Month End Summary - November 2007

I’m still happy with my returns even after coming off the lofty highs I rode for most of the year. I never claimed I’d be able to maintain such rediculously high annualized gains as much as I’d like to do. What I have claimed I could do and continue to do is beat the major indices over the long term. In fact, I’m killing them still. My year to date returns are three and half times better than the S&P 500 and more than double the Dow Jones Industrial Average. 

I received a dividend of $143.33 from my NPLXX money market at the end of November.  I’ve been very happy with the move to keep my cash there while I have naked puts basically running for free.  The other cash I had sitting more idle in my account only gave me an interest payment of $4.23.  (Yes, the decimal is in the right place.)  I also was charged $5.27 for the couple of days I had some on margin from options assignments.  That really helps to illustrate on a very small scale how damaging running an account on margin can be.  Two days of a margin balance cost me more than the interest gained outside of my money market the rest of the month.  Admitidly, the margin balance vs the cash balance weren’t even, but not by as much as one might think would cause such a difference.

Here’s the guts of what actually matters though:

Account Summary: 
Current Account Value: Ameritrade: $77,249.03, Quicken $77,423.48
Annualized return year to date: 25.18%
YTD return (using Quicken report: Average Annual Return, Current Year): 22.25%
12 month return: 26.15%
Deposited $4000 on 11/2/07 

Market Volatility:
CBOE Market Volatility Index (^VIX): 22.87
Nasdaq Volatility Index (^VXN): 28.65
Major Index Returns:
S&P % Change year to date: 6.23%
Dow Jones Change year to date: 9.61%