You know what is a huge pain in my ass?  In regard to lawn care and maintenance, I loathe missing the short window of dry weather around the 1 week mark.  Like clockwork, this is always followed by a period of rain and/or clouds for the next 6 days, effectively turning my front yard into Biosphere 3.

You see, my dad is a self-proclaimed “yard man”.  Last year when he came to visit,  he decided that he needed to immediately eradicate any form of plant life not in the grass family from our front yard, followed by repeated applications of chemical nitrogen.

Don’t get me wrong, the lawn looks fucking beautiful, but the flip-side is that it grows like nobody’s business.  With one week of growth, she mows beautifully…after that, prepare to clean out the mower->bag exhaust with great frequency.

This is the real thorn in my side here, because I always enjoy listening to some music and caring for the lawn without interruption.  I suppose the lesson is: better to mow to soon than too late.

As I mentioned earlier today, I initiated Month 1 of my seasonality strategy through the purchase of equal amounts of the following (at the listed entry price):

• $CVD (46.31)
• $ETP (43.41)
• $ICLR (21.47)

You can see that there was some variation from my purchase price with the close.  I figure those values will balance out close to 0 over a long period of time, so I’m not worried at the moment.  Remember, I’m going to bail on these after a 3% gain from my entry or I will ride them out until the end of the month.  I’ll be writing about these positions regularly, so there will be more details to follow.

I was keeping a keen eye on what $P was doing all day, preparing to add to my position.  Around 3:10, I put a buy order in for more June 10 calls at 0.80.  I believe the bid was at 0.75, but I was noticing some strength and was excited with the prospect of getting more contracts at a lower cost than my initial position.  There was a brief drop in price in just after 3:15 and my order was filled.  Of course, I immediately cursed at myself for not placing my order at 0.75, but I was content.  So the boat is 2/3 full right now.  This one doesn’t really trade in concert with the market (20 day correlation with SPX= -0.73…yikes!), so who the hell knows what will happen next?  Raul always has good thoughts on the matter, so I’m staying tuned to what he is sharing.  Up next, I’m interested to see how it behaves around 10.70, and may look to add if I like what I see.

I sold out of my $WFC and $HON puts today.  I took a small loss on the $WFC and a nice gain (%-wise…’twas an extremely small position) on $HON.  Even with the loss on $WFC, I still think both were good trades.  It’s nice to build a little confidence, knowing that I could have managed them well with significantly more risk on the line.  For me, that’s the goal of trading smaller.  Get back in time with the market, build confidence and go for it when the next opportunity arises.

If you are frustrated with the market and don’t want to keep some of your assets in cash, feel free to buy some shares of $MO on pullbacks.  The demand for their hideous products will never wane, and they pay a kick ass dividend.  I’m just saying.

I was *this* close to liquidating another 1/3 of my position in $THLD early in the session, but thought “I’m going to wait and see where it closes”.  Good thing.  I like this stock a lot…it just keeps bouncing up and down, I’ll continue to trade it until it stops working for me.

I know it’s tough out there…keep your head up and unless you have some conviction (like I’m feeling with the $P trade), stay away from this food processor of a market.

One last thought.  Take a look at $TBT.  That’s a little overdone, don’t you think?  Fly has mentioned the downside risk in $TLT a few times recently, which has certainly piqued my interest.  I know the option market in $TBT is fairly liquid, so I’m thinking of looking into opening a very small call position to try and catch some of that drop.  Of course, none of this makes any sense whatsoever so tread lightly.

My best to you all.

-EM

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