I started the day feeling fantastic about myself. I actually rolled out of bed at my alarm and strolled on over to the gym, ate breakfast, and was ready for work early! Too bad traffic destroyed me,as per usual. You'd think after three months I'd be used to it. Nope. I mean I was still early to work, but being stuck in traffic is the bane of my existence. Top 5 least favorite things I have experienced.
As far as the market goes I was really surprised that we had a positive day. After the terror attack that occurred in Las Vegas I just assumed the futures would be red, the VIX would be up, and the DOW, S&P, and NASDAQ would be down. To my bewilderment, it was only the Nasdaq that dipped into the negative, though it quickly recovered.
Infosys closed today at $14.69, up 9 cents from the previous day. The 0.62% gain caused my option position to increase 5.56% - the equivalent of $5.00.
AMD on the other hand closed today $12.71 which was down 4 cents. The -0.31% loss is equal to a -0.46% loss in my call position. Much closer to 1 to 1 relationship. On slower days this week I will go into more depth as to why I made these purchases.
In other portfolio news it was actually a good day, overall. I think the idea of the Trump Administration tax corporate tax cuts helped Disney. MarketWatch posted a piece this morning listing a handful of companies effective tax rate and Disney was right up there around 35%. Cutting that down to the planned 20% would directly benefit Disney's bottom line, thus justifying the 1.32% gain during trading hours - the equivalent of an $18.32 gain to my Disney position.
The other "big" gainer for myself today was Cara Therapeutics. If you look through my post history and tweet history you'll see my love for this company. I won't get into it here. Cara finished trading up 2.85% from open gaining me an extra $31.98.
Tuesday the 3rd
The slow start built in to a heck of a day for me. Last Friday I bought 3 call options with AMD being the underlying asset. The strike is at $15.00 and they expire April 20th, 2018. I have a cost basis of $348.20 and each contract cost me $116. Today, AMD rose by 5.59% to a price of $13.42. I know yesterday the movement down was closer to a 1 to 1 relationship. Today, I saw the value of my position increase 26.11% bringing my total unrealized gain to 22.77%. The equivalent to $79.30. At one point today I saw the increase up to 32% and I was so, so close to just selling. Would have given me another roughly hundred bucks and closer to my goal of making $1,000 for the year.
I texted my buddy around then and asked him what he thought. He's much smarter than me and has been extremely profitable from a countless amount of smart trades. In conjunction with my own research, he did a little of his own and found AMD forming a flag with converging support and resistance lines. You can't know which way it's going to break; whether it break the support and drops or breaks through the resistance to increase. I am taking the chance. If it breaks the resistance it could cause a short squeeze and push the price up even further. I'm not blind to the risks. I understand what would happen in the event the price falls, but I'm young enough to take some risks.
In other portfolio news, Disney rose by another almost 1% and my Infosys contract fell 5.58% with the price of the stock falling 0.89%.
Total gain on the day was $97.02, or 2.31%. I will take that any day of the week.
Wednesday the 4th
Not a whole lot happened today in the world of my portfolio. I had a couple of winners (TRIP) and a couple of losers (AMD). Overall, I only lost 0.19%, or $8.24. My AMD holding fell by 3.55% and my INFY contract fell by 0.02%. Like I said, a pretty sideways, non eventful day.
Thursday the 5th
There was a deadline at work today and we were slammed. I didn't have a lot of free time to check up on my investments. I did a few brief checks throughout the day just to make there was no cliff jumping or blast offs. AMD had another ehh day and though the stock rose, my position fell by just a touch. The last 30 minutes of trading trended down it brought the value of the contract into the red. INFY was either even or red as well, I can't remember. Either way, the entire portfolio fell by about as much as it did yesterday. Pretty uneventful.
The more I think about it, the more I want to get rid of my AMD position. The articles on the short sellers are making me think, and I already have a solid profit from it. The support and resistance are converging and after two straight days of little movement from the open and slightly lower than average volume has me skeptical. I don't see any indication, nor have any inclination which way it will break.
INFY is still near it's support levels and has room to increase. It's been bouncing off the support since February and climbing to the $15/$16 mark. The worry I have at this time - actually two worries - is any effect the exchange rate will have on it, and the bid/ask spread for my contract. Since it's and ADR, the exchange rates and political and economic environment in India can effect the stock. Hmm...probably should have looked into that before hand. You live and you learn.
Yesterday morning I was able to read some of my other book. Peter Lynch's, Beating The Street. It's a pretty cool book. Lynch goes through his time as the magellan fund manager and outlines his strategy and thought process for all of his buys and sells. I am crossing my fingers that work is slower today and I have the time to finish the book.
Friday the 6th
Before I even had a chance to check futures or pre-market, I received a text from my buddy saying Facebook was gapping lower on open. Facebook is usually a good indication of the market so when I checked the pre-market moves of my watchlist I wasn't surprised to see most of them in the red. Which was very disappointing. Besides the normal spot of sadness seeing red, I had already decided if AMD was up 1% or so I was going to take the profit. Turns out it did the exact opposite! It closed Friday down -0.82% and now my current position is up a modest 12.00%.
Infosys did a little better; finishing up 0.76% and increasing the value of the position by 11ish percent. The equivalent of $10.00. The market itself was generally flat. And Facebook closed the gap it opened with.
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