This past week, ending on April 28th, I made over $1,700 in profit with my options trading. It wasn’t my best week ever, or even in my top ten best weeks. But it was a solid week for me. So, I thought I’d share the detail of how I did it.

My overall feeling going in to the week was Bearish. Stocks are trading near their one year highs, and I don’t believe prices are accounting for the earnings growth slowdown that’s occuring. Because of this, most of my positions going into the week were Bear credit spreads. I had these open on Apple, Autozone, Microsoft, and the S&P500 Index stock $SPY.

Additionally, I am fairly confident in the stability of big Banks right now, so I’m did a Wheel Strategy on Citibank and an Iron Condor on JP Morgan Chase

The Bear Spreads

First up is Apple ($AAPL). On April 17th, it was trading around $167-$168, which was it’s highest since August. There seemed to be a lot of froth in the market in general, and especially in tech stocks that expected to reverse soon. I went ahead and opened a 4/28 Bear Call credit spread at $167.50 and $200 with five contracts. The net credit difference between the two options was $1.26 per share, which worked out to a total credit of $630 for five contracts of 100 shares each. On the 26th, the stock dipped down to the $163-$164 range so I closed my position. It cost me $.45 per share to close this out leaving me with a net profit of $323.92.

The next spread I had open was AutoZone ($AZO). I like trading options on this stock when it gets pretty high in price, but I tend to enter my positions a little early. Over the last six months, it’s hit resistance at around $2,600, only to fall back to 2,300-2,400 several times. So on April 13th, when it hit the mid 2,600’s, I went ahead and opened a 5/5 Bear Call credit spread at 2630/2640 for a net credit of $4.40/share.

On 4/21, the stock was trading around $2,680-$2,690 and I opened another 5/19 Bear Credit Spread at 2680/2690 for $5.72/share. On April 4/27, the stock fell back to the $2,630-$2,640 range and I closed both positions. The lower strike price spread cost me a $132 loss, and the higher one a $94 profit, for a total loss on these two spreads of $37.

Microsoft ($MSFT) was my next one. On 4/6, the stock hit $291, its highest level since December 2021. I opened three 4/28 Bear Credit Spread contracts at 295/300 for a $2.15 a share. By the 25th it was down to $277-$278 a share and earnings would be announced the next day. I closed this position for $0.54/share, for a total of $473 profit. So glad I did, because after earnings the stock made a huge jump.

I also opened a ten contract 4/28 Bear Credit Spread on $SPY at 415/416 on 4/21 when it was trading in the $411-412 range. It appeared to be starting a downward trend. By 4/26 the stock had hit $405, and I closed the position for a $279 profit.

The Wheel Strategy

Citibank ($C) is one of the banking stocks I feel to be pretty stable, so I’ve been doing a Wheel Strategy on it. On 4/20, it was trading at around $49.50 so I sold three 4/28 $49 Puts for $0.70/share. The option expired in the money (ITM) and the shares were assigned to me. My net profit on the option was $210.

The Iron Condor

JP Morgan ($JPM) is the other big banking stock I track pretty closely. On 4/18, the stock was trading around $139. I opened a ten contract 4/28 Bear Call Spread at 141/142. On 4/21, the stock was trading around $140 and I opened a 138/139 4/28 Bull Put Credit Spread making this an Iron Condor position. On 4/25 I closed the Put spread for a $159 profit, and on 4/26 I closed the Call spread for a $364 profit.

Final Results

Like most weeks, I was pretty active in my trading this week. Markets have been pretty volatile these past two months, but I was able to close almost all of my trades for either a nice profit, or only a small loss. For the most part, blue chip stocks are trading in a pretty tight range, and it’s just a matter of finding those top and bottom points. Other than Autozone, I didn’t have to worry about rolling any of these into higher or further out positions this week. As a result. my total profit was $1,774.