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