Anyone here trade options?

[ERD50]

Now obviously a flat year for stocks with high volatility in last 6 months of the year has been the ideal time to write calls and puts. ...

It wasn't for me. A flat year means nothing if there were some big spikes up that cap your gains for that period. You BTC the option at a loss (or let it be assigned, and buy the stock back at a higher price). If those losses on the buybacks exceed the other premiums you received, B&H would have been better.

-ERD50

 

[FIRE'd@51]

If you think back to 1987, institutional investors practicing portfolio insurance were badly burned trying to synthetically create index puts by adjusting a short futures position (i.e. dynamic hedging). They then wised up and began to purchase index puts even if they had to pay up for them. By doing so, at least they knew upfront exactly what their insurance cost would be. Because institutional investors typically hold broadly diversified portfolios, they buy index puts because they cost less than puts on individual securities. They want to insure against market risk, not individual security risk. Also most think (incorrectly?) that they can pick stocks that will outperform the market.

Personally, I like writing puts on individual securities as a form of targeted buying. I only write puts on stocks I want to own. I'm not trying to collect alpha here so I don't care that the puts aren't overpriced - I just want to own the particular stock at a lower price. If I don't get assigned, I still collect the premium, which turns out to be a great annualized return. Clifp, I believe this is your strategy as well.

With regard to buy-write funds, most typically sell calls on individual securities because this brings in more premium. They don't really care if the stock gets called away since this gives them the maximum return for that particular trade, and they tend to be absolute return investors.

The article is saying that there is some alpha in selling index options. However, it does not follow that a covered-call (or cash-secured put) strategy will outperform the index over the long-term. The alpha may not be large enough to beat B&H over time. It just means that, if this overpricing persists, the index option writer will benefit relative to the index option buyer.

 

[utrecht]

Up to date returns for selling weekly naked SPY puts

Real time last 30 weeks

Naked SPY puts....+13.9%
SPY.....................-9.8%

YTD including back test for Jan-May

Naked SPY puts......+22.7%
SPY.......................+1.7%

 

[MichaelB]

We moved the thread to the stock picking forum because it is not general interest and will suggest to members that future discussions on options be located here as well.

Cheers...

 

[clifp]

If you think back to 1987, institutional investors practicing portfolio insurance were badly burned trying to synthetically create index puts by adjusting a short futures position (i.e. dynamic hedging). They then wised up and began to purchase index puts even if they had to pay up for them. By doing so, at least they knew upfront exactly what their insurance cost would be. Because institutional investors typically hold broadly diversified portfolios, they buy index puts because they cost less than puts on individual securities. They want to insure against market risk, not individual security risk. Also most think (incorrectly?) that they can pick stocks that will outperform the market.

Good explanation I wasn't too clued into what was happening back in 1987, just remember selling my Magellan fund the Friday before Black Monday and seeing that by the time the order cleared I got out at the bottom

Personally, I like writing puts on individual securities as a form of targeted buying. I only write puts on stocks I want to own. I'm not trying to collect alpha here so I don't care that the puts aren't overpriced - I just want to own the particular stock at a lower price. If I don't get assigned, I still collect the premium, which turns out to be a great annualized return. Clifp, I believe this is your strategy as well.

With regard to buy-write funds, most typically sell calls on individual securities because this brings in more premium. They don't really care if the stock gets called away since this gives them the maximum return for that particular trade, and they tend to be absolute return investors.

The article is saying that there is some alpha in selling index options. However, it does not follow that a covered-call (or cash-secured put) strategy will outperform the index over the long-term. The alpha may not be large enough to beat B&H over time. It just means that, if this overpricing persists, the index option writer will benefit relative to the index option buyer.

Yes that is my strategy for buying individual stocks, beside the significant benefit of collecting premium, I like the use of options because it prevents me for overpaying. For example if I like ABC at $50 and I see it is trading at 50.20 I'll probably put an order at $50.15, if it never hits the limit price, the next day it may climb to 50.60 and I'll raise the order to 50.55. A few days latter I'll have chased all the way up to $53 before I catch it.

However, the insight I've gotten from Utrecht, this thread and reading the WSJ article, plus googling some of the papers on index options, is index options are overpriced. My initial reaction when I started to see VIX go through the roof in a flat market is that I'd be better off writing individual puts than index puts. I figured (I think somewhat logically) that the collective premium for 500 individual puts (appropriately weighted) on the S&P would be greater than premium on the index options.

