2/4 Almanac

Thursday, Feb. 4, is 15 days before the February options expire, 43 days the March and 71 days the April.

Historically, it tends to be an up day of the week on an up date of the month in an up month of the year. Uppity.

In this period my rules allow trades in March calendar and vertical spreads. Butterfly and diagonal spreads, as well as covered calls, are off the table for now. I'm trading unhedged call and put option purchases that expire in April or later. We are in the doldrums of the options cycle. It is too close to February expiry to find much premium, yet the March expiry is a bit too far away for my taste. So, even when I find trades with good potential, I'm not entering them at this point simply because of where we are on the calendar.

These economic reports will be released:

• Weekly jobless claims at 8:30 a.m. East ern.
• Workforce productivity, also at 8:30 a.m.
• Factory orders at 10 a.m.
• Natural gas inventories at 10:30 a.m.

My portfolio consists of:

• CVS, iron condor, p28/-p31/-c34/c36
• ERTS, iron condor, p15/-p16/-c18/c19
• MCO, covered call,  s/-c30
  
• PALM, covered call, s/-c13

Blue chip stocks (SPY) closed the regular session at $109.83, down 0.5 percent from the prior day's close.

Mediawatch: AP says the advance the past two days ground to a halt because an index of demand for services came in half a percentage short of economists' consensus forecast.

Implausible. The difference between the estimate and the actual figure was slight, and the decline in blue chip stocks was also so slight as to amount to random noise on the trading floor.


In total, 3.4 billion shares were traded on the three major U.S. stock exchanges. That's about 8 percent less than the day before.

Good trading.




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