4/5 Morningline: Holdings

Among my holdings, the bond play JNK, which tracks corporate shares that pay high dividends, is falling today. It went ex-dividend on April 1, meaning I'll be paid even if I exit. And exit I might. I hold this as shares of stock.

	trend	adx	psar	pps	macd	macd trend	sto	sto trend
AOD $9.16
JNK $39.36
MCO $29.56
MGM $12.65
NLY $17.13
PALM $3.03
XLE $59.41

At 11:05 a.m. Eastern

NLY, another dividend play, took a sharp drop today, giving back everything gained in a rise that lasted two trading days. The stock gapped down sharply on March 30 when the dividend was cut. I'll continue to hold my shares for awhile. The shares are trading at a level from which they've reversed before.

MCO, my covered call, has dropped to $29.55. The strike price on the call is $29, so if it stays at this level, it will be called away from me. I've had MCO for awhile and sold several calls against it, so the position will be profitable even if the call option is exercised.

PALM, my zombie shares that have lost three-fourths of their value, continues to trade sideways in a range.


Bad news all the way around on my iron condors. These are combinations of options that are profitable if the stock trades sideways within a certain range.

One iron condor, MGM, has bumped up to $12.68, and the most profitable trading range is $10 to $12.

The other iron condor, XLE, is trading at $59.45. The maximum profit for this iron condor is $56 to $59.

Both iron condors expire April 16, in nine more trading days. So it's important that I make a decision very soon.

These options expire in April, so I'll need to make a decision.

Abbreviations:
psar - Parabolic Stop and Reverse
adx - Average Directional Index
pps - Person's Proprietary Signal
ma20 - 20-day moving average
macd - Moving Average Convergence-Divergence
mfi - Money Flow Index
sto - Fast Stochastic

About the glance: The colors indicate the state of each signal.

• trend: green for up, red for down, yellow for sideways
• adx: orange for above 30-up, blue for 20-down, purple for in the middle. Red is most prone to whipsaws
• psar, pps, macd: green for bull mode, red for bear
• sto: green for overbought, red for oversold, yellow for the neutral zone.

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