Friday, April 20, 2012

Trade Continuation: GDX Naked Puts

Today on options expiration Friday I continued the following transaction:


03/20/2012    STO 3 GDX Apr 21 2012 47.0 Put @ .53                146.75
04/20/2012    BTC 3 GDX Apr 21 2012 47.0 Put @.63                -201.24
04/20/2012    STO 3 GDX May 19 2012 45 Put @.97                    288.70

GDX has trended downward and was at ~46.40 when I continued this transaction. After draining every drop of time value I rolled out one month and down two strikes for a net credit. Margin maintenance on this trade is ~$2800. If these puts expire worthless we will earn $234.21 in 61 days which is an 8.36% return on maintenance or 50% annual. At the close GDX dropped down to 46.10. The precious metals miners have not been able to get much of a bid. Sentiment is very low and most of  the weak hands have had to have been scared away. In the event GDX continues its downward descent I will look to roll out and down again for a net credit. If put to us our cost basis will be $44.21 so we still have some breathing room in this trade. We will have time decay over the weekend and I won't look to roll down and out until I've wrung every drop of time value out of this trade.

Note: when these puts went into the money, margin maintenance increased to ~$3200 which will lower the returns

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