Personal Weekly Review; NW Bias: Stay long or Neutral

Now I'm $200 in the hole, up from $2000 a week or two ago. I'm taking my game much more seriously because I'd love to turn a profit, and build up a $3000 positive buffer zone because being in the green is better than being in the red in terms of potential losses. I plan to not slack off because I've seen what happens...

So SPX has been rallying and will most likely continue to do so next week. The feeling I've been getting from articles I've read on investing.com, businessinsider.com and various other sources is that next week will be more lively. However, its essentially the same setup as this week: 4 trading days, and one of those is a short day. New Years on a Thursday just like Christmas was, and the eve is the short day. Christmas must be a bigger holiday. Anyway, if the action is similar we are likely to not rally more than 30 pts (what we did this week, essentially) especially since the momentum has been slowing from the record-breaking days of last week. I was a bit surprised with how far we went but things (barely) stayed within my iron condor although I was panicking at the last moment there.

My TSLA play turned a profit. I keep hearing about cutting your losses early, but, hey the must mean once you notice a concrete trend change. I was down $130 on my $360 TSLA call at one point...ouch. But I just said I'm going to give this time to work. Now I'm up by $30 or so. But that's not all, momentum seems to be building to the upside, and TSLA (~228) has a good chance of being well above my strike price (232.50) on January 9, expiry day. So this one might turn a nice profit. Have 9 trading days left...we shall see.

Other companies I watch are rallying too, most notably GM which has been itching to do so...that stock started straight off the FED line and hasn't looked back. Momentum has slowed near resistance, however. Should have picked that one up early but I was still spooked being $2000 in the hole and bailing out of some March $33 calls at a significant loss at around $32. AT&T is up...I want to get a piece of that stock for the dividend, but the market is expensive right now. If I get more money in my account I will probably sell cash-secured puts, but the yield isn't much for this company, and selling puts ties up a lot of cash. Not a very attractive proposition overall.

Wish I could put all my cash to work, but with the type of trading I'm doing the rewards are very high per the absolute risk, and thus a little bit of cash can do a lot. But losses aren't cheap. So having cash on hand...or at least being able to sell out of holdings at a profit to get cash is essential.

AAPL is starting to break out. I may buy a call on this stock...a little late, again, but this one could have more to go, or not. I think from a technical analysis standpoint it's not going to go significantly further down now. Momentum is clearly on the up side.

I'm concerned with the show from $TICK. While it was net positive today as shown from the intraday chart, on the daily chart there has been selling into the close every day. This contrasts with the strength seen during the rally after our 9.8% correction in October. This suggests that either people are profit-taking, or institutions are bailing out, AGAIN. And THAT would mean down we go. For now the market should keep on trucking with upward momentum, but I have no clue what will happen in the future.

This discussion wouldn't be complete without mentioning oil: still rangebound. In hindsight I should have allowed more time to get out of my short position profitably instead of at a loss. I had till the 3rd week or January to get out on a down swing. Right now I'm looking for a rally of US crude to the highs of its range at $58 or so to get in and short anew. Crude is probably the perfect swing trade. Get in when its at $54-55, get out at $57-58. Then short it. Then long it. Repeat. It would have worked in the past few weeks at least. However, I'm not brave enough to go long on the lows right now...after all, it is in a downtrend, and I'm still in the hole. I will short it when I get an opportunity, though.

I'd like to short the Yen or Ruble...I suppose I should do some research and then look for a profitable entry point. I think those currencies have stabilized for the time being, however. And options perform best with fast moving underlyings. I should do research.