Category: Account Summary

I’m pretty happy with how February worked out for me, especially considering that I’m not fully invested still.   I finished February with a combined balance of $103,076.06 ($91,897.17 with IBKR and $11,178.89 with AMTD) which is up from my January finishing balance of $98,663.75.  $1,500 of the increase is from the deposit I made on February 8th and $2,912.31 is from growth.  I’m 82.03% invested overall and of my equity allocation (aka my IBKR account) 79.84% is …

I hated to do it, but I think it was the smart move to take my loss on AXA and move on.  It broke support a couple of weeks ago and fell below my strike.  That’s when I should’ve gotten out, but I thought it was going to be a long term hold for me.  Then they came out and announced they were voluntarily delisting themselves from the NYSE.  Perhaps there was some knowledge of out there in advance or …

January turned out to be an interesting month.  After six months in a row of gains we finally saw the Dow Jones drop.  The S&P 500 fell for the second time in 11 months.  It makes me feel a little vindicated for staying so heavily in cash over the past few months after seeing the DJIA fall back to its levels from October.  At the same time it never feels good to have my account balance drop …

I grabbed my list of current holdings as of the markets’ close yesterday, 1/20/10.  I haven’t made any new trades today, so this is what’s in my Interactive Brokers account right now.  I still have 460 shares of the bond ETF, SHM, at $24.05 I hold in TD Ameritrade too.

Underlying    Qty      Expiration       Strike        Type                    Cost if Assigned

UCO            500          N/A              $11.72     Long Shares        $5,860.00 (as of yesterday’s close)
UCO            -5         Feb ‘10            $12.00       Covered Calls      N/A

AXA            -4         Feb ‘10             $22.50       Naked Puts          $9,000.00
CVS            -2         Feb ‘10             …

2009 will go down as one of the most interesting years for the markets in my opinion.  We started the year with panic as if the world would end and nobody would ever buy any products or services ever again and then jumped into the rally that acted like it never had seen a bear.  I didn’t panic as much on the way down (probably should have more), but also didn’t join in the party as much as I should have on the way …

 I’m still mostly in cash in my account with the following options still losing time value each day.  I’m short all of them except for the DIA 103 calls I used to hedge my short DIA 102 calls.

-4 DIA December 102 Calls (DIALX)
4 DIA December 103 Calls (DIALY)
-3 DIA December 102 Puts (DIAXX)
-3 NDAQ December 19 Puts (NQDXL)
-5 UCO December 12 Puts (UCOXE)

All of these options expire on Friday and unless we get two more days like today for oil, UCO will be the only one that finishes …

My increased market exposure from October paid off for me in November as every position improved from month’s beginning to its end.  In my October Summary I pointed out that I got into the markets too early even though I expected a decline.  In November I stayed patient and those paper losses turned into nice sized realized gains.  With an account spread from TD Ameritrade (AMTD) to my checking account and finally to Interactive Brokers (IBKR) I ended …

One of the biggest decisions to make when selling options is picking the right strike price. What’s considered the right strike price isn’t a one size fits all.  Some investors (I’m saying “investors”, not “traders” because I don’t look at my approach as short-term enough to actually be called trading) might want the maximum premium intake possible while others might want to avoid seeing their options ever go in-the-money (ITM).  I try to walk that line of aiming for the highest possible premium intake …

To speed up the clean up of my TD Ameritrade account before I close it I decided to close a couple of my positions early.  Depending if today’s broad market drop continues through tomorrow I might have to buy back some of my other options too.  I started with NDAQ and UCO because NDAQ was in the money and would have likely been assigned after tomorrow’s close.  I had a profit on UCO for the day and it didn’t expire …