Feb 13 Review

Last month I got stopped out of 15 positions, and re-bought 4 of them.

Stocks where I saved myself 5% or more were GEOS, and HAIN. Those that cost me 5% or more in gains were ICLR (+13.8%!), FLT, JAZZ, and ECL. Assuming equal position sizes, the summed gain from not selling would have been 24.7% not counting the repurchased URI.

I paid an additional 9% to re-buy FLT (the position is currently down 0.9%), two were about even, and I re-bought URI 8.8% lower (now up 8.3%).

As for options, I made some money with AAPL and NSM, and ETFs MSCI (Taiwan), TBT (short bonds), UNG (nat. gas). I lost money on a speculative shorts on GME and XRT (S&P Retail), and credit spreads on ETFs SPY (short) and GLD (long). The losses exceeded my gains by a meaningful (and somewhat painful) amount.


Lessons learned?

I meant to relax my stops, especially with ECL and JAZZ reporting, but lost focus until too late. FLT had performed so well it deserved a little more wiggle room. I honestly don't see how I could have predicted ICLR's rebound.

I should have monitored the news on GLD. I would have become aware of the rotation out of gold. I ignored the trend in favor in favor of the RSI indicators, as I did with SPY. Also noted: a low delta on the short options doesn't mean squat when you're spitting into the wind. The bear call spread on XRT looked solid at the time - I'll chalk that one up to bad timing.