It turns out I am wrong and Utrecht's comments were right.

I do trade spreads on individual stocks. I only sell naked options on an index. Trading spreads is less risky than trading spreads but since an index will generally move less than individual stocks do, Im OK with the extra risk from selling naked options. You could go broke on one really bad naked options trade on a volatile stock but indices just dont move as much so I prefer not to pay for the extra protection by buying the option that makes up the other side of the spread.

Let me illustrate with an example. MSFT has a beta of .98 (close enough for government work to be 1). It is currently trading at 25.70 or almost exactly 1/5th the SPY at 126.05. The implied volatility (IV) of at the money MSFT puts is around 22.4 vs an IV of 24.2 for the Jan SPY 126 put.

If I wrote a strangle selling 5 MSFT Jan 25 puts and 5 MSFT Jan 26 calls, I'd collect $5.75 in premiums and I'd make money if MSFT traded between 23.85 and 27.15. The equivalent trade for the SPY is a selling a 125 put and 130 call, this would give me $5.67 and I'd make money if the SPY end between 119.33 and 135.67.

Now if we forget the math for moment it is relatively easy to envision scenarios that we cause MSFT stock to drop below $20 or rise above $30 in the next 5 weeks and turn my $575 of profit into a $2500 loss. A general market rally/decline, a tech sector rally or decline, and host of company specific announcements. It is much harder to think how we will see S&P 1000 or S&P 1500 in the next 5 weeks. Sure it could happen but it is far less likely than MSFT stock rising or dropping 20%. Yet the premium that option writers are getting is the same for these two. Now perhaps the index options are fairly priced and the individual options are underpriced. However, I suspect that index options are overpriced.

While you are right that there is no guarantee this strategy will outperform B&H of the S&P. For the SPY trade I just outlined if no major news happens in the next 5 weeks, it is certainly likely that the S&P will stay between 1200 and 1350 and I'll make a small profit and if it says between 1250 and 1300 I'll be making almost 1% a week. If we do this on monthly basis I can afford a few time when the market moves against. Adopting Utrecht weekly options trades looks even better. Potentially another idea would be to buy long term strangles on individual issues to hedge against major market moves, plus you could get lucky when the oil platform leaks, insider trading scandal happens, or the take over is announced.

All in all this has been a terrific and so far profitable thread.

 

[utrecht]

Ive been selling weekly SPY puts on the day of expiration for 8 weeks now. I sell the first strike below SPY and do it 30 minutes after the market opens. I take in an avg of 0.3% but of course it depends on how high above the strike that SPY is trading.

The total return for buying SPY at 9:00 CST and selling at the close on every Friday for the last 8 weeks is -1.31%. The return from these puts is +0.72%. Not including commissions.

I'm sure someone will tell me that this wont work either but believe me the time value gets sucked out of these things so fast it cant help but outperform SPY unless the market shoots straight up every Friday after the first 30 minutes. I purposely wait to avoid any gap openings up or down

PS..I'm pretty sure selling strangles will work even better.

 

[ERD50]

Ive been selling weekly SPY puts on the day of expiration for 8 weeks now. I sell the first strike below SPY and do it 30 minutes after the market opens. I take in an avg of 0.3% but of course it depends on how high above the strike that SPY is trading.

The total return for buying SPY at 9:00 CST and selling at the close on every Friday for the last 8 weeks is -1.31%. The return from these puts is +0.72%. Not including commissions.

Interesting. Of course, SPY B&H is up 1.775% over the past 8 weeks, not including commissions/fees (oh, that's right, there aren't any).

Yes, I know, your money is free the rest of the time to make other investments (edit: but you also have to have the cash available to cover those puts on that day, so you may have to get out of other investments in order to do that trade, or you are not fully invested and that has consequences also). I just threw that out there for some perspective.

I'm sure someone will tell me that this wont work either ...

There's really no reason to be so defensive. I'm not saying that anything won't 'work', I'm just skeptical that anything like this will provide significant excess reward/risk, before the market would gobble it up. That is my (semi-educated) opinion, nothing more. But I am very interested to be proven wrong and learn something in the process, and I'm very interested in following any strategies that appear to do so.

