Lysol Kills 99% of ......

Malcolm Acs served as today's guest blogger. The views in this blog entry are his alone and do not represent the Disinfectant Industry, No molds or bacteria were harmed in the writing of this blog

Despite spending the last eight years of my life living in Washington, DC, I’ve managed to stay clear of any and all political involvement.

I voluntarily went into work during the Obama Inauguration. I avoided every form of public transportation during the Glenn Beck “Restore America” rallies. I was in the bathroom for most of the Larry Craig scandal.

Recently when I was asked by a complete stranger on the bus if I thought Obama stood any real challenges in re-election, I immediately retorted that I had voted for George W. Bush in each of the last three elections. Based on the abrupt end to our conversation, I think it’s safe to say that Bush will have my support once again next year.

Although I’ve been known as a bit of a hell raiser and a constant contrarian, I’ve always had very little tolerance for protestors in any form. My sophomore year of college the school hosted the “National Conference on Organized Resistance”, bringing over a thousand radical progressives from around the country for a week of discussing everything from authoritative veganism, homemade bomb making, and the evil of tampons. After being tired of the stench of over a thousand unbathed squatters spending a week inside of our building, I attempted to freshen the space with two dozen cans of Lysol. While I did not face any disciplinary action for assaulting the eyes of a few hundred occupiers, my actions were strongly condemned by the student newspaper as an act of ozone terrorism.

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Groundhog Day Revisited

Groundhog Day, the Bill Murray movie, is reportedly the most played movie on television and basic cable. I know that I've done my fair share of viewing that movie over the years, first starting with it's original theatrical release and then seeing it ad nauseum during that bizarre commuting phase of my life, spent in many a hotel room.

Given the movie's storyline, it's only appropriate that the movie keeps getting repeated.

If you're one of those very few people that hasn't seen the movie, or just doesn't know the story, you've likely spent the greater part of your life in Slovakia, focusing on far more important things than light romantic comedies taking place in obscure Pennsylvania towns, starring a now obscure actress.

You certainly wouldn't understand the connection between Groundhog Day and unending repeating, or as I like to call it; "Life".

Personally, I don't understand thow I could have two consecutive days when a Pennsylvania city is mentioned in my blog.

Some things just are out of your control.

I can't really tell you how the Groundhog Day movie ends. It's not that I don't wanty to spoil it for you, it's just that I don't remember, but I do remember all of the intervening details.

In the movie the predictabilty of reliving each day first proves to be maddening, almost driving the Bill Murray character to the brink of suicide, until he realizes that he can step out of the pre-deteremined actions of his character.

Ah, now it's coming back to me.

Only when he realizes that he can capitalize on the mundane and predictable, does he realize the key to his happiness. To top it off, he brings out the best in those around him, as well. As soon as he starts behaving in a manner that conflicts with the expected reality, he changes everyone's reality.

For some people, in the market's after hours, today was as if the movie featured Google.

Talk about a replay.

Google came out with great earnings after the closing bell and shot up about 9%. That's not much of a surprise. They always come out with great earnings and then fall prey to the spin.

Google has a habit of making big moves on its earnings reports that in absolute dollars are magnified by its $500 per share price. It did precisely the same last quarter, making its move to $600, before heading down back below $500 just a short 2 weeks ago.

Unfortunately, you just can't predict in which directions those moves are going to be. Although I don't currently hold any shares, I have in the past and have been blown away by some of the downdrafts in price, even after great earnings reports. Hedges helped soften the falls, but dampened the rises.

It goes both ways.

On the other hand, even though you can't predict direction, you sure can predict that there will be movement.

Today I felt as if I were in my own personal Groundhog Day scene.

It was just another day that happened to have JP Morgan report its earnings as part of the ordinary landscape.

I've owned JP Morgan on and off for about 2 years and have especially been going through my own personal Groundhog Day with the shares ever since the weekly options became available.

On Monday I added onto my position and sold $32 calls, for nearly a 3% premium.

As it just seems to do on a predictable basis it went up and then down. They don't need to report earnings to make significant price movements. The only difference was that today at least there was something going on that could be called a reason for the move.

