Week In Review 7/2 – 7/6/12

Nice profitable week this week, although had a big red day on Friday thanks to two big stop outs.

Highlights of the week:

Winners:  OSIR was a big winner for me this week; I had sold the 15 calls last month for an average of around 70 cents.  I covered them at 10 cents this week.  Synthetic shorts and selling call options can be a good alternative to shorting a stock when you can’t find the borrows.  I also find it’s good for “shorting” what I call “grinders” like OSIR…where it just keeps hitting new highs day after day and chewing up shorts.  It’s easier to hold through a squeeze since you have a longer time frame with the options.  Selling the 15 calls was a no brainer because it had 12 straight up days and the probability of it correcting $2 to $3 or more was quite high.  I could’ve held them through expiration so that they expire worthless, but didn’t want to take any chances for an extra 10 cents so I took the sure profits.

Losers:  ZSTN and ADMP were big losers for me this week, taking losses on both of them on Friday.  I was short ZSTN from 4.05, but it was holding up well on Friday, and the spread was terrible, sometimes as much as $1.  I decided to get out at 4.84 because I didn’t want to risk this one turning into a CMEDY.  ADMP was a swing long I had been holding from 0.77, anticipating a 0.80 break, but the break never came and it hit my stop limit at 0.63 and I was out at 0.60.

Stats:  Not quite where I would like them to be; my P/L ratio is only 1.73 when I’d like it at 3 or better.  My largest loser was bigger than my largest winner, and my average loser was also bigger than my average winner.  The two big stop outs on Friday didn’t help.  I noticed I haven’t been doing so well from the long side the past few months.  For the most part I’ve been a break even trader from the long side since April.  I looked into why that is by looking at my trading statistics.  I couldn’t find anything that would alter what I’m doing, other than a few cases of not obeying my stops and not letting winners run.  So I’ll stick with my current long strategies until I see a reason not to.

P/L:  $1850.40

P/L Ratio:  1.73

# of Trades:  44

% Winners:  68.18%

% Losers:  31.82%

Largest winner:  $347.16

Largest loser:  $-800

Average winner:  $146.16

Average loser:  $-181.04

Average winning trade length:  3.57 days

Average losing trade length:  3.29 days

Max consecutive winners:  18

Max consecutive losers:  4