Matt's Trade Log - 9/10/08

Today was a busy day:

• Sell 4 FSLR OCT08 185/190 vertical put spread
• Buy 2 XLF SEP08 22/24 vertical call spread
• Buy 2 GME SEP08 35/45 vertical put spread
• Sell 400 SLV
• Sell 2 SPY OCT08 119/120 vertical put spread

The first and last trades were to enter new positions. FSLR seems to have bounced off of a support line. The breakeven for the 185/190 spread is well below FSLR's historical support. After the drop in SPY yesterday, it evened out a bit today, making for a good day to sell a put spread on SPY. The only problem I have with my SPY position right now is that it has 150 or so positive deltas, which doesn't represent my SPY sentiment at all. When we get another rally, I will try to offset that with some negative delta. Actually, I tried to do that yesterday, but failed to get filled before SPY dropped like a rock.

SLV has beaten me up a bit lately. I would not enter SLV with the current technicals now, so I decided I should exit the position and wait to see when it is right to get in again.

I also exited my XLF position and my GME position. The XLF position was initially sold for $.44 and bought back today for $.28 for a profit of $.16. After commissions it is probably about a wash. I'm planning to stay out of XLF and other UTFs, other than SPY, for a good while now. The GME position I actually entered via two different trades, a 35/40 put spread and a 40/45 put spread, which ended up giving me a 35/45 put spread. The net credit for both spreads, less commissions, was $3.62. I exited the position today at $2.40 for a profit of $1.12. GME was not above the 45 mark, but with the uncertainty in GME lately I decided to buy it back while I could get a profit on it. With expiration in about a week it wasn't worth the risk to hope for it to get much better.

Overall things seem to be getting a bit better. The market is still crazy, but daily losses are slowing, and I hope to see them turn around soon.