Friday Q&A
Hello Smart Option Sellers! Before we get to the questions, I wanted to say that I've been receiving emails from Smart Option Seller members about their fill prices on today's buy-back trade on GSK. I will go over all the profit details on Monday even though the markets will be closed. It's great to have another win locked in. On another note, I'm glad we were able to take advantage of the recent plunge in stock prices as we were able to get into a few new trades. The moves up and down were fast and furious, which helped us, but we also missed other opportunities due to the sheer quickness of those price moves. By the time I wanted to send an alert out to everyone, the prices became unattainable. If only I had a direct, real-time, instant link to your brains, then we could really do some work! Lol. I'll keep those trades on ice for now, as I think we may see another bout of downside action soon. For some of our newer members, you joined at a great time, as many of our open positions are still attainable at good prices. We definitely had a V-shaped recovery in the market like the one I talked about the other day. Look at the chart of the S&P500 here. You can see the V-shape from the last two weeks. As of now, the market has basically reversed all that was lost, except for the big Friday move on February 2nd. That's pretty impressive. Like I said, I can see a possible downside move again in the next week or two, but it probably won't be as big. Hopefully it will allow us to enter some more trades. Friday Q&A Q: Lee, what's the latest with Bitcoin? A: Ah, bitcoin. We haven't talked about it in awhile. Well, if you think the stock market's volatility has been big, then you haven't been following the cyrptocurrencies. The price swings for bitcoin and all the other cryptos has been nothing short of insane. Towards the middle of December 2017, bitcoin was reaching all-time highs near $20,000 per coin. And then the plug was pulled. It has gone on a descent since then until it bottomed out at $5,875 on February 5th. That was almost a 70% loss in value. Holy sh*t! It now trades right at $10,000, which is a big $4,000 gain since making those current lows. I think there was just too many people chasing the same trade too quickly, and all the buying pressure pushed it up to unsustainable heights (kind of like the stock market). When bitcoin started to drop, it flushed out all the weak players who got in late. They didn't want to lose money so it set off a cascade of sell orders. So why did it fall? A few newsworthy events out of South Korea & China started the drop and it just snowballed from there. I think we've hit the reset button here and can now make a more calculated move higher. Many of go-go amateurs won't probably come back and we can get the quality players who really see the true potential of bitcoin. I didn't sell. In fact, I bought more on the way down. I'm in for the long haul, as I see it as being a revolutionary type of payment system & store of wealth. As I've recommended here, I'm only playing with speculative "fun" money, and not putting my life savings into it. If you didn't get in on the first go-round, maybe you'll consider taking a small stake. Read my instructions farther down in the alert after the Current Portfolio. Use the referral link I include below. Q: I was wondering how you structure your personal portfolio. Specifically, do you have a general rule for what percentage of your portfolio you devote to put option sales, value stocks, dividend yield stocks, earnings day trades? I assume this changes based on market conditions but I was curious if you have a rough rule of thumb. A: I really don't follow any general rules for allocating my personal portfolio. As I've stated many times throughout the years, I really don't own any individual stocks. It's all option contracts for me, and most of it is put-sells. If I see something worthy, I'll trade it. Of course I have my retirement accounts and such, and those are just invested in general index funds and index ETFs. It's the most hands-off and easy way to get the best returns for those kinds of accounts, in my opinion. My "trading" accounts, like I said above, are mostly options trades. Sorry I don't have a better answer than that, but if passive index funds & ETFS can beat most money managers year after year, why try to do something different? Q: i show a loss on gsk wanted to check the buy premium on gsk 31 put i assume i am doing this right to close the trade i didnt get a premium of .05 i got a mid price of .25 what am i doing wrong A: Hi, not sure what you're really asking, but let's try to figure out what's happening. We closed out a profitable trade on GSK today (March $32 puts), but that doesn't seem to be the one you're asking about. Maybe you're mixing them up? We have two separate positions on GSK. If you tried to buy the June $31 put option back today, you would not be able to buy it at $.05 per contract. That value is $.25 per contract, as you mentioned. This newer GSK put-sell trade on the $31 strike has been attainable since we entered the play on February 2nd. What you may be describing is an open profit/loss profile. Since entering the trade at a sale price of $.28 per contract on February 2, it has gone up to a value of $.60 per contract at one point when the market fell last week. This would've put us underwater on the trade and showed a paper loss at that time. It has since dropped back down to about $.25 per contract, putting us back to roughly break-even. The March $32 put options is what we bought back today for $.05 per contract. I think you might be confusing the two positions. If this doesn't help, please write in again. That's all for today. Have a great long weekend and I'll get the next alert out on Monday. Continue to contact me here Regards,
Lee Let's Grab That Cash!
Current Portfolio Continue to work all other trades as instructed and continue to hold all other open positions as-is. See the Current Portfolio below for current prices & instructions. Note on the Current Portfolio - if you are a new subscriber and don't have a position yet on any of our trades, make sure you enter your order at the original recommended sell prices. Do no enter any order unless the current option price is at, or higher, than the official recommendation. If you are unsure or have any questions, please ask us!