But like is often said, many things will 'work', until they don't.

but believe me the time value gets sucked out of these things so fast it cant help but outperform SPY unless the market shoots straight up every Friday after the first 30 minutes. I purposely wait to avoid any gap openings up or down

And my viewpoint is - the 'market' would not consistently by buying these with 'excess' time value, every Friday like clockwork. My opinion is that the time value is pretty commensurate with the risk. Again, if this money was just there for the taking, I think the big boys (and/or their computers) would be buying it up before we could reach for our keyboards. JMHO.


Here's an interesting thing that happened to me a few months back - I had 115 and 116 calls on SPY. My routine is to BTC and roll out if it looks like they will be assigned. Within a half-hour of close on the Fri exp, SPY was bouncing ~ 115.80. I rolled out the 115s, and watched closely, but SPY stayed below 116, so I just (intended to) let the 116 expire, and I'd sell the next calls on Monday, or the next 'up' day. Market close was 115.85, so I figured I was fine. But, the calls were assigned. Turned out the market rose above 116 after the close, and option holders can request an assign for some time after the market close. Now, the person on the other side could have only made a few cents per share on that, and I assume he went short SPY to null out any risk of even a small gap Monday AM. So this was a truly riskless trade for them. Just an example of how 'the market' gobbles up opportunities. And something to watch out for, for anyone who was unaware of that rule.

-ERD50

 

[utrecht]

The 8 Fridays that I'm talking about actually covers 7 weeks because it starts with a Friday and ends with a Friday. It covers from 10/28/11 thru 12/16/11. B&H SPY is down 5% during that span, not up 1.77%. This is an apples to oranges comparison to what I'm talking about so I'm not sure why you even brought it up. If you want to make a comparison, we can compare the SPY B&H -5% return to the SPY weekly naked puts return of -3.15% during that same time frame. Once again, selling puts beat the market in a random time frame. Again, the only time selling puts like this doesn't beat the market is when the market is moving sharply straight up, but selling puts still makes money during that cycle so I'm fine with it. Basically, when this strategy "works until it doesn't work", I'll still be making money. Not a bad problem to have.

I didn't realize that an option could be exercised like that after the close so thanks for that info. Ive never had that happen to me.

How about you discuss your options strategies?

 

[clifp]

Ive been selling weekly SPY puts on the day of expiration for 8 weeks now. I sell the first strike below SPY and do it 30 minutes after the market opens. I take in an avg of 0.3% but of course it depends on how high above the strike that SPY is trading.

Do you no longer sell weekly puts? Market open is not exactly a convenient time for me 3:30 AM half the year and 4:30 the other half.

I also have a question regarding how to handle the situation where the SPY is right around the strike price in the final hour.

To use ERDs example if I am short a SPY 116 call and SPY closes at 116.2
How long do I have to deliver SPY shares? and what is the best way to handle this?

 

[utrecht]

Yes, I sell the weeklies every Friday (and hold for a week), but have also started selling what I call a "daily" put. Its a weekly but I sell it the day of expiration.

I wouldnt call myself an authority on options assignments at all. I can only remember getting assigned one time and it was years ago. I just don't let it happen, although lately Ive begun to think about that subject. I assume in your example the shares will be deducted from your account over the weekend.

If I am short a 125 put and SPY is at 124.95 within minutes of the close, I have to buy back the put (or roll forward which still technically is buying it back). The problem is that the price wont be .05. It will be more like .15 and sometimes more like .25+ if I need to make the trade earlier for some reason. The whole point of selling these puts is to make money as the time value ticks away and I dont want to lose out on any of it. I haven't put a lot of thought to it yet, but I was considering shorting SPY in a case like that. Wont that lock in my price and be the same as if the market closed at that minute?

In other words, I dont think I would be subject to any price changes after that. If SPY rallies, my short put makes a bit more money but my stock loses money and vice versa. I break even. If SPY closes below 125, doesnt the stock that gets put to me just cancel out my short shares?

 

[FIRE'd@51]

If I am short a 125 put and SPY is at 124.95 within minutes of the close, I have to buy back the put (or roll forward which still technically is buying it back). The problem is that the price wont be .05. It will be more like .15 and sometimes more like .25+ if I need to make the trade earlier for some reason. The whole point of selling these puts is to make money as the time value ticks away and I dont want to lose out on any of it. I haven't put a lot of thought to it yet, but I was considering shorting SPY in a case like that. Wont that lock in my price and be the same as if the market closed at that minute?

