General Electric (GE)

Wow! That was a short celebration. General Electric (GE) went from being last week’s winner to this week’s Biggest Loser down -11.19% when COVID started rearing its ugly head everywhere in Europe (and the U.S.).

What is the Super-Speculative Basket?

The Super Speculative Basket (“Super-Spec”) is made up of a handful of stocks so incredibly volatile that I’m uncomfortable giving any of them full allocations even in my Speculation in Play portfolio, instead dividing a single allocation among all of them.

Currently, my Super-Spec stocks are as follows: the Airlines ETF (JETS), Carnival Cruise Lines (CCL), and Virgin Galactic (SPCE). They are listed as a single allocation in the portfolio breakdown chart each week. 

SPY 10/23 325-320 Put Spreads: Insurance

The S&P 500 sold off more than 10% from September 2-18, so when it bounced on Tuesday, I felt it was a good time to buy some more insurance should we see significant volatility in the next month.

With the SPY around $330, I bought the 325-320 put spreads that expire on options expiration Friday in October (the 3rd Friday of the month is “expiration Friday” and is October 23, in this case).

I sold the 320 puts for $5.32 and bought the 325 puts for $6.81 making the cost of each put spread I bought $1.49 ($6.81- $5.32 = $1.49). The maximum I can sell each spread for is the difference between the puts I bought and the puts I sold or $5.00 ($325 – $320 = $5.00).

The maximum profit? $3.51 per spread or a +235.57% gain which could potentially more than triple my original investment if the SPY closes lower than $320 on the date of expiration – a drop of slightly more than 3% from Tuesday’s $330 price.  Basically, I’m risking 3.77% of my portfolio to make as much as 12.57%.

My spreads were worth $1.49 on Friday, down -0.21% from my purchase price.

Twitter (TWTR): Profit-Taking

Twitter (TWTR) popped nearly more than 7% on Wednesday following the unveiling of Trump’s Department of Justice’s legislation to reform the legal liability shield held by the technology sector.

The result?

Twitter making new all-time highs and me taking profits when a sell order I had in place filled at $45.00. The sale locked in +51.06% in gains on some of the initial buy for the position made back on October 30, 2019 at $29.79.

I have now pulled out $45.00 of profit for each share remaining in the position. My next buy target is $30.40 and I have no sell targets for the remaining shares at this time so I can watch where Twitter heads from here.

TWTR closed the week at $43.84, down -2.58% from where I sold Wednesday.