Option to Profit
Week in Review
DECEMBER 28 – 31, 2015
| NEW POSITIONS/STO | NEW STO | ROLLOVERS | CALLS ASSIGNED/PUTS EXPIRED | CALLS EXPIRED/PUTS ASSIGNED | CLOSED | EX-DIVIDEND |
| 1 / 1 | 0 | ? | 1 / 0 | 1 / 0 | 0 | 4 |
Weekly Up to Date Performance
December 28 – 31, 2015
This week also ended with a whimper, just like last and it was appropriate for a year that ended on a whimper.
This ended up being a week of mostly passive observation and a few opportunities to trade, but at least one new position was opened for a change.
That single new position was 1.6% higher for the week while the adjusted and unadjusted S&P 500 were both 0.2% lower.
It was another week of weakness in energy and materials and that has pretty much been the case for the past 12 months.
There was 1 assignment for the week and they added to the nice performance for closed positions this year. Those 78 closed positions, representing the smallest number in 4 years, continue to outperform the market. They are an average of 4.6% higher, while the comparable time adjusted S&P 500 average performance has been 1.0% higher. That difference represents a 364.8% performance differential, as the average holding period has been climbing to nearly 50 days.
One aspect that I had not been reporting on those closed positions has been their annualized dividend yield, which ended the year at 3.4%, right where 2014 ended and quite a bit better than 2013, reflecting increasing consideration of dividend paying positions over the past 2 years.
The net whimper for this year was really all so illusory, as there were lots of cascading moves that eventually took us nowhere.
The other illusory part of finishing the year unchanged is that it was far, far worse than it all appears, if you only looked at the indexes and not at their components.
2015 was a year that saw far more stocks enter into correction and bear territory than it did see stocks thrive.
The skew was really pronounced and it was a small number of stocks in the DJIA, S&P 500 and NASDAQ, with some obvious overlap, that led the way toward them appearing much better than what was really happening underneath it all.
It would be nice to think that 2016 might return us to something a little more normally distributed.
The possibility of an economy that is truly growing would do wonders to make 2016 a good year. Even though many point to the observation that the year following a flat year is a good one, there are too many times when those expected relationships just didn’t pan out.
I was happy to end this week with at least one assignment and a decent number of ex-dividend positions to go along with the single rollover.
Based upon the past 3 months, I wouldn’t mind seeing fewer new positions opened and more time spent rolling the same names over and over again.
This was a week that continued the strange relationship we’ve seen over the past year between the market and energy prices, even though for a little bit it looked like the market was finally coming to the realization that low input costs is a good thing.
Still, it is good to see 2015 finally done, not that there’s much reason to believe that 2016 will be the antidote that most of us are in need of.
With a handful of positions expiring next week and a few ex-dividend positions, as well, there is at least some potential for income generation, with or without adding any new positions to start the year off.
With an assignment the cash reserve is a lttle higher to begin the year, but the operative word is really “little.”
For now, I just want to be thinking about a few days off and a new start.
Best wishes for a Happy and Healthy New Year to all.
This week’s details may be seen in the Weekly Performance spreadsheet * or in the PDF file, as well as in the summary below
(Note: Duplicate mention of positions reflects different priced lots):
New Positions Opened: DOW
Puts Closed in order to take profits: none
Calls Rolled over, taking profits, into the next weekly cycle: DOW
Calls Rolled over, taking profits, into extended weekly cycle: none
Calls Rolled over, taking profits, into the monthly cycle: none
Calls Rolled Over, taking profits, into a future monthly cycle: none
Calls Rolled Up, taking net profits into same cycle: none
New STO: none
Put contracts expired: none
Put contracts rolled over: none
Long term call contracts sold: none
Calls Assigned: WMT
Calls Expired: IP
Puts Assigned: none
Stock positions Closed to take profits: none
Stock positions Closed to take losses: none
Calls Closed to Take Profits: none
Ex-dividend Positions: JOY (12/28 $0.01), CY (12/29 $0.11), DOW (12/29 $0.46), EMC (12/30 $0.12)
Ex-dividend Positions Next Week: CSCO (1/4 $0.21), GPS (1/4 $0.23)
For the coming week the existing positions have lots that still require the sale of contracts: AGQ, ANF, AZN, BBY, CHK, CLF, COH, CY, FAST, FCX, GDX, GPS, HAL, HPQ, JCP, JOY, KMI, KSS, LVS, M, MCPIQ, MOS, NEM, RIG, WFM, WLTGQ (See “Weekly Performance” spreadsheet or PDF file)
* If you don’t have a program to read or modify spreadsheets, you can download the OpenOffice Suite at no cost.
