Friday, April 4, 2008

Being trigger happy makes you not so much

So of course, the day I sold my calls on JPM, I go out and buy puts, also on JPM.
Bad, bad idea.
Since JPM moved based on market news (huge writeoffs by UBS and others that seem to have led investors to believe that the markets had bottomed), as well as bullish sentiment on JPM's upcoming earnings, buying puts so quickly was probably a pretty bad idea.
Not bad in terms of buying the puts, but buying them before the stock had a couple of days to establish a range, which would have allowed me to assess the right price point to jump in. Now as it turns out the puts are right where I bought them, rather than the nice price increase I would have had if only I had waited. :-(

So, note to self - look (for a couple of days) before I leap (no pun intended, although only option traders would get that one).

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

JPM's next move

Sold my JPM Jan 55 Cs today. The stock is up on a combination of the following;
1. industry write downs (UBS wrote down $19B!!!) - reading this Mr. Market seems to think that the stock market's bottomed.
2. The US Treasury's proposed overhaul of financial regulators
3. Goldman Sach's comment that JPM will have next to no writedowns this quarter

Now I figure that what goes up must come down, so will be buying JPM puts. We'll see how well that plays out...