Option Trade Alerts!

August Expiration’s commentary on Wins and Losses:

After numerous requests, we have resumed our comentary on our wins and losses for the previous month’s expiration.

This was a challenging month to say the least, with wild swings up and down. Many of our contingent orders were triggered. However, we ended this month with some good gains:

CLF:

The entire trade was a drag on our portfolio! We ended the last session with a significant gain on the 70-75 put spread. However, we went in for what looked like another winner on the 90-80 put spread, but got whacked by the market girations. We felt every market bump with this trade and we had some serious ground to make up on our other positions! In hindsight, we were a little upset that we didn’t hold the 80 puts a little longer, but we were just trying to mitigate a loss,

Standard & Poor’s downgraded the U.S.’s AAA credit rating for the first time, slamming the nation’s political process and criticizing lawmakers for failing to cut spending or raise revenue enough to reduce record budget deficits.

S&P lowered the U.S.one level to AA+ while keeping the outlook at “negative” as it becomes less confident Congress will end Bush-era tax cuts or tackle entitlements. The rating may be cut to AA within two years if spending reductions are lower than agreed to, interest rates rise or “new fiscal pressures” result in higher general government debt, the New York-based firm said yesterday.

“The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government’s medium-term debt dynamics,” S&P said in a statement late

(Bloomberg) The House finally approved legislation to raise the U.S. debt limit by at least $2.1 trillion and cut federal spending by $2.4 trillion or more, one day before a threatened default.  The House voted 269-161 for the plan negotiated by leaders and President Barack Obama over the weekend. Ninety-five Democrats voted in favor and 66 Republicans in opposition. The measure goes to the Senate for a final vote planned tomorrow.

Representative Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican and chairman of the Budget Committee, called the spending cuts connected to the debt-ceiling increase “a huge cultural change” for Congress.

After final approval in the Senate the debt-limit measure would be sent to Obama for signing and conclude a months-long battle over raising the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling and reining in government spending.

“It’s hard to believe we are putting our