Old Dogs

At this point my new 14 month old puppy is neither a puppy, nor new.


But I think we’re already at the point that he’s incapable of learning new tricks.


LaszloI, on the other hand, am certainly not a young pup, as the very gray whiskers will attest, but I’ve learned the art of the Tweet.


My wife and sister would like me to learn the Art of Shaving, as my sister recently gave me a gift from a store by the same name.


I may not know when my unkempt appearance warrants a shave, but I do now know the differences between @, # and $.


So, as a veteran Tweeter, I’ve now posted about 29 times on the first day.


Too much?


The only thing is that I’m not certain if Tweeting is somewhat similar to the sound that a fallen tree makes in the forest. In that case, I may never find out if 29 Tweets was too much., but there were already 15 followers.


So far, I seem to have gotten a number of followers who all appear to share a common characteristic. Based on their profile pictures and poses, I would say that they probably spent significant amounts of time in Eastern European truck stops.


We’ll see.


But another new things was suggested by a past newsletter subscriber, and bless him, a purchaser of the OTP book, who asked why I didn’t include charts and tables in the blog to better illustrate the points.


Mt first thought was that charts and tables aren’t that humorous and they require more work.


Then, I also remembered that my wife told me last night that she was funnier than I was.


Hmmm.


So, today I tweeted that while Goldman Sachs was being further bitch slapped by the Senate, it’s price fell about $4 in the opening minutes. That presented a nice opportunity to pick up shares and sell the $155 call options, that happen to expire tomorrow. The net on the transactions would be about $0.80 per share. Granted, that’s only 0.5%, but still, not bad for less than 2 days, with very little additional risk.


So let’s give it a try. Here’s the chart


GS Chart


You know that I’m not a huge fan of technical analysis, but when a solid company drops like that, without real substantive news, it’s often a good opportunity to jump in.


In this case, the options premiums were:


GS Options premiums


See? I told you these weren’t very funny.



Who knows? Maybe my wife was right. After all, , she did turn out to be right about slavery and heroin.


By the same token, JP Morgan took another hit today as well and I think, represents a good opportunity to pick up shares on the cheap.


Same with Mosaic, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to include more charts today. I’ve seen enough of their somber sorry statistics.


Yeah, let’s see if she’s as able at artful alliteration  as am I.



Now, normally I  wait until the end of the day to compose the blog, but I was so excited by learning the Tweeting trick that I just couldn’t wait any longer.  Were it not for the fact that I have to stay away from salt, I would have shared one of Laszlo’s chicken jerky snacks with him.


But then, I also realized that I should wait to celebrate until I see how that Goldman recommendation works out.


There’s always a new trick to be learned tomorrow.

Visits: 41

Rip Van Winkle

At some point, even Rip Van Winkle wasn’t going to return from that final sleep.


But here I am, 9 months later and not a single blog post.


Not quite the 20 years that Van Winkle allegedly slumbered away, but based on my life expectancy, still, a pretty big portion.


Actually, I dreamt that I wrote a book.


My publicist tells me that while I was gone, people now Tweet and Poke..


And so, he strongly suggests that if I want to push sales of the OTP Book, I need to Tweet and Poke.



So I started slowly. Figuring that I could get into less trouble by Tweeting, until he explained to me what those actually meant.


So now I am @TheAcsMan and I’m being told to get a moniker for all of the friends that I really would rather shun, but now must Poke and be poked.


I spent the day in Hershey, Pennsylvania yesterday. It reminded me a little of the time that Ned Flanders and his kids moved to the town that made the Hummel figurines. It was as idyllic as he had imagined it would be and somehow, it became maddening in its perfection.


Hershey looks idyllic. I wonder?


I spent about 4 hours driving yesterday, but not before making my 2010 SEP-IRA contribution, just in time for taxes.


 Now, with this new piece of change sitting in  the account, readers of the OTP newsletter, or those smart enough to have already purchased the book, and yes, there are some of those, can probably guess what I did.


RIverbed Technology was an old favorite of mine, but I haven’t owned it since about $28.


So now I own it.


In fact, I did something that I don’t usually do, but the money was really burning a hole in my pocket.


I spent the entire amount on RVBD and I bought all of the shares in one chunk.


That in itself wasn’t bad, but as I started my drive, with SmartPhone using the E*Trade app and my netbook logged in to E*Trade, I just  just watched RVBD tumble about $2.


I know, you’re thinking how “uncool” I am, because I don’t have an iPad.


Listen, there are lots of reasons that I’m not cool. Just add that to the list.


OK. I know that there are other readers that are aghast at the safety concerns of being so plugged in while driving.


Eh, what’s life insurance for then?


But it got worse. I had left the house without being able to get my sell order for the $33 April call option executed. Again, a broke a cardinal rule, in that I got hung up over a penny or two between bid and ask.


As I was heading home by 3 PM, things hadn’t gotten better, with the Dow still down over 100 points and RVBD leading the retreat.


So it came as a little surprise that in the after-market, what should I see, but RVBD move up about $5 from its close on an unexpected announcement  a week ahead of earnings.


With the excitement of being able to get a second chance at selling the call options, but now at $35.


With 2 days left until options expirations, I hope my shares get assigned. Then I promise I’ll follow my own rules.


I did take the opportunity to buy back my $80 Mosaic contracts. With a cost basis of about $76.40, I netted about $1.20 on the call contracts. I’m hoping for an upward move tomorrow, as Mosaic came back from down $1 to even, late in the session and then selling $77.50 call options.


That’s what the milking is all about.


Speaking of which, if I was still writing the original Option to Profit Newsletter, I would be putting out a buy signal on Goldman Sachs at $160.15, with the sale of an April 160 call option at a premium of $1.38.


Although I don’t currently own any Google, it announces earnings tomorrow. Older readers may remember some of my Google rants. I personally am very reluctant to pick up shares right before earnings announcement. Fortunately, I don’t have any spare cash right now. But if I did, I would purchase Google at $576 (give or take) and sell a $580 call option at an $11.60 premium.


Google usually acts explosively when they announce earnings, always on the first Thursday or earnings season.


If you look at the historic price action on the few days before earnings are announced, they seem to be in the direction opposite of where Google goes after the announcement.


Most recently, despite a small price climb today, Google’s action has been decidedly negative.


I think it will go up nicely after hours on Thursday. If I’m right, an shares get called, you would have a $1500 profit for 2 days.


Or not.


If I am wrong, Google typically goes down between $30 and $40 and then recovers about 50% or more of the retracement in a week or so. At that point, you would strongly consider selling May Google calls.
I’ve never owned more than 100 shares of Google at a time, but it is a great stock on which to repeatedly sell and then buy back option contracts


If you were a subscriber, you know that I would usually give 4 or 5 short term trades on the Wednesday before expiration, but without the explanations.


I’m too tired to do that, but you know what to look for.


Wake me up in about 19 years. Maybe a gentle poke would be sufficient.

Visits: 17