In other words, I dont think I would be subject to any price changes after that. If SPY rallies, my short put makes a bit more money but my stock loses money and vice versa. I break even. If SPY closes below 125, doesnt the stock that gets put to me just cancel out my short shares?

If you don't get assigned (e.g. the stock rallies above the strike price after you short it), you will be net short the stock over the weekend.

 

[ERD50]

The 8 Fridays that I'm talking about actually covers 7 weeks because it starts with a Friday and ends with a Friday. It covers from 10/28/11 thru 12/16/11. B&H SPY is down 5% during that span, not up 1.77%. This is an apples to oranges comparison to what I'm talking about so I'm not sure why you even brought it up.

You mentioned 8 weeks, so I picked those dates from the calendar. It's as valid as 7 weeks.

At any rate, I think it shows that you can't judge something like this from a few data points. SPY returns went from -4.85% to +1.775% by just moving the start point one week. A -3% return strategy could be judged as doing OK by one measure, and lousy by another measure just one week apart. Not really meaningful.

How about you discuss your options strategies?

Sure, but first I'll discuss my goals, as my strategy is influenced by what I think is reasonably achievable. My goal is to eek out a small, hopefully steady return in excess of SPY B&H. Since I'm skeptical that big gains are there for the taking, and I won't put myself at much more risk than SPY B&H, I'm not swinging for the fences. I'd be happy to beat SPY by 1% each year.

I do think that people pay a premium for insurance (buying puts) and for lottery tickets (buying calls). So I think there is money to be made selling these. I don't think it is a lot, or the big money would swoop in and eat up the excess.

I guess it's time for me to review how the Buy/Write index funds have been doing. That is something that I have used for a model. Back when I looked at them, they sometimes under-performed SPY by a bit, but reduced volatility significantly. But they sold calls just one strike out. I'm thinking that going further out might give me more volatility than those approaches, but still provide income from the premiums, and not cap the gains as much/often. I'm not really looking for lower volatility, but I'm hoping the premiums exceed the cost of the capped gains. So essentially, I sell calls on SPY, as far OTM as I can and still get ~ .5% premium. That would be ~ 24% a year if I never had to BTC, or buy back SPY that got assigned - but that will happen. Hopefully, the annual buy-backs cost less than the annual premiums received.

I just moved to the weeklies later this year, I prefer them for the faster feedback, and if I want to avoid ex-div dates, I'm only out 4/52 weeks rather than 4/12 months. I recently started splitting my call sales - I do half on Monday (or later if the market is down Monday, or on Friday if I'm rolling out), and half later in the week at a higher strike if there is a bounce up in the market. If the market is flat, I might decide to sell the other half by Tues/wed, if there is still some premium there. This means I may take in less on some weeks, but if I have to BTC, the pain is less.

YTD, I under-performed SPY by a small fraction of a %. I've been up in all the other years I've been selling calls, so I think this was just a run of bad luck for me, a few weeks with big spikes up cost me. So we will see.

-ERD50

 

[clifp]

Sure, but first I'll discuss my goals, as my strategy is influenced by what I think is reasonably achievable. My goal is to eek out a small, hopefully steady return in excess of SPY B&H. Since I'm skeptical that big gains are there for the taking, and I won't put myself at much more risk than SPY B&H, I'm not swinging for the fences. I'd be happy to beat SPY by 1% each year.

I do think that people pay a premium for insurance (buying puts) and for lottery tickets (buying calls). So I think there is money to be made selling these. I don't think it is a lot, or the big money would swoop in and eat up the excess.

My goals are quite similar. Although I am seeking to gain alpha by reducing volatility.

One thing I have been noticing lately is that there seems to me a consistent premium for puts compared to calls. Since the profit profile of a naked put is the same a s covered called. I would think they would always trading at the same price.

However, if look at Dec23. A ATM covered call at 122 is @1.25+ the increase from 122 to 121.59 current price that = 1.66. However the 122 put is 1.72. Looking at the monthly I consistently see puts being priced a few percent higher than equivalent calls. Am I missing something here?

