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.

Hi all, I’ve been off line for a nice trip and some off time. Well I opened the GOOG trade and got spanked with lousy earnings. I should pay more attention to my own rules…lol. The drop in AAPL also wasn’t all that great.. I have closed all previous AAPL and GOOG positions and opened new ones with Jan, 2013 /600 and selling weekly’s against them. Friday I sold the AAPL 620’s for 4+ and back to making money instead of donating to the option gods. At this time AAPL is the only positions that I have open. The drop in AAPL seems to be a great entry point. Time will tell. Now to the blog to catch up on some of the post.

Hi all, it is 9:45 on the west coast and I just opened a trade that might interest some of you. This is a vertical call spread using GOOG I bought the Nov 745 and sold the Oct 20 750. This was a debit of 8.7 The plan is for Goog to stay over 750 by the Nov expiration. If so here are the approx. results. I will make the diff in the spread ---5 I will sell calls weekly for 4 weeks and make approximately 3.5 each week =4 x 3.5 =14 (could be lots more) So a gain of 19 but it cost 8.7 to open this position so a net gain of 10.3 for each option. I did quite a few of these so the results could be very nice. It is earnings week for GOOG so some risk there but as the Oct 750 has over 17 in time val. for 3 days it seems pretty good to me. This isn’t for all but I’m doing them. Good luck

Ways to trade

Hi all, Lots of talk regarding instructional ideas. Wow you guys have more time than I do. I have mixed emotions regarding all the info available on the web and in seminars etc. I am glad that so many find the information helpful as nothing beats knowledge and experience. For those of you that find it confusing, the relationship of the IV compared to a rising delta and a dropping stock price and all the other variables that affect the premiums, I’m with you. I have been doing this nearly everyday for fifteen years. I’ve made lots of money and sorry to say lost my fair share. But I have never found any of the tons of info that is available to be of much help. It certainly will spell out a lot of what if’s, but it all changes immediately with the stock price change. You can spend hours researching all the variables but eventually you have to pull the trigger based on plain old common sense. The correct gamma and delta and IV and all the other info won’t help a bit if you don’t pick your stock or index based on common sense. For those of you that don’t have the time to watch all the videos and web cast, just follow some simple rules. Pick a darn good stock Pick one with a decent PE Use options that have a decent premium and plenty of O-I Avoid stocks with coming news i.e; earnings etc. Optionsense; I think you mentioned that you are finding a longer time period safer as you have more time to be correct.. Hmm don’t you also have more time to be wrong? To me time is the biggest enemy of all. I don’t want to be holding a position a month from now when Israel attacks Iran or vise-versa. I want a position that is only a few days long unless I’m doing a bullish call spread such as I have with AAPL. For short term spreads, call or puts, I want my money at risk for just a few days. An example of positions that I will open probably Tuesday assuming all is right with the world.. AAPL trading around 700 Iron Condor (IC) this weeks 630/625 put for a nickel =1% On the call side 750/755 for another nickel=1% for around 2% a week with these two. GOOG trading around 734 put side 680/670 for a nickel and 765/770 on the call side = .05 for another 2%. I have absolutely no idea what the various greeks or other indicators would say about these trades but they are common sense. A long ways from the stock price and 1-2% in a week. Someone show me a mutual fund that makes 100% a year, and they get to use computers as big as your house… For you traders that love ‘more’ information good luck as there are a ton of people selling ideas of how you can make money. To me I fall back on my natural skeptical side and think if it works that good, why don’t they use it and give the information away as they obviously can make all the money they want. I make quite a lot of money from trading and the last thing I want is some of your hard earned money just so you can have me tell you the end all way of trading. For the traders that are just getting started, take it easy. Use common sense. Don’t try to learn too much or you might get paralysis by analysis. There can be too much info out there for some of us. Gbarbs, you mentioned rolling down the sold side of a call spread. Don’t forget when you do that, it takes profit off of total profit at maturity. I also do it at times but generally it is costly if you assume that the stock will come back by expiration of the long side. If you believe the stock will come back, usually you are better off to not roll down. Good luck all and I do enjoy sharing ideas Jerry

