Hi Readers! In this Trade Talk post, I will be talking about what changes, such as new positions and adjustments, have happened in the past week in my options trading portfolio. Here is the update:
Tuesday (2/20/2024):
Before I talk about the updates, I will just briefly recap my existing positions. I had a QQQ Long time spread, and a SPY long straddle, both spreads being ATM at the time of purchase. These spreads have gone many adjustments throughout the week before this week, so please keep that in mind.
Now I will get into the actual adjustments I made on Tuesday. First off, I had noticed that the SPY Long straddle was not doing so well, as it was at a loss of around $1000. However, SPY had made some movement, within the breakeven points unfortunately. I was also incurring daily decay (theta) since it was purely a net long options position. So, to cover that loss, I decided to short an SPY Straddle at a closer expiration date. The short straddle was in the Feb 26 expiration cycle, and the original long straddle was in the March 1 expiration cycle. Also, the short straddle was at a strike price of $500, and I shorted 10 of the straddles.
For QQQ, I did not do much except purchase 500 shares of stock. I had noticed that QQQ reached a demand/support zone, so I decided to purchase 500 shares to gamma scalp and make some money for the position.
Wednesday (2/21/2024):
I did not make any adjustments today. However, my options' profits changed a lot. First off, near the middle of the day, my QQQ Long 500 shares were losing around $1,200. However, QQQ spiked back up and ended the day at a much higher point, so my long 500 shares were profiting by about $1,650 by the end of the day. My short calls' profit went down by a little but. However, my long calls' losses were cut by a little bit thanks to the upside move by QQQ.
For the SPY position, since for the first half of the day SPY went down and away from the $500 price point, the short calls were profiting and the short puts were losing money. But, since the stock returned to near the $500 point and the short straddle was very close to its strike price, both the short legs of the short straddle started to profit.
Thursday (2/22/2024):
For QQQ, I did not end up selling the long shares I had, and that ended up being the best thing. QQQ opened ended at around $425 the previous day, and opened up at around $434 on Thursday, bagging me nearly $10 per share. This earned me an extra $3000 on the long shares. The short $435 calls I had also gained more profit as QQQ had jumped up to nearly that price point. Additionally, over the day, I closed the long shares of QQQ I had, and both the short $435 calls and the long $432 calls I had picked up nice profits. At the end of the day, both options were profiting a combined $3,200.
Not much happened for the SPY position, I made no adjustments for that position. The loss of around $1000 it was incurring also did not change by much.
All I did was close out of the QQQ Short calls I had, which were profiting by about $1,200, since they expired on Friday the 23rd. I did not make any other adjustments on my positions.
Plans for the next week:
I want to identify more gamma scalping opportunities, to make some more money for both my QQQ and SPY positions. I also want to continue monitoring the SPY short straddle. I might have to exit that short straddle, as the whole profitability of that straddle was dependent upon low volatility which was broken. I also want to do something to maintain my deltas and thetas near 0 for the QQQ long calls. I also plan to just maintain my deltas and thetas near 0 for all my positions, as that is a very effective strategy that hedges as well.
This is what I did this past week on my options trading account, stay updated for the posts next week! I will explain the adjustments and changes I actually ended up doing, so stay tuned! Thanks for reading!
Pictures:
Tuesday:
Wednesday:
Thursday:
Friday:
