see-saw on the Goldman Sachs ship

I shorted GS tuesday evening for a quick afternoon fade, but i didn't get it and so i was left holding GS puts !!!
as you know i hate holding stocks overnight in such volatile environment...a little bit of good or bad news and your position is fucked. especially with financials. so i was bummed, since after hours it was spiking higher.

But, on Wed. morning the gov. announced $85 billion loan to AIG. Logically, good news, but the market went ape shit over it. GS in pre-market was down $10....awesome. I saw the first 20 secs worth of action, saw that it would hit 120 and set sell level of $30 for my 150 puts. I didn't even have quotes, the options pit is a little behind in such cases. I was probably one of the first people to make market on that derivative that day. Great nice profit of $12.

I am at home for the moment. I didn't feel like rushing to work. So i am enjoying the moment. Watch the talking heads on CNBC, smoke a cigarette, take a crap (carry the laptop in there too :) and i come back thinking that's the worst. I do another quick trade on the upside, let it go down a little and go LONG. i wait a little bit and go LONG some more. Don't aske me why i must have still been hungover or sleep deprived or to exhuberant over my recent successes, that i went so heavily in. I get to work everything's down, GS down $25...i think great absolute bottom and i buy some more....you know the story the bottom on Wed. was $100....i had 29 $100 sept. calls with only 2 days to go. perfect way to blow your account.

i was up early thurs. morning. i had calculated various scenario's at different price levels and i was ready to take a hit. only thing in my favor was that volatility had created monstrous premium's so even though GS had moved down considerably, i was somewhat compensated. luckily, the market moved up and at $114 i had previuosly thought the risk / reward ratio was acceptable. i wasn't sure it would move to $120 and the hit at that point was not so bad, especially since I had made so much the day before. i am typing in the order, the fire alarm at work goes off, the boss is yelling everybody out, i hit submit and it's filled !!! yipppeeee....later on GS goes back to 100, then goes down to 91, where i wanted to buy it, then to 88, where i absolutely wanted to buy it...but for some reason my IB webtrader wouldn't accept my stock orders!!! i would have done call options but the lowest was 90's and they wanted $10 for it with stock at 88 and 1 day left. INSANE and DEFINTILEY NO WAY! 5 min's later that stock peaks back to 100. that was a definite gimme and i knew it. sigh.

the moral of this story is that i was able to salvage massive losses, buy not being greedy and keeping an eagle eye on the ticker of my stock. this is something i didn't always do before. but, now i know, that if you are trading options which are about to expire immenently you need to watch the ticker on that stock like a hawk. a couple of minutes could cost you thousands.

overall i only lost $500 (thank GOD) but i was up massively !!!

list of trades below:

BOT 10 GS IT SEP08 CALL 25 2008-09-17, 10:06:51
BOT 10 GS IT SEP08 CALL 23.5 2008-09-17, 10:11:25
BOT 9 GS IT SEP08 CALL 16.8 2008-09-17, 11:15:44
SLD 29 GS Option SEP08 100 CALL GS IT 16.50 CBOE(USD) 10:11:29 GMT-0400 on Thu, 18 Sep 2008 new
SLD 2 GS Option SEP08 125 PUT GS UE 13.50 NASDAQOM(USD) 15:50:55 GMT-0400 on Thu, 18 Sep 2008 new
SLD 2 GS Option SEP08 125 PUT GS UE 13.50 NASDAQOM(USD) 15:50:55 GMT-0400 on Thu, 18 Sep 2008 new
SLD 2 GS Option SEP08 125 PUT GS UE 13.50 NASDAQOM(USD) 15:50:55 GMT-0400 on Thu, 18 Sep 2008 new
SLD 2 GS Option SEP08 125 PUT GS UE 13.50 NASDAQOM(USD) 15:50:55 GMT-0400 on Thu, 18 Sep 2008 new
SLD 2 GS Option SEP08 125 PUT GS UE 13.50 NASDAQOM(USD) 15:50:55 GMT-0400 on Thu, 18 Sep 2008 new
BOT 10 GS Option SEP08 125 PUT GS UE 13.00 CBOE(USD) 15:25:53 GMT-0400 on Thu, 18 Sep 2008 new
SLD 1 IBM Option SEP08 130 PUT IBMUF 13.10 NASDAQOM(USD) 15:57:24 GMT-0400 on Thu, 18 Sep 2008 new
SLD 1 IBM Option SEP08 130 PUT IBMUF 13.10 NASDAQOM(USD) 15:57:24 GMT-0400 on Thu, 18 Sep 2008 new
SLD 1 IBM Option SEP08 130 PUT IBMUF 13.10 NASDAQOM(USD) 15:57:24 GMT-0400 on Thu, 18 Sep 2008 new
BOT 3 IBM Option SEP08 130 PUT IBMUF 12.00 NASDAQOM(USD) 15:53:34 GMT-0400 on Thu, 18 Sep 2008 new