A mixed week: nearly broke even but AMZN shows why cash-settled indices are better trading vehicles

I was short the 2860 SPX calls for Wednesday expiration, and was so pleased by its late move out of the money I took a screen shot to commemorate:

But AMZN wasn't so cooperative this week:

I was short the 1885 calls, and it looked bad enough on Thursday that it might go to 100% loss, up 30 points from the 1885 level. But it came down nicely and closed just in the money: 1886.30. Since I got $1.79 credit for the spread, that would have yielded a small profit, right?

Wrong! Unlike a cash-settled index (a lesson I learned in TSLA months ago on ThinkOrSwim), you just are on the hook for being short 100 shares of whatever stock you're trading against (per contract!)  ... in this case 1 contract = 100 shares x 1885 or $188500 I'd have to sell short and then buy back at whatever price I could stand. Most brokerages these days will close out the offending short strike before this happens.

So one can't just let it go to expiration and work it out from there as one can with cash-settled indices. I actually closed out the short 1885 calls earlier in the morning when the price had fallen to $1891 or so ... I couldn't see it necessarily falling further from there so just decided to close at that point.

Harrumph. Not as bad as working in one of their "fulfillment centers":

Anyway, with today's down move I got $3.80 credit on the Wednesday-expiring SPX trade, which had yielded only $2.50 last week.

I'm going to wait and see for Monday, but probably will just use SPX for the Monday to Friday trade ... for one thing it's "expiration week" next week meaning that the Fabulous NDX trade is available again so need to leave space for that one.

The trades so far:

Expiration	Underlying	Long put	Short put	Short call	Long call	Credit Received	Result
07/16/2018/	SPX	2680	2730	2810	2860	$3.60	Won 100%
07/18/2018/	SPX	2700	2750	2820	2870	$3.95	Won 100%
07/20/2018/	SPX	2700	2750	2835	2885	$2.40	Won 100%
07/20/2018 (a.m.)/	NDX	7260	7310	7410	7460	$5.99	Won 100%
07/25/2018	SPX	2705	2755	2835	2885	$2.40	lost 16% of amount at risk
07/27/2018	SPX	2695	2745	2825	2875	$3.50	Won 100%
07/30/2018	SPX	2720	2770	2850	2900	$2.60	Won 100%
08/01/2018	SPX	2730	2780	2870	2920	$2.15	Won 100%
08/03/2018	CMG	430	450	490	510	$1.01	Won 100%
08/03/2018	AMZN	1692.5	1722.5	1887.5	1917.5	$2.60	Won 100%
08/06/2018	SPX	2720	2770	2860	2910	$2.05	Won 100%
08/08/2018	SPX	2740	2790	2860	2910	$2.05	Won 100%
08/10/2018	RUT	1610	1640	1710	1740	$1.53	Won 100%
08/10/2018	AMZN	1737.50	1767.50	1885	1915	$1.79	Lost about 30%

That's 12 for 14 winners so far: 85.7% winners.

More next week ...