Everyone was expecting disappointing numbers, which of course is why share price went up admirably from Monday through Wednesday.

Of course?

As luck would have it, it went down sharply today and is now below the strike price, with expiration on Friday. Why ot went down when everyone was expecting bad news and why it first went up in advance of the expected bad news earnings?

Yeah, as if that scene's never been played out before.

You just have to get used to it and go with it.

I could do these kind of weekly trades every week.

In fact, I do.

On the other hand, the ProShares UltraShort Silver doesn't come with a weekly ETF, but it really doesn't matter. Silver goes up big on one day and goes down big the next.

I sell the call options, buy them back, sell them again, buy them back again.

You get the idea.

The share price of the ETF is virtually unchanged from where I bought it, but that volatility brings a great premium. Actually, whereas I usually sell near the money options, the volatility and resultant premiums for this ETF were so nice, that I've been selling well out of the money options, balanced with some at the money options, so that I could benefit from the stock's capital gains, receive options premiums with less risk of being assigned and also receive heightened premiums that are very responsive to the stocks moves.

Huh?

Today, for example, with silver falling and the ETF share price rising, when it hit $14, I sold $16 calls expiring next Friday for $0.34 per share net. That's on top of the $0.62 and $0.57 per share netted the past 2 weeks on those same shares.

But I also sold some $14 calls on Monday, when the share price was $14 for a $1.19 premium.

The last month's options cycle was the same.

And the one before that?

The same.

I guess that's why some people like annuities. They're so predictable, just like groundhogs.

As an investment, I'd rather not have an annuity, but I don't mind if my shares throw off predictable options income and start annuitizing themselves.

Now if life really was like portrayed in Groundhog Day, I would certainly banish my lack of nerve that popped up yesterday and I would have sold calls on Sallie Mae and Mosaic.

As it turned out, Sallie Mae gave up most of the gain that it made on Wednesday.

Mosaic on the othre hand went up a bit more, but each day that no new rumors pop up is just another day of lost opportunities to bank some premiums.

But, the one thing I know is that the opportunity will return and I'll never tire of doing the same thing over and over.

As opposed to the personal hell that Bill Murray found himself in until he found the key to navigating through hell, I feel as if I'm in heaven.

What may be going on is that the market represents the inverse of the Groundhog Day experience.

While everything changes around you, the best way to thrive is to keep doing the same thing.

Inertia is a terrible thing to waste.

Invest like TheAcsMan

Option to Profit is available as either an eBook or 300+ paperback. Take a humorous look at a serious topic and learn how to make your portfolio finally go to work for you in bull and bear market environments.

See a sneak preview of Chapter 1.  hoco blogs

More about the book and purchase options. Scroll down and read the Szelhamos Rules blog, updated every weekday.

Find  OTP Book at Amazon, B&N or now you can also Order direct  from publisher. Use 10% Discount Code P4S2ZD8H

  

Did I Not Get that Memo?

With Eddie Murphy being back in the news following the announcement that he will be hosting the next Academy Awards, I was reminded of a vintage sketch he did on Saturday Night Live many years ago. (Regular readers will note this is the second time this week I've reached for an ancient SNL citation)

Going undercover as a "white person" he discovered the secret society, along with all of its perks, that was hidden from people of color.

The bottom line was that even with "white people problems," life's not that bad, I want in.

As I listen to the daily description of the over-riding trading strategy manifesting itself as either being "Safety trade off", "Risk on" or "Risk off", I wonder where those decisions are being made.

The various "talking heads" say it with such a cavalier attitude that I get the impression that there is some secret cabal meeting where the Stock Market Direction of the Day Committee gets together and decides where things will be headed.

I'd like to be on that committee, despite the fact that I generally agree with Groucho Marx's observation that he wouldn't want to join any club that would have him as a member. I'm perfectly willing to use any leftover white pancake powder that Eddie Murphy doesn't need. I'd even wear one of those powdered wigs, but will not wear one of his skin tight red leather suits.

You have to draw the line somewhere, even though I don't do charts.

As I look through my resume, which is chock full of worthless committee assignments, this one I would gladly be part of, not that Radiation Safety isn't vitally important to vital organs.

