My options-only portfolio

[atrp2biz]

I've had an affinity to options ever since high school which--man, that was twenty years ago. I've dabbled in options in the past but without an actual focus or objective. However, this changed about a month ago. In May of this year, I decided to allocate $100,000 towards an options-only portfolio.

I've generally been a buy-and-hold investor primarily to avoid triggering a taxable event. It gets boring at times, although I can't complain about the returns. However, I'd like to be more engaged in the market and a 'fun' portfolio would fit the bill. An example of this has been the past couple of weeks. My core portfolio is down several multiples of the gains from my options portfolio, but I'm pleased as punch that my options portfolio made a few thousand dollars.

I've already started a blog to journal my trades, but would like to engage this forum community to provide thoughts on the overall strategy (generally +theta, -gamma, delta neutral) and position sizing from a portfolio risk perspective.

Portfolio objective: 15% p.a.
Journal objective: Reflect on successes and failures with your feedback

I look forward to your input throughout.

 

[atrp2biz]

June summary

Overall, June was a pretty good month at +12.4%. The performance was much better than I would have thought (which is somewhat concerning) and makes me wonder about the level of risk given the size of the portfolio. The portfolio has very little correlation with the rest of the market and my core portfolio which is a nice perquisite.

 

[lawrence-lugar]

Fear Nothing. Risk Everything.
Welcome to my church...where,we worship...money.

 

[atrp2biz]

July is off to a decent start. At the close today, my P/L since the start is +$6000. It could have been much better except my SPY calendar roll on the short side was disastrous. With SPY at 200, I rolled down my short 207 calls to 204 while keeping the long 207s. The roll did not end well with SPY closing at 210 last week. I'll try to make some time to scribe a more detailed account of this bad roll in my blog.

But many things went well in June. I had a nice result with my short puts on US Steel (X) which I transitioned into a short strangle. My GOOGL vertical was a big winner. Hopefully my winning ways with GOOGL continue with my short August 700 straddle I opened up today. I intend on closing this position well before earnings release at the end of the month.

My daily theta is currently $350. I'm pretty comfortable with this level as I'd like to get generally between 0.1% to 0.5% of my net liquidation value. If I need more margin flexibility, I'll add some wings to my GOOGL straddle which will bring down the portfolio theta a bit.