Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Mitigating GLD #2

Other ways of mitigating my bear call spread gone wrong on GLD:

Buy a later-month bull call spread, for a debit of about 0.68, composed of long the February 110 strike and short the February 111 strike. This is profitable at a GLD price of from about 110.50 up, as our present bear call spread is profitable from 110.50 down. This mitigates the big loss if the stock continues to rise, and we can close the February spread for a small loss if the stock reverses again and moves down. There's a maximum profit of 0.35 at expiration on the February spread, against a max loss of 0.43 on the December spread. So, maximum loss of the combined positions is 0.12. That's vs. an assured 0.28 loss if we just close the position now.

Reversing the play and buying a late-month bull put spread, with the same month and strikes, gives us a 0.35 credit with a maximum 0.35 loss, somewhat better than with the debit spread. The combined max loss is 0.08. The risk/reward is 50:50, better than with the debit spread.

Those are the mitigation possibilities I see. I'll be making trading decisions in the last half hour of trading in the U.S. markets.

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