Three winners, three losers, one break even trade for the September option cycle that just ended. Unfortunately, the three losers were far, far larger than the winners, making for a small loss. Everyone of the trades that I bought back would have been winners had I held on through expiration. The catch is that the draw down would have been terrible, both in terms of dollars and emotional drain.
FDX, GLD, USO all come home safely, after the fox got into the hen house and killed off MCD, BUD, SPY, with AMZN a break even. USO was the only short play, all others were on the long side. Given that, and the beating the market took, it shows some discipline to come out of this month with only small trading losses. Yes, some folks made profits, some made big profits, however, a lot of players suffered catastrophic losses by taking on more and more risk as the market moved against them. A few are wiped out, never to return.
As always it is easy to trade in hindsight. If someone knew the Dow would rally a full 1000 points off Thursday's low, it would have been shooting fish in a barrel, both on the long and short side.
Monday is a new day. Starting flat with no positions has a calming and clearing effect, and one reason I like options. There is often a new start after options expiration Friday.
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