Hi all, a lot of questions on the blog regarding which brokerage is best, cheapest, fastest etc. I have been with Schwab, Fidelity, Ameritrade etc. At this time I trade with two brokerages. Most of my trades are with TradeKing because of the rates. I do manage two accounts that are with Ameritrade and I like their platform. I also seem? to have faster trade executions with them. Maybe I put in a more reasonable attempt? But 75% of my trades are with TradeKing. I get no kick back for recommending them..lol (wish I did). But the rates are 4.95 and .65 per option. I look around every now and then and have not found anyone to beat them. They have next day fund transfers of money. Decent online help when needed. They seem to have a fair amount of tools for you traders that look at that stuff. I trade most days quite few options and never use any of the tools. Most of you that have known me for a year or two know that I don’t use vix, (I have no idea how to use Gamma, Theta, Alpha etc. I never look at the Delta or the Implied Vol. For those that do use all of the Greeks etc. TK seems to offer it? The opening and closing and rolling out is very simple and intuitive. They make a four legged trade very simple. So if you are looking around you might check them out. For those that have been trading AAPLE, it sure has been an upward road. The premiums are good and the upside is still to come. The new phone and other products will just keep producing money. I do think that a pullback could happen as it has gone up a hundred points in the last month or so. But for every seller there is a buyer waiting to jump in on any correction. I appreciate you traders that always jump in to help new traders or anyone with a question. It is a pleasure to exchange ideas with you.

Hi all, Well I have lately been called Johnny Apple seed, do to my liking AAPL and using it nearly exclusively. For me it is a stock that comes along only once every 10 years or so. The premiums are great, the upside with new products is fantastic and the management is forward thinking and innovative. They lead in market share and customer loyalty. So I am breaking the rules of diversification. At this time I only have AAPL options. That said there are other great stocks that offer great option situations. I like GOOG, which continues to innovate and if they cannot beat you they buy you. GOOG hires the best and brightest from other companies and will for years be a force to consider. At this time Priceline (PCLN) is the leader in their field and has some great options. But lookout PCLN as GOOG is thinking of getting into the booking of hotels etc. If so with name recognition and their marketing, they usually eat the completion. I get questions regarding longer term options. As most of you know that follow my thoughts, to me, time is the biggest enemy. Too much can happen. i.e. war in Iran, election coming, some goof ball doing something stupid, major earthquake, Europe meltdown.. Pick your disaster, it can happen. I have many Jan options that were opened at the buy side of a longer term play. But I am uncomfortable with them. Not because of the stock but strictly the TIME factor. So for those of you that look at selling puts into Oct etc. be very careful and leave lots of cushion. There is so much money to be made with careful choices there is no reason to go out to far. We (I) talk of 1+% a week. We forget that, that is considered outrageous to sophisticated money managers. There isn’t a mutual fund that makes that kind of money. Do weeklies and just make deposits. No reason to guess on the potential of a stock that maybe has reached bottom or the next GOOG etc. Pick winners, leave cushion, avoid earnings. With those three sure ways to making money there is no reason to guess. Good luck all Jerry

Hi all; Just a reminder to check what AAPL has done in the last 5 days. 31 points and still heading towards Oct release of the new I-Phone. Quality will come to the surface. For those that are looking for a naked put trade check out aapl for Aug 18 at the 550 strike. With 57 points of cushion you get +1% for two weeks. Pretty safe and a good ROI. I sould like a cheerleader for AAPL but with a lot of options in several accounts i love the stock and its future. I like GOOG also but worry for AMZN with its high PE. Plenty of positions with good ROI out there. Use caution and play safe. Don't fall for market HYPE ala FB. Go with proven fundementals and you will be safe.

An easy 80% in 6 months

Hi all, I had a friend that is interested in options but doesn’t have the time necessary at this point to do full time trading. He asked me if there was a simple trade that should make good profit. I looked around and decided to show him a trade that I now have and that will work for full time traders or new traders that want a profit yet not trade every week. This is simple and only requires one thing to happen. By January 2013 AAPL needs to be over 600 and over 630 for full profit. I see no problem with that part as AAPL might be over 630 this month. So the trade is to -- B2O (buy to open) a Jan 2013 AAPL call at the strike of 565. This will cost you today 80.90 S2O a Jan 2013 AAPL call at the 630 strike. You will receive 45.60. You now have a net debit of 35.3 If AAPL is over 630 at expiration date you close both side right before expiration and the result is a profit of 65 difference between strikes minus 35.3 = net gain of 29.7. As the set up cost you 35.3, it is 29.7 / 35.3 = 84% ROI in 6 months. This is about the easiest way to make over 80% in 6 months that I know of. Your break-even point is if AAPL is over 600 at closing time.