 

[utrecht]

Why do you want to avoid ex-div dates and what exactly happens when they come around (apart from the obvious)? I guess the price of SPY drops when the dividend is paid out? I had never paid attention to it, but now that you mention it we obviously had one on Friday. All day I was wondering why the hell the everyone was reporting the SP500 was in the black when SPY was in the red.

I assume the price changes overnight Thur night? Even if all of this is correct, I still don't know why you need to avoid that week. The SPY puts that I was short last week made money on Friday even though SPY was down for the day because the time value gets sucked out the most dramatically on the day of expiration.

 

[utrecht]

My goals are quite similar. Although I am seeking to gain alpha by reducing volatility.

One thing I have been noticing lately is that there seems to me a consistent premium for puts compared to calls. Since the profit profile of a naked put is the same a s covered called. I would think they would always trading at the same price.

However, if look at Dec23. A ATM covered call at 122 is @1.25+ the increase from 122 to 121.59 current price that = 1.66. However the 122 put is 1.72. Looking at the monthly I consistently see puts being priced a few percent higher than equivalent calls. Am I missing something here?

I don't think you are missing anything. That's one of several reasons I sell puts instead of covered calls.

 

[ERD50]

Why do you want to avoid ex-div dates and what exactly happens when they come around (apart from the obvious)?

It's really just a personal preference to keep my accounting 'clean' rather than any solid economic decision.

I apply my 'system' mostly in a tax-deferred account that I'm not currently adding to or drawing from. So I can quickly do a simple test of my performance against SPY B&H at any time.

Now, if I sell calls on EX-DIV dates, I can have an uncertainty over whether my shares get called or not, and I may have only a partial assign. Then, I have to buy back the shares, and the price may have gapped, and I have an extra transaction forced on me that doesn't represent my 'pure' strategy. Maybe that's not a good reason, but I don't like the uncertainty at any rate.

I don't think you are missing anything. That's one of several reasons I sell puts instead of covered calls.

Do divs explain this? I haven't looked that closely lately, but it seems any significant delta could and would be arbitraged out as a riskless play?

Maybe FIRE'd@51 could comment on this, he seems to have a really good grasp of these mechanics.


BTW, one of the reasons I have limited my selling of cash-covered puts is that it requires a large chunk of cash to sit in my account. I know it is insured to $X, but there is some fine print on the total amount of coverage the broker has company-wide. I was not able to find out if this was sufficient to cover each and every account if something really, really bad happened. We almost all preach diversification here, and I feel well diversified with SPY, and the broker is only holding the paper records that I own that, but having a large chunk of cash at one broker scares me. That isn't diversification. Even though the risk must be really small, the idea of losing money in 'safe' cash scared the dickens out of me. Just didn't seem prudent. I'm much more comfortable with those 'risky' ( ) options.

-ERD50

 

[utrecht]

End of year results for weekly naked SPY put selling

Real time results for 35 weeks:

Naked Puts....+7.4%
SPY..............-7.7%

YTD results including estimated back test results prior to the 35 weeks:

Naked Puts...+22.3%
SPY..............+0.0% (about 2.0% including dividends)

 

[jxs8n1]

Weekly options calls writing

Hi,
I was writing covered weekly calls against JPM and GE recently.
Please share your best stock picks for weeklies.

 

[utrecht]

Hi,
I was writing covered weekly calls against JPM and GE recently.
Please share your best stock picks for weeklies.

The only thing I sell weekly puts on regularly is SPY, which is the Sp500 index tracking stock. Most individual stocks are just too volatile for this strategy, at least for my tastes.

 

[FIRE'd@51]

For Vanguard Voyager Select and Flagship clients, options commissions have just been lowered from $8 plus $1.50 per contract to $2 plus $1 per contract. Plus the first 25 trades per year are free for Flagship clients.

Commission Schedule

 

[clifp]

For Vanguard Voyager Select and Flagship clients, options commissions have just been lowered from $8 plus $1.50 per contract to $2 plus $1 per contract. Plus the first 25 trades per year are free for Flagship clients.

Commission Schedule

My that is almost worth moving some more money to Vanguard for.
Anybody know if Vanguard has a decent trading platform?

 

[FIRE'd@51]

Anybody know if Vanguard has a decent trading platform?

