Unfortunately I’m going to have to dump out of $DRIP short calls. They are my only positions going against me badly, since I have long options hedging my $UVXY and $VXX shorts.

We are poised now to see the worst week in the market since the financial crisis. Even in best case scenarios with corona virus, it’s likely to scare the markets for a few more weeks. What this will do to $XOP is uncertain. But since yesterday’s close we are going to open 4.4% lower. This means DRIP must open (x3) 13.2% higher. So a .70 drop in XOP means at least a $21.00 rise in DRIP.

Frankly, most of my accounts can’t handle it, and I need the margin to sustain and place other positions. I will try to profit from DRIP’s eventual decline, but I’ll have to wait until it’s actually underway. Fortunately, I didn’t go nuts and only have 3 calls on two accounts, and 2 calls in a third account. I kept my smallest accounts out of it completely.

Other than a couple misadventures over the years, one in $KOLD and a couple in $NUGT, the #ContangoETFs strategy provides a pretty smooth income. But these outlier moves are too damaging, so I’m going to cease the naked calls and use diagonals or spreads, like many of have switched to in #VXXGame and many of you are already doing in DRIP.