Hi all, I have been pretty busy with several projects so not enough time to post or keep up with all the comments and finally did today. Regarding this AAPL run, wow it sure makes it hard to continue on the path I was hoping for. First, Artelly; please write again. Don’t know how I missed your request. Now on to the ITM spreads. Well as probably most of you know even though you started with a ITM spread you now probably have a Deep In The Money spread. One day away from the ability to trade and now today I found myself way behind the curve. Here is what I did. I had several different long sides but most were 565 Jan 2013 and this July 20 575. Yikes already 35 points behind the stock. First there are two main ways to make money with this method and of course you can mix and match when that is appropriate. At the end of this I will tell you of what I have done today. One goal is to make weekly money by selling the strike that keeps you around 10 points below the current stock price. If the stock moves then you sell the next higher strike. If it moves even more you might have to roll out to the next month and pick up some credit as well as a strike or two. The other way to win is to get a bigger and bigger spread between the long side and the short side. This has the down side of not really building the account while doing it, but the profits are deferred until closing. EX; you have the aapl 550 and you keep rolling out to the next month and getting 10 points more. You might have to do this without taking in $$ when doing this roll. So you opened this on June 1 and had the Jan 550 and had sold the June 565 and each month you had to roll out to the next month and made no money while rolling, but you did pick up 10 points or more each month. So by Jan you had rolled up 10 points per month for a total of 70 more points. So now you could have the Jan 635 sold and the Jan 550 bought and it all expires. You now get the full distance between the two strikes for a total of 85 points so now if you 10 of them it would be worth 85,000. During some of those months the stock probably didn’t go up and you caught up some and just rolled out to the same strike for a decent credit. That of course would be mixing the two objectives. So you can make profits rolling to the next month or just taking a credit weekly / monthly. Now what I did was a little different. Today I rolled all of my current shorts July 575’s) into the Jan 630. I picked up for an 8.50 in credit and I also picked up 65 points of spread between my 565’s and the 630’s. What I accomplished was two-fold. I now have a big spread between the two strikes and I used the new credit to open some more spreads and this time I went to the 600 Jan 2014 and sold the July 6 – 615’s. (when I did this AAPL was trading at 614..) with these I have around 76 weeks to either roll up or up and out. I will sit on the old ones that have the two Jan expirations and just collect the difference at closing time. If AAPL should fall back on bad earns etc. I might close the short Jan 630’s and open a lower strike and collect the lost TV of the old 630.. But that is just a thought hanging out these if AAPL drops. I hope all are adjusting to the different plays with AAPL as it is sure moving towards earnings. Moving this fast has certainly makes one do some deep thinking and scrambling.

Home again

Hey, I'm home and had a good time and ready to get back into trading. Ihaveo's, your post of 6/21 @ 1:12 was correct. There is no 'sure' way to trade options. But turning the odds in your favor is the best way to make money that I have found. Regarding some confusion of DITM options. (deep in the money options) The plan is to buy a low strike far enough out and sell a near term option a little below the current stock price. As you roll up, if the stock goes up, you create a difference between the bought and the sold option. In two of the acc’t I manage, the bought is now the Jan 2013, 535 strike. So assuming AAPL continues upward somewhat towards earnings I will be rolling up 5-10 points a week or even having to jump into the next month. I will continue to roll up and out and get a bigger and bigger spread between the two strikes. Come Jan I want to close all and if the stock is at 700? I can sell the 535 for 165 points. Let’s assume that I have only been able to roll into the 650 strike for the sold one. I will have to buy it back for 50 points. That means that at that time I will receive 115 points of credit. That does not take into account each credit I received when rolling. If AAPL only goes to 620 by Jan then I will get 85 points of credit and also have the credit of the roll ups. As Ihaveo’s mentioned AAPL (or any stock) does not always go up. So if one set of these expire without rolling then you get to keep the credits and start over. I see I missed an interesting week FOMC, Greek and Egypt elections. So let’s get back into trading and see where we go from here. Some great post and questions. I hope all are learning and enjoying as much as I am. I thank all that try to help other others and either explain or de-mystify options. Jerry

