And I use the term “strategy” loosely. But based on the premise of why I entered these short call trades in the first place, I want to continue selling puts against the positions, but I’m trying to be patient and selling them on down days (for example, for next week’s expiration you can’t really get much premium on puts unless you sell at the 90 strike and above and that feels too close based on how volatile this ETF can be).

I’m taking this one week at a time. For this week, I’ve rolled 95 and 105 calls out to 5/13 at much higher strikes (which are now already in the money, go figure) and I’m watching my 120 calls into the close. Because these roll so easily this has been a strategy that’s worked, but I’m looking at some really deep in the money calls that may have to be rolled in the May and June expirations (calls with strikes in the 40s); I’ll just deal with that when those expirations arrive or when it looks like I’m in danger of assignment. On a big move down (I know it doesn’t feel like that will happen anytime soon but it will and always does), I’ll sell some puts and hopefully get out of some calls gracefully that will have been brought back into the money. In the meantime, if you want to operate this way you better be comfortable with seeing a lot of red in these positions until things turn around. Margin requirements are also increasing with these so that’s a consideration as well.

I’m also not forgetting that NUGT suffers from a lot of mathematical (tracking) headwinds when there is a lot of up and down volatility. Once there’s some more 2 way action on this, we’ll start to see it come back in line (providing gold calms down a bit of course). Of course if gold takes a dive we can sweep the chips off the table, but even if gold prices stabilize and become rangebound, we’ll start to see this ETF fall back from its highs.

Just remember that, as @Iceman is known to say, no trend lasts forever. We’ve all traded $BOIL calls, $KOLD calls, $DUST calls, etc, to see huge spikes and ultimately normalization. That’s what I’m playing for here.

I can’t believe I had to roll this one.
Rolled $NUGT 4/29 105 call up and out to 5/13 116 call for 3.09 credit.
I also have a 120 call expiring today that I couldn’t imagine…oh never mind…NUGT is a beast.
So thankful this rolls easily.

Selling some puts to hedge all this short call exposure.
Sold $NUGT May 20 65 puts @ 1.55

Rolled this week’s 90 call up and out to May 13 100 call for 2.00 credit.

With little to no time value left, I didn’t want to risk being assigned short something that was HTB. So I rolled one of my in-the-money May positions.

Bought to close $KOLD May 110 call @ 54.66. Sold for 67.96 (as a rollout from Feb) on 2/3/16.
Sold to open $KOLD Aug 110 call @ 60.16
Credit for the roll: 5.50

Continuing to chip away at the basis on this (and will do for my other May positions–115 call, 118 call) provided KOLD doesn’t implode by May expiration.