Close: HPC BRPS Mar 25/20

I made a mistake today.  Something I sort of knew not to do but never experienced before – I traded in the first 15 minutes after the market opened.  The financials got a boost today with Obama’s Bad Bank/Super TARP/Spend a trillion dollars BS plan.  I’m not going to get into why I don’t think this plan will do anything but make us more broke but the street loved the news and the financials all ran up.

So at 9:35  I looked at my HPC position.  I had a BRCS and a BRPS on.  I figured I might want to cover it for now until the dust settles.  I looked at the mark price on the Puts and it looked like I could buy the spread back for a $1.00 loss but I could sell the call spread for a $1.00 profit giving me a breakeven.  I liked it and entered the the two trades.  What I didn’t notice was the natural for the call spread was a $1.00 more than I thought it was and my Put spread order was filled for the $1.00 loss but the calls remained open.   With in a minute or so the spread jumped $1.15 higher as the MMs began to tighten up the bids/asks.

So right now the BRCS is still open – it never filled so I’m going to hold on to it for a while longer.  There is 3 weeks left I’m pretty sure HPC will move lower again soon.  It’s only about 1.25 ITM so I’m confident it will come back in.  I’ll watch it close and adjust if necessary.