HI all. It is Saturday evening and one last post and answer part. --LOV; I use long and the longer the better. You are saying shorter term than I like. City; You are correct, the real value comes when you are able to let all expire. Of the accounts i trade, many look somewhat natural until finally they expire and bingo big money. ihaveo's; there are different situations but when the TV gets to 1.5 or 2 i start thinking of rolling. If the option is out of the money I will let it run, if in the money i start thinking of rolling. There is probably questions I have not answered but other have or tried to help. But to sum it up i want to have a call option that is ITM and around 10 pts ITM (in the money) Keep doing that until the stock takes a breather and all expire worthless and you finally collect the money. Tomorrow I will be off the grid and catching nice rainbows with my flyrod. You guys are in charge and keep the market under control. It will be a week before i even see the Greek results.

A different idea on trading

Hi all, here is an idea for a slightly different way to trade on a vertical spread. I am using AAPL as it has seemed to have bottomed out and it also has great premiums. This is on the same idea of trading in the money covered calls. With AAPL trading around 581, I am looking at buying Jan 2014 570 strike for $111, and selling the June 16th 570, for 14.25 This is of course 3.25 of time value. The idea is if AAPL keeps going up I will continue to sell the 570 for the next two weeks and with two weeks left in the July cycle I will roll up 5 points and go out to the July 21 and take another credit. If aapl has not gone up much I might continue to sell the 570 strike for the next week without going out to the next two weeks. So the idea is to stick with the strike you have even if the stock is going up some and when you reach the point where there is two weeks left in the next period, jump to that option and roll up 5 points. By using Jan of 2014 you have approximately 77 weeks of taking in 2 or 3 points of credit when rolling. In a perfect world AAPL will be around 700 in a year and a half. If so your 2014- 570 would be worth 130 for a net gain of 19. And if you were lucky enough to make 2.5 points a week for 77 weeks it would be a gain of 192 points of pure profit on the calls sold. You would also make around 33 points of profit on the original bought call of the 570. This would be a net gain of 192+33 = 225. This could mean a ROI over 200% in a year and a half. A lot of if’s but something to consider. I am going to do it with maybe 20 positions. I will keep you posted on the ROI.

Well this was the week from hell for the market. My trades went fine as I look for little profit and lots of cushion. I hope all of you have had the same good luck. The difference between us (cushion addicts) and the rest of investors, especially option investors is that we go for consistent lower returns. We expose ourselves to little time and we leave lots of cushion. It is that easy to make 1-2% a week. After 5 months the DOW is about even and the S&P also. Friends, it is that easy to beat the market. But it takes discipline and a plan. Step by step and profit by small profit you can beat the market. I enjoy all the contributions by you guys. It is fun for me to see new ways to trade these options. There are so many ways but most successful ways limit time and add cushion. Good luck all Jerry

Hi all, Well this May is some proof that the old saying in the stock market that says ‘Go away in May,’ sure provided some insight. With world events and even those closer to home in a confused stage, I advise anyone that is trading to be very careful and avoid holding positions over weekend (especially long weekends like this memorial weekend.) There are just too many things going on. Will Greece pull out of the euro? Will Iran get the bomb. Will U.S. bonds get downgraded again etc etc. There are plenty of positions that will open on Tuesday or Wednesday that offer cushion and little time left in their life. An example is the SPX (sometimes with different brokerages called $SPX.X) It is trading around 1317 and you can buy the 1225 and sell the 1230 put for around 1% in a 4 day trade. You can also add to the same trade and turn it into a condor by selling the 1365 and buying 1370 call. This also makes around .05 so it now is a 2% trade. The put side has 87 points of cushion and the call side has around 50 points of cushion. There are other examples using a stock like CMG with the 330/335 put. I certainly would not use a stock that doesn’t offer weekly options. I would not be holding a position over several weeks as there are just too many factors pulling the market in different directions. You want to expose yourself to little time and keep lots of cushion. There is no reason to open dangerous positions just because you ‘think’ the stock has fallen as far as it can, etc. The point is to not get close to any current stock price. The market is just too volatile. I want to emphasize that you need to be very careful in this market. There is plenty of money to be made using common sense and careful positions. Cushion and Caution…