Month End Summary – April 2009

I ended April with balance of $69,417.47 according to TD Ameritrade and $69,758.27 according to Quicken (something hasn’t settled I guess is the difference).  While I could have made more if I was more heavily invested, I’m still pretty psyched with the returns I’ve had year to date and also since the end of March when I only had $60,624.53 in this account.  Adding $5,000.00 mid-month helped in that gain, but $3,792.94 was just from account growth and that’s cool.

I’m on target with my goal of making 30% annualized returns based on my current year to date gains, but I don’t have room for error right now since I’m barely above 10% with four months in the books.  Using my extremely basic math and only basing my May goals on my current account value I need to grow my account by $1,735.44 up to $71,152.91.  That doesn’t take into account the time value of any deposit I make mid-month, so it’s just the basic target I’m using for planning.  I have $1,434 in time value left to melt away over the next 11 trading days from the options I’ve already sold minus the options I’ve already bought.  If those all finish in my favor I only need to pull in another $301.44 in May.  Of course I’m not expecting everything to go my way, so I’d like to sell a few more options to bring in at least $1,000 more and give myself a little more room for error.  The cool part is that I don’t have to be overly aggressive to reach my goal.  I just need to get some somewhat safe activity building to make sure I have a good June set up too.

Here’s how I compare the major indexes:

• My 12 month Return: -38.02%
• Year to date (YTD): +10.67%
• Annualized return since 4/8/07 (blog’s beginning): -24.60%
• Deposits for month: $5,000 on 4/15/09 

According to Morningstar, here’s how the major indexes have done over the past 12 months and the year to date (YTD):

• Dow Jones Return:  - 34.19% 1 year, -5.86% YTD
• NASDAQ Composite Return: -28.83% 1 year, +8.89% YTD
• Russell 2000: -30.74% 1 year, -1.81% YTD
• S&P 500 Return: -35.31% 1 year, -2.49% YTD
• S&P Midcap 400:  -31.84% 1 year, +4.93% YTD

The VIX ended the month at 36.50 and the VXN ended at 36.64.  The lower volatility has decreased option premiums, but they are still decent enough to expect good returns based on the current risk levels.  I’ll keep hedging most of my positions, so the lower cost of premiums helps me when I buy my insurance.