October 2015, RUT Credit Put spread

Today I added a new position to the October expiration cycle during the afternoon session as the market reached a short term pessimistic extreme.

Sold October $RUT 980/970 Credit Put spread for 0.60 credit

— The Lazy Trader (@lazytrading) September 29, 2015

Weekend Portfolio Analysis (September 26, 2015)

I spent very little time this week looking at the markets. Safe positions far out and nicely set up price alerts allowed me to focus and be productive in other areas of my life. When this happens I usually lose a bunch of followers and the number of visits to this blog is drastically reduced. I made no trades and all is looking good in Lazy Trading Land.

Weekend Portfolio Analysis (September 19, 2015)

Well, September expiration is in the books and I saw the following positions expire for max profit:

RUT 1330/1340 Credit Call spread
RUT 900/910 Credit Put spread
SPX 1650/1675 Credit Put spread

This would have resulted in a 5.75% draw-down for the month, but I had an additional little loser:

SPY long 147 Put.

This long Put idea was an insurance play, bought just in case the market kept crashing. A small price to pay for piece of mind in the middle of the debacle.

November 2015 SPX Iron Condor

Today I went back to playing offense, something which I hadn't had a chance to do since the little crash in late August.

Sold November $SPX 1630/1640/2100/2110 Iron Condor for 1.75 Credit.

— The Lazy Trader (@lazytrading) September 18, 2015

This is the first trade of the November monthly options expiration cycle.

Figured out

Andrew is close to retirement, and has it all figured out.

"I'm a passive investor with what I'd consider a well-managed margin account that will allow me to retire comfortably at 65 with no other deposits into it."

Weekend Portfolio Analysis (September 13, 2015)

The markets went up 1.75% this week in the face of universal bearishness. By the way this is the second article I'm writing today, I suggest you read The daily fluctuations of your easily influenced mood which initially was intended to be my starting commentary on the Weekend Portfolio Analysis but it turned out to be too long so I published it as an independent piece.

It was a pretty hectic week for me with a work deadline in a few hours and some heavy tasks that took a while. I had to put 8 solid hours yesterday as I watched my beloved Blue Jays completely demoralized the New York Yankees. It's only today that I have time to write on the site, and quite a start for the day it has been with ideas flowing easily. I thought my brain would be burned out. But nop. Here I am.

The daily fluctuations of your easily influenced mood

The entire world was bearish, and of course the markets went up from 1927.30 to 1961.05 this past week for a solid +1.75% gain. This is why the untrained trader does a disservice to himself by being constantly connected to financial media outlets: CNBC, MarketWatch, Bloomberg, The WallStreet Journal, BNN, Twitter.... In most cases, the unexperienced person ends up a victim of his surroundings and the prevalent opinion of the majority around. If you follow 200 people on Twitter, and 90% are being cataclysmic and seeing the end of the universe right around the corner, you will have a tendency to be bearish and scared as well. Quite possibly making trading decisions based on that bias that you didn't even have to begin with. It was just inoculated in you as a result of your own decision to be influenced by what others are thinking, by actively going out there looking for that which you didn't really need.

Weekend Portfolio Analysis (September 5, 2015)

♪♪ New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made of
There's nothin' you can't do
Now you're in New York
These streets will make you feel brand new
The lights will inspire you
Let's hear it for New York, New York,
New York ♪♪♪

Today I'm writing to you from the historic, majestic and ultra-expensive New York City. As for using a piece of that song here (Copyright material), don't worry. It'll all be OK. The unstoppable cash flow provided by this site allows me to buy the rights for that song or any other for that matter.