As I discussed last week, two of our short put options expiring today should close out-of-the-money so there is nothing left to do with them. We get to keep the premium we collected when we wrote those puts on Huntsman (NYSE: HUN) and Prologis (NYSE: PLD) without having to give up anything in return.

However, any chance we may have had of escaping a loss on our Macy’s (NYSE: M) put was extinguished yesterday when retail sales for December were reported. It was the biggest drop in nine years and will make it difficult for any retail stock to make much headway until January’s sales figure is released next month.

Marching On

We have no options expiring in March. Our next set of options does not expire until April 18. It is too soon to start taking action on any of them, but there have been some recent developments worth noting.

Yesterday, CenturyLink (NYS: CTL) dropped after releasing Q4 results and announcing a reduction in its dividend payment. The dividend cut was widely expected, but it still overshadowed what was otherwise an encouraging report. I would not be surprised to see CTL rebound in the coming weeks once the program trading triggered by the dividend cut abates.

Shares of International Paper (NYSE: IP) have settled into a trading range between $46 – 48 after releasing Q4 results on January 31. That is above our strike price of $45, so our short put will expire out-of-the-money if it can hold that level. Currently valued at less than nine times forward earnings and less than one times sales, IP appears undervalued and more likely to appreciate over the two months barring another stock market correction.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for our short put position in Signet Jewelers (NYSE: SIG), which is trading deep in-the-money after the company reported disappointing holiday sales figures. I believe the stock market overreacted to that news, but it will take a couple of quarters worth of solid results to get SIG back up to a point that we can write a profitable covered call against this position.