I took a pounding on a short of SYMX.  I got caught on the wrong side of a pump, sold my position and licked my wounds.  That sucked.

This is moving up very fast and might even be a buy at this point.  The stock was flying on no news.  It will likely move much higher on news.  The company is issuing press (joint venture news today).  They will also be presenting at a conference later in about a week.  I expect more news to be coming out between now and then.  My portfolio took a big hit with this one and I will have to work hard to bring my gains back.

Ouch.

Corning - GLW

Not that I don’t LOVE Corning (GLW), but 21% in 1 day was too hard to pass up.  With some recent hits that I have taken, a quick profit is nice.  I think there is more upside potential than downside risk, but I also feel that I might be able to get back into this position over the next couple of weeks.  It all depends on the macro news, not the company specific news.

I like Corning if we are headed for a turnaround.  I bought 5 call options with a November Expiration and a $15 strike price.

If we have some positive housing news (can it get much worse?), continued build out of bandwidth across the globe, and an administration who cares about clean emmissions, Corning could hit a new growth phase.  Let’s not forget flat panels, cell phones, and fiber to the home (FTTH).

Purchased 5 Nov 21 – $15 call options.  See my trading log for complete details.

Corning - GLW

I decided to take the plunge again on Citigroup. I like this stock. I like the potential. There is a ton of upside on this stock and I believe the home run potential outweighs the chance of the bank going bankrupt or being nationalized.

You have got to love the story of a left for dead company who was teetering on existance who suddenly sees their stock up 640% in one day.  This is a good read about Vanda Pharmaceuticals.

I bought some June  put options on VNDA (you will be able to view in my trading log).  Whenever a stock hops 600%+ in one day on news, I might want to be a seller.  The market often overblows events, both up and down.  Things go up more than they should and things go down more than they should.

I am looking for a small gain on this one with a very small amount at risk.  We’ll see what happens.

Vanda Snaps Victory From The Jaws Of Defeat – Pharmas Market with Mike Huckman – CNBC.com.

Let’s see where this one heads. Shorted STXX @ $0.91 per share. I would expect that we will see a much lower number in the coming days/weeks.

In Allied Irish Banks again.  It has been acting pretty poorly lately.  Looking to move up with the current swing.  1,000 AIB @ $2.36.

Bank error in my favor!

This trade of Celgene call options has a short story behind it.

I have discussed how good Schwab’s StreetSmart Pro software is.  Well, they dropped the ball on this option bracket order (note to self: don’t do bracket orders for options).    I bought my 4 contracts on Celgene and did the order as a bracket.  When placing a bracket order you are placing the buy and the sell order at the same time.  Schwab’s software is great in that it allows you to determine what you want your sell order to trigger on.  You can trigger based upon price, percent gain, etc.  I used percent gain on this order.  I placed my buy of 4 CELG July 40 calls @ $3.50.  The other side of the bracket was the sell order which I placed with the goal of an 8% profit above the $3.50.  Conservative trade, but a good percentage gain for a short term trade.

I received confirmation this morning that my call options sold @ $3.40 this morning.  The message was “condition met”.  It triggered because it saw my 8% gain condition as being met.  I had to call Schwab on this one to have it corrected.  Somehow, the order was triggered at a loss because the software/system reset the price that it was basing the 8% gain on.  When I called they stated that I had changed it to make it an 8% gain on the contracts at a price of $3.10.  They were saying that I changed the buy side of the bracket after it had executed. (not possible).

I asked the rep to look into this further because I did not believe that I changed anything.  In fact, during the first call he stated that I made the change but could not provide any sort of confirmation, time, date, etc.  When he returned my call, about 10 minutes later, he stated that the system reset the price in error and the contracts were back in my account.  Since the bid was up around $4.00, they didn’t just execute the 8% above $3.50 order (would have been around $3.75 for you lazy math folks).

I was please that this bank error worked out in my favor.  I sold 1 contract @ $3.90 and the remaining 3 @ $4.10.  I’ll update the total profit in my trading log.

I still think that CELG is a great long term play for the reasons outlined in my “Celgene is a Bargain” post.  This was purely a trade.  I am long CELG in both my retirement and primary account.

I know that I could probably have waited this one out and watched the contracts go to $0, but I am taking my profit and running.

Bought 10 Citi Apr 4 calls (CD W) for $0.11.   Profit of $247.   Pretty big in percentage terms (66.15%).

UPDATE (11:07am): Currently at $0.05 per contract.  Dropped all the way to $0.02.  Hindsight says that I should have been more patient, but…. “can’t go broke taking profits”.  I truly feel that this will be a dead contract at the end of the day and would have given me 100% profit, but I am OK with the 66% gain in 1 day.

Sold 10 Call options on Citi at $0.39 a contract. Total premium taken in $373.53. This is a covered call since I do own the 1,000 underlying shares of C.

As with my trade 2 days ago, I wouldn’t mind being taken out of 1,000 shares of Citi at $3.39. It would be fine if I had to deliver on the contract tomorrow. It is a heck of a premium for 1 day. Granted, earnings are tomorrow.

If it dips prior to the close, I will still be looking to cover for a small gain.