Marathon Oil, it’s been pushing up for quite a while now. I looked at this last week, I think, when it broke out on the daily chart, but I didn’t pull any triggers, and that day it pulled back to within the range. Over the last 4 days, though, this has been pushing back up within this range and yesterday broke out again with a lesser pullback — staying near the highs of the range. Today, price is up a bit but not a ton, but could be ready to make another push. The bands are starting to expand again, so there might be some opportunity here. I’ll run the numbers and see what I like.
Entry – Order on 3/2, Triggered on 3/4 @ $2.30
I ran the numbers here, there’s a 8% move to break even, which is entirely possible within the 15 day window I’m giving it, and everything is well within my target. I’ll continue to follow my rules when/if this is triggered, and start locking in profits at 1R (.5R? I’m somewhat slowly getting back into this, so maybe I should be a bit more conservative and look around that area)
Underlying Price – $23.24
Underlying Target – $28.00
Strike Price – $23.00
Premium – $1.00
Delta – 0.23
Order
Trade
Exit – 3/7 @ $2.95
Today, Monday morning, when I checked on this position, the underlying made another push up and I was over .5R in profit. Seeing as how I’m fairly new to options, I didn’t wait until 1R, and entered a trailing stop this morning. I initially set my stop with a $.10 trail with a break-even limit, but I got an error message that my limit was too aggressive and my order was cancelled.
I re-opened a trailing stop order to close for $.25, instead of $.10 since I didn’t have a limit price to set. As I was figuring out my closing order, price was pulling back, so it wasn’t long after entering the trailing stop that it was triggered. I got out at $2.95, for a roughly $65 profit. I think that’s beautiful for the first real options trade I’ve taken, and my second is in profit as well.