Learning to trade options journal

I have been trading stocks for about 6 years now and have recently been studying options quite a bit in school. Sooo I thought now would be a perfect time to start paper trading for a few months and if everything goes well I will open up an account with my tax return.:cheesy: If I bomb I guess that money will just go into the roth ira or my stock trading account. Any advice or opinions on my trades would be greatly appreciated.

I will only trade in the direction that the indexes are trending. If they show bullish signs I will only trade options that I believe are bullish, same goes for bearish. Next I will only buy(no writing) calls/puts that are in the money, unless I am doing I am doing a spread that limits the maximum amount of money that I can lose.

Finally I am using a $5,000 practice account because thats about how much money I would use if I were to open an actual account. Well I actually started a little lower than $5k because I made some practice trades just to get a feel for the software.



My calls trades open right now
Ticker Exp Date (days) Qty Strike Premium
Feb-8
TTM March 10 (38) 1 $12.50 $2.35
MMS March 10 (38) 1 $50.00 $8.20
Feb-9
CHK March 10 (37) 2 $23.00 $2.50
TNP March 10 (37) 3 $15.00 $1.05
Feb-15
BBY June 10 (124) 1 $31.00 $5.80



Spread
Ticker Exp Date (days) Qty Put/Call Strike Premium
Feb-9
IBM March 10 (37) 1 Call $120.00 $5.15
IBM March 10 (37) -1 Sell Call $130.00 $0.84

Update of trade values as of 2/19/10

Still watching for...
-IBM to stay below 130 but if breaks 50ma could go up to 130 but I doubt over because of strong resistance it has put up in the past(so my sold call should expire worthless).

-TNP to bounce off support.

-CHK to get up to about 29 and if it does I will close that trade.

-Long term turn around for BBY but if it can't break the 200ma when it gets a chance I will close that trade.

-MMS to keep up trend but wouldn't be suprised with a profit taking pullback...I think I should have taken a longer time period on this trade.

-TTM looks like it might trade sideways for a little before it hopefully continues its U/T.



I will be buying 2 May 10 40.00 put of GSK monday morning for $3.00