Our April 6 post highlighting three May/June calendar call spreads has proved profitable less than two weeks later. With today’s mini-rally, the EEM position (140 strike) hit a gain of 20 percent, which is a good place for conservative traders to book a profit. IYR, on the other hand, started selling off sooner and harder than EEM, leaving the spread position, at a strike of 69, bouncing between break-even and slightly negative. But this just goes to show, yet again, why we like theta-positive positions - even though IYR has fallen almost 6 percent, time decay has kept the trade afloat.

The third position, on XLE at the 77 strike, would have us up as much as 8.7 percent - if we could have gotten the opening order filled at our target price. The mid-price on April 6 was meandering around $1.15, but even though it came down as low as $1.10, sellers weren’t budging from their $1.20 asking price. As we noted in 6 Rules for Getting Your Trades Filled, flexibility is important if you really want the trade; if you had gotten in at $1.20, you’d still be flat to up slightly as of today, despite the strong rally in the energy sector. And the even better news is, we still have more than four weeks until expiration for theta to work its magic.