Vertical Put Credit Spreads Part 2

Last week I reviewed the performance of the Terry’s Tips options portfolio for the first half of the year.  I should have waited a week because this week was a great one – our composite average gained another 6%, making the year-to-date record 22%, or about 3 times as great as the market (SPY) gain of about 7%.

Last week I also discussed a GOOG vertical put credit spread which is designed to gain 100% in the year if GOOG finished up 2014 at any price higher than where it started, something that it has done in 9 of its 10 years in business.  I want to congratulate those subscribers who read my numbers closely enough to recognize that I had made a mistake.  I reported that we had sold a (pre-split) 1120 – 1100 vertical put credit spread and collected $5.03 which was slightly more than the $500 per spread that I would have at risk. Actually, if the difference between the short and long sides was $20, and the maximum loss would be almost $15 (and the potential return on investment would be 33% rather than 100%).  We actually sold the spread for $10.06, not $5.03, and I mistakenly reported the post-split price.  We are now short 560 puts and long 550 puts, so the difference between the two strikes is $10 and we collected $5.03, or just about half that amount.  Bottom line, if GOOG finishes the year above $560, we will make 100% on our investment.  It closed at $585 Friday, so it can fall by $25 from here and we will still double our money.

Today we will discuss two other spreads we placed at the beginning of 2014 in one of the 10 portfolios we conduct for all to see at Terry’s Tips.

Terry

Vertical Put Credit Spreads Part 2:

We have a portfolio we call Better Odds Than Vegas.  In January, we picked three companies which we felt confident would be higher at the end of the year than they were at the beginning of the year.  If we were right, we would make 100% on our money.  We believed our odds were better than plunking the money down on red or black at the roulette table.

Late in 2013, the Wall Street Journal interviewed 13 prominent analysts and asked them what they expected the market would do in 2014.  The average projection was that it would gain slightly more than 5%.  The lowest guess was that it would fall by 2%.  We decided to make a trade that would make a nice gain if any one of the 13 analysts were correct.  In other words, if SPY did anything better than falling by 2%, our spread would make money.

In January, when SPY was trading about $184, we sold a vertical credit put spread for December, buying 177 puts and selling 182 puts.  We collected $2.00 at that time.  If the stock manages to close at any price higher than $182 on the third Friday in December, we will get to keep our entire $200 (per spread – we sold 8 spreads, collecting $1600).  The maintenance requirement would be $500 per spread less the $200 we collected, or $300 per spread ($2400, our maximum loss which would come if SPY closed below $177 in December).  Our potential profit would be about 66% on the investment, and this would come if the market was absolutely flat (or even fell a little bit) over the course of the year.  The stock closed Friday at $198.20, so it could fall by $16.20 between now and December and we would still make 66%.

The third company we bet on in this portfolio in January was Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR), now called Keurig Coffee Roasters.  This was a company with high option premiums that we have followed closely over the years (being in my home state of Vermont).  We have made some extraordinary gains with options on several occasions with GMCR.  Two directors (who were not billionaires) had bought a million dollars each of company stock, and we believed that something big might be coming their way.

With the stock trading about $75, we made an aggressive bet, both in our selection of strike prices and expiration month. Rather than giving the stock a whole year to move higher, we picked June, and gave it only 6 months to do something good.  We sold Jun-14 80 puts and bought Jun-14 70 puts, and collected $5.40.  If the stock stayed at $75, we would make only a small profit on the third Friday in June, but if it rose above $80 by that time, we would make $5.40 on an investment of $4.60, or 117%.

The good news that we anticipated came true – Coke came along and bought 10% of the company for $1 billion and signed a 10-year licensing agreement with GMCR.  The stock shot up to $120 overnight (giving Coke a $500 million windfall gain, by the way).  At that point, we picked up a little extra from the original spread.  We sold a vertical call credit spread for the June expiration month, buying the 160 calls and selling 150 calls, collecting an extra $1.45 per spread.  This did not increase our maintenance requirement because we had, in effect, legged into a short iron condor spread. It would be impossible for us to lose money on both our spreads, so the broker only charged the maintenance requirement on one of them.

Selling the call spread meant that our total gain for the six months would amount to almost 150% if GMCR ended up at any price between $80 and $150.  It ended up at about $122 and we enjoyed this entire gain.

We have since sold another GMCR vertical credit put spread for Jan-15, buying 90 puts and selling 100 puts for a credit of $3.45.  Our maximum loss is $6.55, and this would come if the stock closed below $90 on the third Friday in January.  The potential maximum gain would amount to 52% for the six months.  This amount was far less than the first spread because we selected strikes which were well below the then-current price of the stock (GMCR is now $125, well above our $100 target).  This makes our potential gain for this stock for the year a very nice 200%.

We advocate making these kinds of long-term options bet when you feel confident that a company will somehow be the same or higher than it is at the beginning. If you are right, extraordinary gains are possible. In our case, our portfolio has gained 41% for the year so far, and the three stocks can all fall by a fair amount and we will still make 100% on our starting investment when these options expire (hopefully worthless so we can keep all the cash we collected at the outset) on January 17, 2015.