At least a memo. Send me a memo, preferably a day or two in advance. That way I could instead look through my portfolio and not see a list of worthless or non-performing holdings. Besides, I've made my position on Insider Trading pretty clear.

No one gets hurt.

The existence of such a committee is clearly patterned after the London Gold Market Fixing Ltd. committee which meets twice daily in London to set the morning and afternoon price of gold.

The difference is that we all know about that committee. Membership is tightly controlled, but it's proceedings are publicly divulged.

Interestingly, as the London Gold Market Fixing Ltd. Committee meets twice daily, physically present members may pause proceedings by placing a Union Flag atop their desk, whereas telephone members simply say the word "Flag" to pause the proceedings.

Very typically civilized and orderly as is the rest of the days' precious metals trading.

In the case of Carol Bartz, who was fired via a telephone call from the Yahoo! Board on Tuesday, I don't know if she had a flag to use. My guess is that if there was a transcript of that phone call, some flags would be raised if I tried to reprint what would likley have been a salty conversation, given her past penchant for profanity.

Whereas many feel that such a firing over the telephone is quite distasteful, I look at it as being symbolic.

Maybe its actually "emblematic", but I'm certainly not going to use what little remains of Yahoo! Search to figure out which word is best suited for use.

Oh. Nothing remains?

The manner of Bartz's firing is actually very much similar to the way the CEO of Borders informed employees of the demise of the bookstore chain.

He did it my e-mail. Maybe if he would have used paper and the printed word and convinced more people to do the same, Borders would still be selling books.

You would think that Yahoo! could have come up with a much more technologically savvy way to inform Bartz.

Personally, knowing that every person of stature "Googles" themselves, that would have been a good way to deliver the news.

The fact that "Google" is a verb, while "Yahoo!" not so much, tells the tale. Instead, Yahoo is a noun and not a very flattering one, unless you take pride in being rude, noisy or violent. Maybe profane, too.

In the meantime, the other big news of the day happened at the beleagured Bank of America.

Despite great performance at its Wealth Managment division headed by Sally Krawcheck, she's now ex-BofA, as she is ex-Citi.

Here too, though, it's clear that a memo hasn't been received.

In this case, its for all of those who are showing their support for CEO Moynihan.

Those supporters should know that it's no longer acceptable to use the excuse "he inherited this mess" in defense of someone who assumed leadership in January 2009. If you buy that line of thinking, either Angelo Mozilo has been elevated to George W. Bush status or the other way around.

Seems that you can't decry that defense when applied to President Obama and then turn around and use it for Moynihan. But then, those silly Wall STreet types never think that anyone is listening and taking notes.

I keep the memos.

That memo might have been best delivered in the foreclosure notice that was actually filed against a Bank of America branch in Florida.

Today's secret memo clearly set a signal to put the risk back on, despite the fact that it's hard to understand how you can refer to prices now being of "value", yet refer to the actions taken to secure value as being "risk on".

Whatever.

Today as we just picked up from the last hour of Tuesday's trading the climb in prices never looked back.

I took the opportunity to sell weekly call options on Halliburton, Freeport McMoran and Sunoco. I also had the opportunity to sell a September Bank of New York call option on the shares I picked up this past Friday.

With still a week to go for this month's options cycle I find my performance to be well below last month, which was the second best I'd ever had with regard to premiums collected.

Not too surprisingly, when stock prices go down, as they did in the past month, I'm not as aggressivie in selling those calls, as I do like to  recoup unrealized capital losses. Luckily, that's been the case.There's a trime for income and ther's a time for trading profits.

I think that was a song by The Byrds.

As the day came to an end with the Dow up 275 points and gold down nearly $60 the view on "The Street" was summed up by the exchanges "Streetwalker".

According to CBC's Bob Pisani, we should stop using the phrases "risk on" and "risk off".

Ah, finally a man who is against the secretive mechanics of the markets. A man who believes that we should all drink from the same deep cup of wine.

His reasoning was so crysta clear and to the point.

"Risk on and risk off are QE2 phrases".

Huh? What? What does that even mean? Why do they keep changing the code every day?

I'm sure that won't be the last memo I'll miss.

