When a Good Trade Goes Bad

Back during the summer doldrums, when the mining stocks were getting taken out to the woodshed, I bought some long-dated call options on GG, AUY and EGO.  I also put on a smaller trade with $45 GG call options set to expire on October 20.  My entry price was somewhere around $0.97.

Needless to say, when QE to infinity was announced and the whole gold sector took off, all my options positions shot up too.  My October calls basically tripled.  But, I didn't sell.  Fueled by a bit of greed, I was in the process of moving accounts to a different broker, and so decided that I had the time to wait until everything was done to close out the position.

Fast forward to this week.  The transfers are finally done (after a few hiccups which were unfortunate) and now I am underwater after the recent correction.  With only 7 more trading days until expiration, I'm not going to cut my losses yet (the chart actually suggests that GG might be at a bottom), but, trust me, a lesson was learned.  Namely, that when you are putting on a trade, and not an investment, you need to be satisfied with the quick hits.  I think there's an expression about pigs getting slaughtered that would be entirely appropriate here.