Oct 30th

Decision time for some of the December trades. We getting in the time zone of 49 days till the December expiration. Normally for me time to start setting up some longer term Iron Condors. I have not yet jumped to the chime. I will wait till the first couple of trading days in November. We currently could be under the spell of the end of the month trading. End of October is significant since quite some mutual funds will close their books for 2008 on Oct 31st. This could explain some of the positive activity. They like to be seen with winners and they don't want to be seen with some of the bigger losers on their books (difficult this time around)

Next week the market will show its true hand.

As said on my Oct 19th post I am a bit less worried about a sell off now and here. But then the last two weeks have shown me how foolishly mistaken I can be. The covered stock trades I did, are doing well by now - as you can imagine I had some doubts during this bronco ride. The covered calls are with exception of the trade I disclosed still intact - results look promising.

Up till now undisclosed - I did play around with PRU to recapture some of the losses incurred. If we stay between 18 and 40 I will not suffer any losses on this trade. I am naked short the 5 40 calls and I own 200 PRU and sold the Call 20 November. Plan for the defense of the 40 calls is to buy 500 PRU if and when we bounce to 40.00. The plan for the 200 stock and the 20 calls - just endure the pain and come November expiry sell the Dec 20 calls.