DailyPlay – Closing Trade (TLT) – August 19, 2022

Closing Trade

• TLT -107.58% Gain: Sell to Close 3 Contracts Aug 26, 2022 $118.50/$114.50 Put Verticals @ $2.74 Credit. DailyPlay Portfolio: By closing 3 of 6 Contracts, we will be receiving $822. We Closed 6 of the 12 Contracts for this trade on August 12 at a $2.77 Credit. Therefore, the average gain on this trade was 109.1% and the average cost basis to exit this trade is $2.76 Credit.

Investment Rationale

The SPX is now but 1% beneath its 200-DMA, and I’d fully expect computer-driven funds to get even more bullish if that oft-watched level is exceeded, especially in the low volatility / high momentum environment. And that’s why I am using a whole range of SPX 4270 to 4500 to lighten my overall equity market exposure, rather than trying to pick the perfect day to sell out of an entire portfolio constructed over many years and a variety of entry points. (Honestly, that just wouldn’t make sense to do.)

Today is yet another summer Friday, which also means it’s a weekly option expiration session, too. And from what I’ve read, there are some $2 trillion of options going off the board today, so expect some real intraday swings as dealers need to unwind their positions. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the SPX gravitate toward 4300, as it has ~23,000 option contracts still open for today’s expiration, almost evenly split between calls and puts. That’s roughly more than the combined open interest of all other contracts that are +/- 50 points of 4300.

I do want to do one trade adjustment today, closing out 3 of the 6 remaining short TLT Aug. 26th $118.50/$114.50 put spread we still have of the original trade. (We previously took off 6 of the 12.)  UST 10-yr. rates have again stalled at initial resistance at 2.91%, so let’s take more profit on this trade as we’re up 107% on this portion.

TLT – Daily

Additionally, Monday’s conditional DP in XLV did not get its necessary upside breakout for us to buy the

Enjoy the summer weekend.