Out GOOG and in JCP

I won’t be taking any trades, most likely, today.  I sold my GOOG position this morning, which was dumb.  I avoided making $500 so that I could make $50.  Not the sign of a good trader, but thankfully the website name matches.

The market today is doing what I thought it would do yesterday.  Since my whole timeline is messed up, I’m going to probably avoid anything today.

I see strength in some stocks, weakness in others,  Mostly I just see a lot of sideways action that will eat me up if I try to make an option play.  Lindsey is brave and bet against BIDU, and on very short term options.  I’m not usually going to make any options play with just 5 full trading days left.  Plus, next Friday is like quadruple expiration day or something crazy like that.

Options plays usually aren’t recommended for quick scalping, so I’ll be careful to pick stocks that I believe are headed strongly in one direction.

Sold:
GOOG Jan08 $690 call (GOQAR), 1 @ $28.50
 Entered 12/13 @ $28.00, exited 12/14 @ $28.50
  2% profit, $48.00
  stock price when entered $686.48
  stock price when exited $689.47

Right now the same contract is at $31.50 x $32.00, so I didn’t make at least $300 more on this contract.  Sometimes I need to have more faith in my decisions to enter a position.

So in order to show I have more faith in myself and my decision on directions, here’s a JCP play.

Buy:
JCP Jan08 $45 call (JCPAI), 5 @ $1.75
  stock price when entered $43.02

I have confidence that JCP will go up.  So much, that I am risking another $875 on the stock (which is over 10% of my account’s total worth).