Weekly Options Play

During this years earnings I have been dabbling in the weekly options. I've been looking for bigger swings in the call/put trades and leveraging larger trades. To accomplish this, I have been using the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) Last week I had purchased 25 SPY April 24th $213.00 calls for $0.05 and got my opportunity a few days later to sell for $0.11, but missed my sale and never recovered on the trade. The options expired worthless.

The S&P 500 hit a new high on Friday, so my belief is there could be some large movement in either direction. To take advantage of this move I employed a strangle trade on the SPY May 1st weekly. My strike prices are $208.50/$211.50 (put/call).

New Established Positions

I established some new call positions and picked up some shares in a small company trying to leverage the transition into electronic cigarettes and vaporizers. The company I'm referring to is Vapor Corp (VPCO). I'm not a smoker, but at my place of business, I have seen a large amount of regular smokers now choosing to use electronic cigarettes or vaporizers, so why not invest in what you see? In the options world, I'm feeling bullish on a few areas based on earnings season and large swings in pricing, so picked up some weekly and monthly call options. The first two are highly speculative and are pure volatility plays and I'm looking for large movements over a very short period of time.

Netflix (NFLX) April 24th $630.00 calls. Earnings were released April 15th.

SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) April 24th $213.00 calls.

ULTA Salon (ULTA) June 19th $170.00 calls. Earnings scheduled for May 28th.