IMO, the trading platform ranks somewhere between non-existent and terrible. But I only use it for my Rollover IRA trades (primarily the 25 free trades), which are pretty vanilla since you can't do complicated options trades in an IRA anyway. To sell a cash-secured put or do a spread trade, you have to call a Vanguard Brokerage Associate, but you still get the low commission rates. I have my own spreadsheets that I use for my analysis. All I need Vanguard for is to enter the trade.

 

[ERD50]

IMO, the trading platform ranks somewhere between non-existent and terrible. But I only use it for my Rollover IRA trades (primarily the 25 free trades), which are pretty vanilla since you can't do complicated options trades in an IRA anyway. To sell a cash-secured put or do a spread trade, you have to call a Vanguard Brokerage Associate, but you still get the low commission rates. I have my own spreadsheets that I use for my analysis. All I need Vanguard for is to enter the trade.

I guess it depends on what you mean as 'complicated', but from your next sentence, I assume that includes cash-secured puts and spreads.

So just FYI, I have my IRA with E*Trade, and I do cash secured puts, and can do spreads on one screen.

Their Comm schedule is $10 and $.75/contract, so if I did my arithmetic right, break even with Vanguard is at > 34 contracts. Not that I'm recc E*Trade, I guess they are all right, I'm with them due to inertia and no big problems that have driven me away. I don't really have a frame of reference to say if they are better/worse than anyone else.

-ERD50

 

[FIRE'd@51]

I guess it depends on what you mean as 'complicated', but from your next sentence, I assume that includes cash-secured puts and spreads.

Just to clarify, I don't consider cash-secured puts a "complicated" trade. It is because you can't enter them online that I give the trading platform very low marks. BTW, Vanguard lets you write a covered call (as you know, functionally the same thing as a cash-secured put) online. Nor can you roll out a covered call online, unless you want to leg into the trade, because the platform does not allow you to enter any type of spread trade. Hopefully, these deficiencies will be corrected in the future.

Cash-secured puts and covered calls are the main trades I do in my Rollover IRA. For the low (or no) commission, I don't mind calling the options desk to enter the trade.

For trades in my taxable account, I use another broker and pay the higher commission.

 

[utrecht]

As I mentioned at the beginning of this thread, its tough to calculate "return" when selling naked puts since you aren't actually buying anything upfront. There are three ways Ive seen people do it.
1. Some people will want to call their profits "infinity" since there is nothing to divide into.
2. Some people will want to divide profits into the required margin to put on the trade.
3. Some will divide profits into the total amount of money it would cost if the stock was put to you.

#3 is the most correct way if you want to compare your returns to stock returns or if you want to compare your returns to someone selling covered calls on the same stock. But #2 is more correct for the way most "traders" think. They only care about how much money they make compared to how much money (or margin) they are tying up.

There has been lots of discussion here about whether or not selling naked puts can possibly outperform the underlying stock long term. I think long term the returns will probably be very close (although I believe the shorter term puts you are selling, the better chance you have of outperforming the stock).

To clear up this point in my mind, Ive done some more research. Instead if selling naked puts, I looked at buying deep ITM calls and then selling short term calls against them. This is a diagonal spread and is similar to selling covered calls except it costs much less which means the profits are the same dollar wise but much higher percentage wise.

Example: SPY is trading at 131.54

1) Covered call...Buy 100 shares of SPY for $13,154. Sell a weekly 132 call for 0.74. Assuming the stock doesn't move, you make 0.56%
2) Buy 1 Jan'13 95 Call for $37.95. Sell a weekly 132 call for 0.74. Profit = 1.94%
3) Naked put...Sell 1 weekly 131 put for 0.76 **return is different depending on your method of calculating**. If you are a trader you will divide into your required margin and get about 1.92%.

Now I know, most people on this forum are not traders and will never want to convert their SP500 holdings into options and trade every week. For anyone who does trade a portion of their portfolio, this may be of some interest. The research Ive done so far shows that there may be a bit of extra profit squeezed out by using method #2 instead of method #3. Most of all, by using method #2, it clears up the question of what a trader's actual returns are. You buy something, when you sell it you divide your profit into your original cost and get your profit.

Lastly, assuming that the market is not in a complete free fall for an extended period of time, there is absolutely no way this method can lose out to a buy and hold strategy. Of course ,that's one of the main reasons for using options in the first place. To get serious leverage. The down side is that you do have to actually invest real money and not just trade with buying power available to you from your other buy and hold investments.