Invest like TheAcsMan

Option to Profit is available as either an eBook or 300+ paperback. Take a humorous look at a serious topic and learn how to make your portfolio finally go to work for you in bull and bear market environments.

See a sneak preview of Chapter 1.  hoco blogs

More about the book and purchase options. Scroll down and read the Szelhamos Rules blog, updated every weekday.

Find  OTP Book at Amazon, B&N or now you can also Order direct  from publisher. Use 10% Discount Code P4S2ZD8H

  

What Buddy Holly Teaches Us

Special thanks to Josh Brown (Reformed Broker) for reminding us that February 3rd was the anniversary of when the music died.

Sometimes I think I'm like that kid in "The Sixth Sense".

"I see connections". That's not quite as spooky as seeing dead people, but just the same, some of the connections can be pretty tenuous and call reason into question.

In this case, though, the connection happens to be to a dead person who now appears very much alive, as Natalie King Cole has released paternal DNA testing indicating that Buddy Holly was her biological father and will soon be releasing a music video duet of "Oh Boy".

But what in the world does Buddy Holly have to do with stocks, investing or the markets? So little, that if I didn't bang out this blog right now, the moment the idea popped into my head, there is no reasonable way that I would remember the concept or connection 3 minutes from now.

It all started with a simple Tweet from Josh Brown, author of The Reformed Broker website.

I have no connection with him, in fact, I think he may have even blocked me from posting to his Twitter account, due to our onetime irreconciliable differences over Darfur.

But he pointed out a great Buddy Holly tribute album with lots of very impressive contributing artists. How could you not want a Buddy Holly song covered by Cee Lo Green?

Being who I am, I scanned the list of artists with one filter in mind, but the search turned up nothing. Maybe he was still with the rest of us sitting a very extending Shiva for Clarence Clemons.

That prompted me to dust off a couple of 35 year old concert venue renditions of Buddy Holly songs by Bruce Springsteen and then caused me to allegedely post links to them on this site.

I say "allegedly" because it may be against the law to have done something like that. Despite great admiration for both Springsteen and Holly, an equally prestigeous named law firm might pursue me for something.

Allegedly. Good luck finding them.

Anyway, Buddy Holly was truly an amazing guy. A walking and talking cultural contra-indication, he was a Texas Boy in the 50's, playing to racially mixed audiences and performing with musicians who couldn't get in the front door in many parts of the country. Interestingly, The Big Bopper also couldn't get in because of his girth.

The fact that his wife's name and that of my Sugar Momma are the same played no role in the strength of the connection.

Another of my favorites, Don McLean paid Buddy Holly homage, at the expense of Elvis. Entirely coincidentally, the blog "The First Time" from just a few days ago featured Roberta Flack, whose own song "Killing Him Softly" was a tribute to Don McLean.

As Kurt Vonnegut used to write, "And so it goes".

Had I not seen Don McLean in concert the night before the SAT's, maybe I would have had three Harvard degrees.That undergraduate degree would have taught me to never begin sentences with either the word "But" or "And".

No regrets, though, as that is a recurring investing theme of mine.

I say that after having just lost Google to assignment, far below its Friday close. And then there was Visa and before that Green Mountain Coffee Roasters.

Okay, maybe some small regrets. Unfortunately, my vanishing memory banks can't seem to erase those memories.

Buddy Holly showed that there were lots of different ways to break out of the stereotypical mold and create a new far-sighted and visionary path.

He also helped re-invent an entire musical genre, much like I will need to recreate my portfolio today, as nearly 40% has to be replaced due to assignment.

I didn't need a plane crash to realize that there were alternatives to buy and hold, although, sometime this week, I will pay some tribute to a Buy and Hold guy (if I can remember).

It did, however, take the untimely death of my financial advisor, who when we first started our relationship, was still known as a "stock broker". I discuss him at length in the Option to Profit book, which I obviously plug at every opportunity.

Today, I will be figuring out how to redeploy about 40% of my portfolio, following assignments of Freeport McMoran, Google, Halliburton, Sallie Mae, Rio Tinto, Transocean and maybe a few others.

