Updates for Friday (9/26)

Still no final word on a bailout plan. I guess the only thing that's encouraging to me right now is that it means somebody isn't willing to just blindly pass legistation. I haven't had time to keep up with the news like I would like, as I've been keeping pretty busy with my real job. My concern is that all this will come out before Monday and the markets will jump. This is a distinct advantage of a long strangle though. The markets can shift directions and I will still make a profit. It's just that I'm really close to my 10% profit goal to the downside on a couple of the plays. So it will take some time to reverse the downward move and build a move to the upside. But again this shows another advantage of how I execute strangles. All my options are out at Janurary expiration right now, so I don't have to have a profitable move in the stock for a couple months yet. But obviously the sooner the better, so I can get my profit and put it back into another trade.


Today's Activities
Sold LVS Jan 25P/40C - 1 contract for $9.95, a net profit of $0.932 (10.3% in 2 days :-) )


Updates
AMZN seems to be trying to build a base for a leg to the upside. I placed a horizontal line at today's open and there actually is some historical justification here that I had missed before.

DRYS is still moving down, but it's getting close to that lower bollinger band. For some reason this strangle isn't responding very well to the move. The stock has dropped almost 25% since I got into the trade, and the put is now $5 in-the-money. However, I'm still at a 4% loss overall. This might be a good stock to demonstrate a way to get out of strangles like this that aren't performing. I'm still experimenting with this part, so we can all learn together. Once it proves a reverse in direction I will "leg out" of the put side. This will allowing me to capture the profits on the put (currently ~65%), and then ride the call back up to a profit.

FDX gapped down at the open, but then recovered most of the loss by close. Like DRYS it is getting very close to the lower bollinger band, so my downward ride might be about over. Especially since the bounce today was off of a horizontal support trend. Since it has bounced off of a defined trendline and I am profitable on the put I am going to allow it to confirm and then "let out" of the put. I will post again before Monday to explain how the play will look.