10:25 a.m. New York time

Options

My primary concern continues to be my short iron condor options position on XLY. It expires at the end of next week, it’s underlying stock price remains in the profit zone, and yet the positions remains unprofitable.

On Tuesday of this week — tomorrow — I enter new options positions using the series that expires February 21, which will be 45 days away. Earlier I posted about the shortage of exchange-traded funds with sufficient volatility to meet my standards for an options trade. Happily for my strategy, the situation has reversed, and I have ETFs in 10 different sectors that meet my standards: An implied volatility rank of 25% or higher.

I discussed  in an earlier post the possibility of using calendar spreads as a vehicle for trading low-volatility options positions. It’s the less desirable options compared to short iron condors, so now that my choices are greater, I shall slide calendar spreads back on  the shelf until the next low-vol period hits.

Stocks

In stocks, I have no exits planned today. Three stocks fell short of the metrics needed to remain in their portfolios: LPLA in the Growth Portfolio and PAAS in Momentum, both of them strategy portfolios, and BMY from Genetics, a watchlist portfolio. The strategy-based holdings were removed because of their metrics; the watchlist holdings was removed by managers of the ETF whose holdings list I’m using for my pool, ARKG.

All three continue to carry attractive ranks from Zacks, so I have moved them to the Bench, a portfolio for, among other uses, stocks that have been dropped from a portfolio that still have a buy (2) or strong buy (1) rank.

Three stocks joined the qualifying symbols in the Growth Portfolio: BYD, STM and TX.

I also added four positions to the Momentum Portfolio as I continue to move toward the goal of holding every stock in its population, which presently numbers 12. These trades put me more than halfway there, with five more to go. (The population changes every day, of course, so the goal is always in flux.)

The entries:

• Growth
  • BYD for a $29.27 debit.
  • STM, a $26.73 debit.
  • TX, a $22.23 debit.
• Momentum
  • ACA for a $45.33 debit.
  • FORM, a $26.09 debit.
  • JD, a $37.81 debit.
  • MBT, a $10.36 debit.

Over the weekend I implemented my decision to narrow the floating stop loss on all stock positions to 10%, improving the risk/reward ratio.

By Tim Bovee, Portland, Oregon, January 6, 2020

Disclaimer

Tim Bovee, Private Trader tracks the analysis and trades of a private trader for his own accounts. Nothing in this blog constitutes a recommendation to buy or sell stocks, options or any other financial instrument. The only purpose of this blog is to provide education and entertainment.

No trader is ever 100 percent successful in his or her trades. Trading in the stock and option markets is risky and uncertain. Each trader must make trading decisions for his or her own account, and take responsibility for the consequences.

License

All content on Tim Bovee, Private Trader by Timothy K. Bovee is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Based on a work at www.timbovee.com.