Hi all, Wow some new names and option players. Been off line for a couple of weeks while my wife and I went on a golfing trip to Palm springs and the Phoenix area. (SUNSHINE !!)I kept up with my options while away. What did I ever do without an I-phone??? Lots of you using index plays. I haven't used them much lately but they are a great way to do options. For me I am still using quite a few CC's with FSLR and FB. All expired on Friday and tomorrow I will decide on which strike to open new coved calls by the plays at the opening or after an hour or so. If the stock is moving up I let it ride until it seems to level off for an hour or two. If down I will open at the next higher strike above the current stocks price. For covered calls I open just the opposite of IC's or puts etc. I open them quickly for the current weeks to capture all the TV I can get. For IC's I like to wait until maybe Wednesday. Lets hope the Russians behave and the news settles down. Good luck all

Hi all, good to see taxman and Ihaveoptions still trading. Sorry for you TAX as snow is pretty for a few hours, and then.... All of my last weeks options worked quite well. For the coming week I still like FACEBOOK (FB) They have proved that they can monetize the site and it should continue to move up. For traders that want it easier... look at covered calls with FB You can buy the stock for around 67.09 and sell the coming week either the 67's or 67.5 and make a nice return. I'm doing 30 or 40 in a margin account. So that can earn 3-4% in a week. Margin account have the risk of a major correction and a margin call if your stock of choice dives. But with the FED keeping interest rates low for the time being I like the risk. For those with a higher risk factor FSLR reports at the end of this week. Most seem to expect good reports? For one of my accounts I am going to buy the FEB 28 at the strike of 50, cost around 4.90. 3.17 of that is in the money. I expect a jump of 5 or 6 points with the report. I'm not doing a spread with these as the up or downside is just to much to guess with. But maybe just 3 or 4 of the call options as a flyer. With a possible jump of 5 or more it could be a quick 100%+ in play. With FB for me I see it as a once every now and then pick. They make money, half the worlds population is on it and it keep growing. I will keep riding the stock until it slows. Have any of you guys or gals been watching PCLN ? Pushing 1300...What is with that company? nearly 100 points higher than GOOG..! I keep trying to figure ways to jump on the train but up or downside risk is just to high. Someday a split will happen on PCLN or GOOG but until then I can't find a play. I am going to get back into S&P etc. soon but the busier I get the more I rotate to easy stuff. At the end of next week we are heading to Palm Springs and then toward Phoenix for a week or two each. Sunshine is calling.. lol good luck all and pass along some plays. Jerry

Hi all. Thanks to all that have kept the blog alive and well over this last year. I have had many many questions regarding where or what I'm up to and why avoiding posting on the blog. My only excuse is pretty lame but I really have been busy the last year. This past week I spent in the Caribbean spending some hard earned money while chartering a nice Lagoon catamaran.. I'm now home and want to add to the blog I have branched out into doing some investing for others. This has burned up lots of time and energy but paid the bills. So again I am going to try and do a posting more than weekly. I have changed a lot of my strategy mainly for easy trades but I still do a lot of Iron condors. A condor I really like for the coming week is trading at a ridiculous profit of over 10% per week if opened now. I will wait for a few days and look again but if nothing happens soon I will jump in.... Look at Face Book FB trading at 64.35 Buy the weekly 55.5 for around ..04 - \ Sell the weekly 58 for ..09 make around ..05 today Sell the 70 for ..16 and buy the 72.5 for .10 make around ..06 If this works you would make around .16 and a cost of 2.50 each for a profit of over 4% a week. I will wait until Tuesday to do this trade so the profit will drop some but I will still try for 5% for a three/four day trade. Waiting gives me the chance to re-evaluate and adjust the strikes used or even if I want to do the trade. On many of the accounts I manage the owners want a little safer way of trading so I have gone to the simple covered calls. FB has reported earning and should continue upwards? Again I like FB for most of these. I also do some EBAY. When doing covered calls I use the next strike available. With FB I am buying lots of them and selling the weekly 65 calls. The goal with these is to get called! I use a lot of margin so this ups the profit but adds some element of risk but my accounts are ok with some risk if care and thought go into them. So there you have a few of the trades I am doing these days. I hope to hear from you traders regarding what you think and how you are trading this weeks available trades. Jerry

Hi all, Well this time I am really back and looking forward to posting my trades, answering question and getting the Blog back to producing winners. I am still on a BOD and have some other duties but now I am trying to make the blog a bigger part of my duties. I love the interaction and trading ideas offered here. I apologize for being absent so much but other duties have distracted me and now I am back on track. First of all I have again changed directions. As most of you know I started trading daily around 15 years ago. I have made a fortune and lost a lot of it. I have been up and down as I tried different methods. I have settled on a method that I now feel offers some great rewards with as little risk as can be expected. I get many request and notes asking how I started with selling puts and now do spreads. The answer isn’t simple but mostly it revolves around the ability to trade weekly options. When I started there were no weekly options. Most of the rules I suggested were pointed toward how to trade monthly options. The stocks I now use (listed below) work best with weekly options and offer a good ROI (return on investment). I try for 1% a week and will show how I bump that up some. OK, so what do I do now, it is nearly always CONDORS. I have quit doing the longer term spreads. They work but I find that all too often the stock moves a bunch and then I’m trying to catch up and then the stock fall and I caught up for nothing. That of course is condensing it but now it is Condors pretty much total. That of course has me trading both puts and calls. So my rules for selling puts as outlined in my book still apply and give me some basic rules and guidelines. For those that do not know condors. Here is a simple explanation, Say the stock is at 500. I buy the 550 put and sell the 555 put. I hope to make .05 I then or in a combination if your brokerage offer that. I will sell the 545 calls and buy the 550 calls. So this condor has 4 legs. I buy one put and sell the next put & and I sell a call and buy a call. Only one side needs maintenance as only one side can end up in the money. If your condor has strikes that are 5 points apart, as above, then the maintenance is 5 for each option. If you have an account of 10K then you can do 20 options. If you can make .04 on each side that is .08 total in two or three days for 1.6% ROI in a week. I get request often for what stocks I am now using. Well for the current condors I use –AAPL, GOOG, NFLX., AMZN, XOM, TSLA. These stocks offer decent premiums and have weekly options. One golden rule for those not used to doing condors is (and this apply to most positions) open position no sooner than Wednesday. Don’t violate this rule.. you can make plenty of money waiting until Wednesday and you will avoid losing your bankroll. Example I was looking at GOOG on Monday and thinking maybe I will open a positions. Well on Tuesday goog moved a bunch and yesterday it moved 27 or so points. If I had done the Monday position I would be losing many thousand. I was thinking of doing 90 of them. But when I look today there are good positions and only a day or two left! With the politics and the rest of the world situation there is no reason to push the envelope. Tomorrow I will write on how to correct a bad position. Good to be back Jerry

Good to be back

Hi all. Well I have been on a roller coaster for a few months. I've become active on a BOD and also had a long vacation somewhat off the grid. But enough of me. Just wanted to say that I’m sorry for not posting for awhile and glad to be back. For trades that I am now doing.. A somewhat long term spread with GOOG. I recently bought the 9/800 and have sold the April 840. I won't be surprised if GOOG heads past it. If so I will have to decide to roll up the sold strike each week/ or month. But they pay quite well and my 'plan' for goog is to be around 900 by Sept. If so I will capture all the weekly prem's I take in plus capture the 100 pt's on the long side. The downside is how high I can roll the sold one. Otherwise I will have to buy it back to close in Sept. I usually hesitate to roll to soon as you forfeit prem when rolling and then if the stock misses on earns etc. it drops so all the forfeited prem’s are wasted? Always a dilemma. I usually try to stay 20 points below the current stock price. I am also doing some vert spreads with goog. For tomorrow I have a condor 830/835 calls And 790/795 puts This is for a little over 2% when opened yesterday. Still over 1% available at this time today. Tell me some of your trades and fire away any questions ‘good to be back’ Jerry

no more AAPL for awhile

Hi all. I've been pretty busy but with the holidays coming fast I am certainly slowing down. I have given up on trying to make APPLE go up. As you traders know one day up 10 then down 20 etc etc. I have closed all the AAPL options from 4 different acc'ts. Of course that means it will go through the roof. I have opened new positions in the following stocks and some of you might like to take a look for possible trades. A stock I really like is Phillips PSX Everything about it is good except that it only has monthly options at this time. But still you can get around 17% per month so worth a look. Another stock I am using is CAT, to buy the Jan 2014 87.5 and sell the 90's this week for 4.5% Also one I have started using again is GS buying the Jan 2014 115 and selling the current week 120. A negative is that there is no 122.5 strike. So if it gets moving you have to go out and up to stay ahead of it. Weekly for this week is 7% so some god money there. Another one I’m using is MCD pretty dependable. Buying the Jan 2014 87.5 selling this weeks 90 for around 3% My only other stock I’m using is VZ. I’m buying the Jan 2014 42 strike and selling this weeks 45 for 3%. VZ has lots of strikes to pick from which is nice So for anyone looking for ideas take a look at these. Good luck Jerry

Hi all, I can see I either have to do options full time or other business interest full time. I have broken many of my own rules while trying to ‘out-guess’ the market. I have gone to a lot of cash until I can see if this market is actually ready to go north. I have opened and closed so many positions lately my account looks more like a refrigerator door. At this time I still have some AAPL spreads. I have the Jan 2014 550 and selling weekly’s against them. This gives around 14 months for AAPL to stay the same and give a good weekly ROI or move up as many seem to think will happen. It is hard to believe that AAPL has dropped around 150 points in a matter of weeks. Hopefully the new products will produce some good news. Now that earnings season is pretty much over for a while, I am tiptoeing back in but I am very cautious. The coming confrontation between the House and the President regarding the fiscal cliff is spooky. So do be careful and leave lots of cushion in your positions.