Trade Activity 7/1/11

Sold U.S. Steel (X) at $46.57 for a 9.34% gain since my entrance into this stock on 6/21/11

Trade Activity 6/21/11

Bought U.S. Steel (X) at $42.31

Bought Century Link (CTL) Oct $41.00 put at $2.75

Playing with the Trend

I'm going with the upward trend in the steel production and have messed around some more with U.S. Steel (X) and AK Steel Holding Corporation (AKS). I got back in AKS at $15.94 and entered into another Jan 2011 call on X at $2.70 and closed the position at $4.30.

This morning I bought some Chesapeake Energy Corporation (CHK) on a breakout in the technicals. The tricky thing with this week will be volume since we are going into the Christmas week.

Update: Got in on CHK at market open at $23.93 and sold out 14 mins later at $24.64. As I am updating this, I left some profit on the table the high was $25.04.

Recent Close Outs

I closed out my positions in DryShips INC (DRYS) and U.S. Steel Corp (X) at $8.14 and $33.83 respectively. I did miss the 3+ point move on X this week because my limit order hit last Friday. My mistake for not updating and checking my charts over the weekend. My overall profit for these trades were 36.8% for DRYS and 21.4% for X.

Options Assigned

My April covered calls that I sold on RIO and CHK got called away at $15.00 and $20.00 respectively. I still realized an approximate 15% gain on each position at those strike prices. I was safe on my X because my strike price was $30.00 and Friday's close was $29.96....talk about close.

Double Shot of X

I doubled up on my shares of U.S. Steel (X) and will now sit back and observe the market for a bit. It will be tremendously hard to sit on the sidelines, however I feel I am well positioned in stocks that will thrive going into the future.

Steel Plays

Even though this sector had a big sell-off in the past few days, I like some of the stocks within that industry. I picked up some shares of United States Steel X at $27.79 when the market was down big yesterday.

I'm at a bit of a crossroads on shorting the S&P 500 with SDS. I really wanted to sell yesterday when it was well over $100, but I stayed put with my shares. I really think the market will be lower, but don't want to get too greedy with profits during these tumultuous times. The G20 meeting is today, so we could see more extreme volatility especially heading into the weekend.

Don't forget options expiration is next week as well. Have a great weekend.