Trade Alert – Thanking some gives and booking some face gains
Let’s thank some gives today as we head into the holiday weekend. I’d mentioned the other day that Turkey Week is usually a mostly-up-market/bullish time, and such seems to be the case so far this week.
Facebook’s finally back to where it was after the most recent quarterly report. That was a classic set-up for our style of trading/investing as we sold calls at the highs around $24 immediately after that report and then bought them back when the stock dipped below $19 just a couple weeks later and now we have the opportunity to trim those calls again now that we’re back here above $24 again. I’m selling 1/10 of my FB calls today, which will be the closest-dated expirations on my list, which is the March 2013s with $22 or so strikes. If the stock rallies another 10% from here, I’ll likely trim some more of these calls as FB is now getting to be a very big position courtesy of these calls kicking in as the stock races past their strike price.
As for Apple? Apple is as Apple does. It’s all about whether or not the iPad Mini and the iPhone 5 sell like hotcakes into the xMas iPad/iPhone iSeason. I expect analysts to raise estimates in mid-December if sales are indeed booming. I bought more calls when the stock was below $510 last Friday and I’m not selling any of them yet.
I’m still on the road and trying to get settled back in but it looks like I won’t be able to make the weekly Live Q&A chat at 2pm EST today. With the holiday week, I’m not sure many of you were planning to make it either, so let’s just plan on returning to the normal schedule next Wednesday.
HPQ is probably a buy around $12 if you’ve got a time horizon of 18 months or more. Crappy company, crappy management, crappy acquisitions, crappy goodwill of $45 billion still left on the balance sheet AFTER the $9 billion write-down on Autonomy yesterday. I just can’t bring myself to buy the stock yet. I should have been short this sucker from $20.
Have a great T-day manana and hug your family.
