Adding to Simon Property Group (SPG)

Adding to my SPG position today at around $157/share.  I started my position in SPG last year at $166, and have added chunks at lower prices, the lowest was $152.  The stock has been rising slowly since then, and they just reported an excellent quarter yesterday.  Today, retail is getting hit hard because JC Penney is reporting abysmal numbers, and SPG is down around 3.5% as a I write this....

Here is yesterday's SPG report summary:

This purchase takes me to a very full position in the stock, with a current dividend yield of 4.56%.  Love it.

Chump

S&P 500 Put, Stop Loss Triggers, Recent Adds (SJM)

So, how to hedge a big IRA portfolio?  Or should you bother if you are still 7 years away from your retirement age goal?  This has been on my mind lately.

• The S&P500 PE is up over 25 lately, at historically high levels.  We haven't had a correction of 3% or more in nearly a year (11.5 months), and a 5% correction since well before that (18 months)
• I don't own the S&P500 ETF in my IRA, so that's good.
• I tend to buy undervalued stocks, and sell overvalued stocks, so that's good.
• I do own a handful of names that are pretty overvalued, but continue to climb, so I hesitate to sell these, and they've grown large in the portfolio  (GD, JNJ, MO, PM, JPM, PSX, ABBV, CVX), which is bad if a correction comes soon...

Here are the measures I've taken to be a bit more prudent in the short run:

• I bought an S&P put slightly out of the money at 2540, with an expiration of December 29, 2017.
• This is liking having a short position for $250,000 worth of S&P "stock."  If the market drops 10%, this put would gain around $25,000 in value.
• The cost for this put was around $4200
• If the market remains positive, the put will expire worthless, and I'll have flushed $4200
• As I write this, the market is down around 0.75% today, the put is up 40% today, slightly above the price where I purchased it....
• For the stocks mentioned above that are overvalued, I put in stop loss orders for several (JNJ, GD, CVX so far)
• I placed limit orders for a 3% trailing stop loss vs. last price.
• If any of these drops 3%, the order becomes a limit at the price that's 3% below last closing price.  
• The orders are only to trim down to a "full" position in the portfolio
• As of this blog post, GD has triggered (did so on 10-19-17) at a price of $207.75, which is above today's price, so that was good.

Shifting gears, I like SJM again today, and have added another chunk.  FASTGraph below:

Regards,

Chump