sure what this week is going to bring. The market looks like it could go either way at this moment so I will take my profits now and see where we go.

2010 Jun SPY 105 call  ROI  + 22%  for $900

June Trade

Currently I feel the market is due for a small recovering rally and then I think the market is going to sell off. When looking at the SPY chart, I think there is a good chance we could have a head and shoulders pattern starting to form. I think support will hold at 105 and we will move back up to the 112-115 level where we will sell off again and form the head and shoulder pattern. I'm not sure how long it will take, so rather than opening my normal credit spread, I have decided to purchase a June SPY 105 call and hold it for a couple weeks as we bounce off the 105 support. I will then look at opening a bearish credit spread as we get closer to the 115 resistance level.

May Results

The month of May has been a crazy month for the whole stock market.

All three of my trades ended up working out which has brought my account back to where it was.

May 2010 GLD 106/107 Bull Put Spread expired successfully for a ROI of +17%

May 2010 SPY 124/125 Bear Call Spread expired successfully for a ROI of +15%

May 2010 GLD 111 Calls for a ROI of +105%

My account now sits at $15,900.

SPY Puts

What a crazy day was yesterday. Since SPY closed below the 115 level I have opened Jun 2010 112 Puts as I expect the market to drop down to the 109 level and test that next support.

Watching SPY

I will be watching SPY closely over the next week as it heads towards the 115 support level. If that level fails, I will be looking at opening some put positions as SPY should then fall to the 109 level.
 
My May 2010 124/125 Bear Call spread is looking great and should expire successfully on May 21st.

GLD May calls

After my April GLD spread went the wrong way last month I decided to buy back my puts and leave some of the GLD 111 calls open. I then rolled the calls over to May 2010. Today I decided to sell off the profits made which ended up making up a lot of my losses from the original spread trade.

May 2010 GLD 111 Calls ROI +105% for +$3,515

This puts my account at around $14,160.

May 2010 Trades

I opened two new trades for May 2010.

May 2010 SPY 124/125  Bear Call Spread for a 15% ROI

and

May 2010 GLD 106/107 Bull Put Spread for a 17% ROI

April 2010 Results

This month ended up being a tough one as the GLD trade went the opposite way I was expecting. I had to purchase back my puts and decided to roll the calls over to May 2010. The whole trade cost me around $5000.

The SPY trade expired successfully with a ROI of 13% for around $700.

My account is currently down to ~ $10,640.

GLD

GLD continued its break out nicely today. My May Calls are helping bring back losses from the original spread trade that went wrong. I will be watching closely to see when the moment stops and will look sell off my calls when this happens.

GLD trade

The GLD trade for April 2010 went completely wrong and I had to close out my spread trade and take losses. I decided to do something a little different and leave 12 of the April 2010 calls open. I then decided to roll those 12 Calls to May 2010. I'm hoping that the GLD breakout of 110 will continue for the next week or so and I might be able to recover my losses.

April SPY Trade

Decided to pull the trigger on a Bull Put spread for SPY. I think the 115 is a good support level and if it breaks 115 then I will look at closing the spread and buying puts as I think we will have a significant drop if we break 115. I placed the following trade:

April 2010 SPY 114/113 Bull Put spread for a ROI of 13%

April Trade

I placed my first April trade today. I feel that GLD is in a downward trend at the moment and I think the upper resistance of the 110 level will hold for the next month. I have opened the following credit spread:

April 2010 111/110 GLD Bear Call Spread for a ROI of 17%


Not quite sure what to do with SPY for this month yet, so I have held off on making a trade. I want to see what happens this week.

March 2010 Results

Both of my March 2010 trades expired successfully.

The SPY trade was a ROI of +12% for $630.

The GLD trade was a ROI of +15% for $960.

For the month I was up $1,588 which means my account finished up 11.3% for the month.

This puts my account at $15,627.

March 2010 Trades

I have opened two new trades for the March 2010 expiration:

Mar 2010 104/105 SPY Bull Put Spread for a ROI of 12%

and

Mar 2010  102/103 GLD Bull Put Spread for a ROI of 15%

Feb 2010 Results

Both of my Feb 2010 trades expired successfully. The GLD trade got very close, but luckily the 104 level held and it bounced off of it nicely.

I ended up + $1328 which was an average of 12% return on the two trades.

This puts my account at $14,038.

Feb 2010 trades

I placed my first two Feb 2010 spread trades today.

I have opened:

Feb 2010 GLD 104/105 Bull Call Spread for a ROI of 12%

Feb 2010 SPY 119/120 Bear Put Spread for a ROI of 15%

January Performance

So January ended up showing my first spread trade that went wrong. Technically the trade would have been successful if I had left it open, but I followed my rules of closing it out when it broke the 114 level. Even though it ended up dropping back down below it, i can't take the risk.
I ended up losing $3,300 on the trade.

The GLD Jan 2010 105/106 Bull Put Spread ended up being successful for $700 which was a 12% ROI for that trade.

Overall for the options month of Jan 2010, I ended up down $2,600 which puts my account at $12,700.

I will probably try and do less risky trades that only return in the 10% to 15% range as trying for the 20% - to 25% return trades are a little too risky.

Closed out SPY call

I closed out the SPY call that was left from my original spread trade as it doesn't look like it will break out. I will just need to take my loss on this trade and move on to next month. Can't win em all. :)

Close out SPY 115 leg option

With the SPY jumping up above 114 today, I decided to take losses and buy back the 115 leg of the Bear Put trade. This puts me at a $3,300 loss, which is about 35% loss on the trade. I am still leaving the 116 Call open as I want to see if the market will jump a little bit with us now breaking out into new highs. If so I might be able to get back my losses.

GLD Trade

I have opened a trade on GLD as gold seems to have bounced off a nice support line of 106.
I have opened the Jan 2010 105/106 Bull Put Spread for a ROI of 12%.