Overall 21% stocks, 79% cash and equivalents. Stocks position down slightly from past week due to some long side liquidation. Overall, I was up about 0.6% for the week versus a similar move in S&P based on Thursday’s numbers. That aside, everything I did this week turned out badly.
Noticing a breakout in RIMM on the weekly chart, and weekly range bands, I bought 2 lots of RIMM in the taxable account and 1 in the retirement account at about 64.80 on Monday. RIMM of course petered out after I bought and went sideways down from there. I sold 1 lot at 63.5 a day later for a $130 loss.
I attended Dr Alex Elder’s Webinar advice Tuesday evening where he was bearish on RIMM. RIMM started to look toppy, so I shorted 100 RIMM at 63.75 and sold my other long at 63.38. I also closed my other lot in the retirement account at 63.40. At this point I’m short 1 lot of RIMM and I’m feeling good as RIMM is starting to turn down after its big run. Next downside target is $60 and i’m already counting my future profits.
On Thursday, RIMM opened strong and started to rally and I ended up covering my RIMM short on Thursday at 65.5 for a 1.75 loss. So on RIMM alone, I lost about 4.2 on the long side and 1.5 on the short side. These weren’t large losses, but at one point, I was up over $100 on each of these positions and let them run to losses.
FAS started to look toppy in the middle of the week. I had a good profit from a long entry at 5.75 so I sold 2 of my 5 lots in each account at about 8.60 on Tuesday. By Wednesday, these had dropped to the high 7.0’s, so I felt good. At the same time, I bought 1 lot of FAZ in each account at about 10.25. These ran up to about 11.8 on Wednesday and I was up nicely. Well FAS rallied back and FAZ dropped and I ended up closing my 1 lot of FAS in each account on Thursday at about 9.15 for a $110 loss in each account.
So the bottom line was I lost about $850 across the 2 accounts based on these trades before commissions.
Finally, I sold my AAPL April 115 calls at 3.30 on Wednesday at the low of the week. I made a small profit on these, but only a fraction of what I could have closed them out for later in the week.
In retrospect, I was in the right positions and in the right direction, but I didn't have clear entry/exit parameters and the account suffered as a result. Also, i'm in the mindset to take small losses, and let profits run. Its just that I took the losses but didn't let the profits run in some cases. In the bright side, I didn’t do much damage to my accounts and I still have some good positions open.
My regular corporate job was incredibly demanding this week along with some last minute scrambling to get tax return in also took away from market time. I know I could have pulled some money out this option expiration, but it wasn't mean to be.
For the year. I am down about -2% versus -4% on the SP-500 based on Thursday numbers.