Investor's Opinion

Portfolio and Paper Trade Update

Published: 2010-04-15 21:39:00 EDT by Unknown

It has been a week since my last post and nothing has changed in my portfolio until now. Friday is option expiration and I have one outstanding Sold-To-Open (STO) Call option out on my iShares Silver Trust ETF position (SLV). The Call option is for the $18 strike price and the ETF is at $18.07 at the close of today's trading day with an asking price that is higher than the current price and for a larger volume than the bid price. It certainly looks like I will be called out of my position by end of day on Friday.

It has been a really good run on the ETF and I am averaged down from my initial 10 share purchase so that I will make a profit on the transaction of about 6%, not including the premium I sold the option for. It is my opinion that SLV will probably pull back after option expiration so I will just have to wait and see if it drops and holds below $17.50 until the funds clear again. Hurray for me that it isn't a wash-sale if you make a profit.

I still have paper trades in effect and I am making a change to one of them today. Sprint (S) has done very well but there is only one month left until the expiration of the Call option that I "bought" on it, this means that unless it goes up further, time will decay it's value until all that is left is intrinsic value, or the amount between the strike price and the current stock value. Unfortunately even that isn't guaranteed. Since there is only 5 cents of additional time value left, I am going to take my "profit". It is absolutely possible that S could go up another 20 to 30 cents or more, but I don't have to take the risk.

After these two changes this week I am left with my stock positions of Capital Product Partners, LP (CPLP); EV Energy Partners, LP (EVEP); my Bought-To-Open (BTO) Call options on Brocade Communications Sys Inc. (BRCD); and my paper trade on Inspire Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (ISPH). ISPH did the head-and-shoulders chart pattern I expected but stopped dropping after passing the neck of the pattern. It looks like it is consolidating for another move up. If it does move up above the downward trending resistance line I have charted with a current price of $6.25, I may buy a Call option on the stock to attempt to hedge against the losses in the stock. And if the stock closes above $6.90, I will sell the stock to close off all of my paper trading. That is my opinion, you can take it or leave it.

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Labels: chart patterns, option picks, option strategies, paper trade, stock picks, stock strategies, trade terminology in use, update

Updated: 2010-04-15 22:35:41 EDT