LGND

Daily Trading 4/6/21

Daily Trades

It’s good to be back on the saddle. I took the day off yesterday, which I probably should have announced ahead of time, but here we are. Even without working, we still closed our Ligand (LGND) position thanks to the power of Good Till Canceled buyback orders.

Days like today feel like dumpster diving in the equities market. None of the stocks we track were worth opening positions on due to either low volatility and/or high price. Even a few I’d consider a “get your beak wet” trade on all had earnings mid-contract.

I tried to sell the Paychex (PAYX) post-earnings slide, but couldn’t get 1% premium so bailed on that. I did open a position on Ubiquiti (UI) which actually popped up nicely at the end of the day.

Today I had a long chat with my business partner Tim regarding how lousy the prospects are for selling premium on any decent company. The reality is we’re going to have to expand our criteria to stay trading if this rally continues upward. Or it could just be that come Friday we’ll have forgotten all about this and will be 25 contracts deep again.

Comminitea Trade Update: SUMO has hung in there above $19 so we are hovering near 50% of max profit. One of the guys had hit 56% of max profit and closed out today. I’m still hanging in there to eke out a bit more of the premium, particularly as I have no better prospects at the moment. I will revisit whether to close this towards the end of the week.

Daily Trading 3/23/21

Daily Trades

There’s a cliche in trading that goes “It’s a market of stocks, not a stock market”. I couldn’t help but think of that today as I scrounged around and found some tickers we track that had started to falter.

This afternoon we opened trades on Western Digital (WDC), Ford (F), CVS (CVS), Ligand (LGND), and old trusty US Steel (X). These were “wet your beak” trades that we may size up if they go against us (except CVS which is an experimental trade I’ll share more about later). And that rationale came in handy as they all went against us this afternoon. There’s still plenty of capital to throw at some of these so I’m not crying in my beer just yet.

One thing I used to do is ask for more premium than the mid point. I used to get more than “asking” by having orders sit all day. I got out of the habit and started putting in orders asking for the mid because I wasn’t getting filled on some decent trades. I may go back to that on some tickers and take a “meant to be” approach.

I should have closed out Walmart (WMT) when it was at 55% max profit at mid-day. Instead I tried to scrape a few more dollars out and then it slipped away. This is called being greedy and breaking one of the 10 Rules of Easy Trading (which I’ll post on this site soon).

So the moral of today is it may be okay to demand a few more dollars on open, but don’t be too stingy on close if you’ve already hit your target.