I will likely buy back Sallie Mae, Transocean and Rio Tinto and follow through with the recommendations that I Tweeted on Friday afternoon regarding Sunoco and Time Warner, in addition to whatever else remains in or is added to the portfolio.

Of course, I'll look to sell call options, always being satisfied in the 2-4% monthly gain per stock. Dividends, small capital gains and options premiums, whatever it takes to scratch out a respectable living.

In a way, it's like the small venues that Buddy Holly played, because in his barely year of fame, he hadn't yet gotten to the big times, which for Rock and Roll, hadn't really come of age yet anyway.

Or as I like to look at opportunity costs, "You didn't miss them anyway".

He was obviously a risk taker and I am slowly getting into that frame of mind, at a time when the financial guys are saying that those of my age should "slow down".

Anyway, I just read a short article that seemed to say that approaching retirement only 25% of holdings should be in equities and the rest in annuities.

Can you say "WTF" on the internet?

Would Buddy Holly put his money into annuities? Elvis maybe. The Jester? Never.

Screw annuities. Just to slow down that aging process and as a thumb in the eye of those thinking that I should be slowing down, I've started selling more and more put contracts. Even though I've done that for a few years now, as part of my less than 5% speculative piece, it was always with very low cost issues, like Citibank, Sirius and YRCW. Now I'm branching out, slowly working may way up the price chain with Harbin Energy, Yahoo and Spreadtrum Communications recently. Maybe Google next?

I don't think so. I may see connections, but I'm not a lunatic.

But it is fun. It's not what I'm supposed to be doing at this age, but it is all a frame of mind. And besides, that frame of mind is both figurative and literal. I love wearing the big glasses and checkered jacket. Probably the only person who will see me in my lucky trading garb will be Sugar Momma and the UPS guy.

Sugar Momma has been looking askance at me lately anyway as the last 3 or 4 texts I've sent her have mistakenly included the word "tit", instead of "it". Proof reading was never one of my strong suits, but coming on the heels of the blog entry, "How my WIfe's Bra Saved us Money", now she's not so certain that those were simple auto-spell mistakes.

Although the UPS guy has learned not to ask me questions, I'm sure he'll be able to hear the Buddy Holly tunes that will be streaming today and he'll probably say something to the effect of "Man that's so loud, I can barely even hear your annoying wiener dog barking".

That was the whole point.

Today, as we start another options cycle, I'll be replaying "That'll be the day the Bear Market Died" all day long and thinking of all the connections that are so obviously there.

Don't you see them?

Check out Recent PortfolioTransactions

Careful what you Wish For

What's in the Szelhamos Portfolio?

There was a time, not that long ago, that a curse would visit me once each month. Sometimes those months had 4 weeks and sometimes those months had 5 weeks.

No this isn't that monthly curse that mothers must instruct their daughters upon, although many would call it a miracle, rather than a curse.

But in my case this was the curse of wishes and hopes.

Now, by my own choice, I've invited that one time monthly curse into my life every week.

The problem with selling call options is that you often find yourself wishing for stock movements that are inconsistent with human hopes and desires.

Unless you're a short seller.

But most normal people want to see an unabated rise in the stock market.

Up, up and away.

Although I'm an inveterate believer in covered call strategies, I certainly understand the flip side, particularly since I've lived through the agony of losing a stock to assignment after an unexpectedly large run-up in price.

My wounds are still fresh from having lost Green Mountain Coffee Roasters at $45 when it shot up to $65.

Did I mention that it was about $80 now? Although the cynic in me believes that there's still another accounting issue on the horizon and it's a much steeper drop from $80, than it was from $35 when Herb Greenberg first caught our attention with the peculiarities of their numbering system.

So when the unthinkable happens, there's only one thing that you can do, since ranting and breath holding isn't very adult-like.

Instead, you wish and hope for the price to fall. That's much more adult like.

Even though you don't really think of it in such terms, what you are really doing is wishing for financial pain to be inflicted on others so that you don't suffer the pain of missed opportunities.

To explain that in terms a child could understand, when you get to the window to order your ice cream cone and are told that they're all out of your favorite flavor, you secretly hope that the person next to you who got the last scoop suddenly drops theirs to the ground below.

