OCR: I bought some calls on this stock last week. This was in my retirement account. I've owned it in the past; both successfully and unsuccessfully--but on a net/net basis I'm green. It is currently in a turnaround. When I sold my last position, I decided that this was a stock that I would be dismayed to see an updraft without me, but I did not want quite the exposure of owning the common. Therefore, I bought calls. I only had 8 as I did not get filled at my designated price. Today, with the market performing poorly, it was doing quite well.
Essentially an activist shareholder was appointed to the BOD. His firm, Valueact owns about 16% of the company. He had to agree not to make a tender offer, etc for a while. There are many shorts in this position, so clearly they were spooked. I sold my calls. Good news is good news and a 50% gain is a 50% gain. I left money on the table, but I didn't want someone else to be sweeping my money into their pockets!
DIA/UYG: The market trickled steadily down. I was looking at UYG, and thinking that it should make a double bottom before I entered it. With so much ugly news regarding financials, this seemed prudent. I thought that getting some DOW exposure would be worthwhile. I bought just a few calls in my retirement account: MARC 125's.
My son came home and switched the TV to Braveheart (from CNBC). All of a sudden I noticed that my scrolling tickers were flickering like crazy. I wondered what news had hit the wires to cause such a surge of buying. As it turns out there may be a "fix" for AMBAC, one of the bond guarantors. Clearly shorts were covering, but I'm sure that this "news" (and it is not really news as they've been in discussion with the NY regulators for a while, and it is expected that 'something' will get done) is giving the market a toehold in this wall of worry that it has been climbing.
I have enough long exposure to enjoy the enthusiastic response. My DIA calls went from 1.62 to 2.35 in just a matter of 30 minutes. It could have gone the other way. I just happened to be lucky.
I'm still holding a position in SMN. Of course, that went down with the market going up. I'm trying to straddle the right line between conviction and stupidity. The holding is in my spec account, and I was willing to let it go down to 20K with this position. I'm not far from it..
And finally, here is the Lucky 13 that we've been tracking since the beginning of the year.
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