Granted, that puts you at odds with everyone else and if your the kind the craves human acceptance, you really don't want to be lumped in with short sellers in the eyes of society, or the type of people that wish to see ice cream cones littering the floor.

Now that there are far more stocks that have weekly options available the wishing and hoping comes far more often and societal scorn just gets heaped on and on.

This week just so happens to be the end of the June options cycle, but these days, the third Friday of the month just doesn't carry the same cache as it once did.

Remember when triple and quadruple witching hours threw the fear of God into even the most hardened of traders?

Those too are just yawners these days.

Lots of people still talk about unusual price swings near the close of trading on options expiration, but really they're just rehashing memories of a time long ago. They can't face the reality of what their high school sweet-heart looks like at the reunion, so instead they remember the good old days, when men were men, screaming buy and sell orders at one another as the seconds were ticking away toward the close of another month's options cycle.

Those days are gone, too. There's not that much screaming anymore. Someone probably wished that away too, tired of all the noise and chaos, and ultimately ushered in electronic trading and settlement.

On Tuesday, after that beautiful day of gains across the board, I looked at where my holdings were standing relative to  their options' strike prices and I saw that I was now on track to lose many of them to assignment if they stayed at those levels.

Granted, I had purchased some of those stocks on Monday, with the express intention of holding the shares for just a few days. But now I had come to think of them as my own and really didn't want to lose them.

I bought Home Depot for the next day dividend. I also bought shares of Transocean, Google and JP Morgan and sold in the money options after they rose beyond their initial purchase prices.

So I did what the god foresaken short sellers do.

I hoped and wished for the market to fall.

Why not just my stocks? Why the whole market?

Because I have a well diversified portfolio. Unfortuntely, as smart as I was to diversify the holdings, I wasn't smart enough to foresee that I'd be at risk for losing most of my shares.

So I hoped for a nice little drop in prices. The key word here was "little".

In my ideal world, prices would drop just to the point that all of the holdings closed just below their strike prices and then we'd do the same thing over again.

Well, I got what I had hoped for, except a whole lot more than hoped for.

I just wasn't being careful.

Even poor Pandora suffered in it's IPO. Imagine pricing $4 above the high end of the expected range and then going as high as 60% above the IPO price, only to end up the day about 9%.

All in all, most people would be happy with with a one day 9% gain, but I don't think that was the case today.

I didn't wish that on Pandora and all the poor folks that got suckered into buying at at pre-debacle prices. The newly issued shares changed hands nearly three times. There are probably some very happy people and lots of very unhappy people.

Since I didn't hold shares in Pandora, I found today's minute by minute trading chart amusing. The rapidity of its fall from $26 was impressive and it just deteriorated through the day.

When the dust settled the day was just a mirror image of Tuesday. This time, it was a sea of red for all of my positions, no different from everyone else out there. Of course, the options sales offset some of those losses, just as they cut some of the gains on Tuesday.

I did get off a single trade yesterday. The same one that I had tried to do on Tuesday. I finally found enough buyers for the Sirius - XM Satellite Radio January 2012 puts that I had wanted to sell.

Puts are another strange universe, again hoping for market setbacks.

Since I sold puts I was actually banking on Sirius' stock price to rise between now and January. Wouldn't you know it, but Sirius actually went up yesterday.

Finally a position that went in the right direction, if only for a day.

So today, I'm hoping for a market climb nearly equivalent to Wednesday's loss.

And then as long as I'm hoping, Friday would just roll over and flatline.

Isn't that an uplifting image? But that's just part of the curse.

The power of hope is pretty amazing. I just wish I could make up my mind and know exactly what I should be wishing for. That would make me a better person, one much more in tune with society.

Nah. Maybe next month.

Invest like TheAcsMan

Option to Profit is available as either an eBook or 300+ paperback. Take a humorous look at a serious topic and learn how to make your portfolio finally go to work for you in bull and bear market environments.

See a sneak preview of Chapter 1.  hoco blogs

More about the book and purchase options. Scroll down and read the Szelhamos Rules blog, updated every weekday.

Find  OTP Book at Amazon, B&N or now you can also Order direct  from publisher. Use 10% Discount Code P4S2ZD8H

  

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.