After my February covered calls and naked puts were called away and assigned I had the need to recover some and open new positions.
NVDA – Those who are tired of my rambling on about NVDA will be happy to know I should be done with it for a little while. I opened the day by selling March 22.50 covered calls (UVACX) on 400 shares and was debating the other 400. I received $667.00 from this first trade. After it fell from its highs I went ahead and sold March 20 covered calls on it and received $1046.99 on this second trade. I hope/expect all 800 shares to be called way at March expiration, but if not, I’ve at least taken in some more cushioning. The first trade was all time value I sold. The second trade only had $0.80 per share of extrensic value. Still, $0.80 on $21.86 at the time is a nice return in one moth.
I decided to stick with all 800 shares because the potential return was so good on the call options that I couldn’t resist. I would have liked to sell April puts to increase my premium received, but they weren’t posted for NVDA yet and after waiting nearly six hours in between trades and seeing NVDA drop deeper, I decided to cut my losses.
MOT – Since I decided to keep NVDA, I decided to dump MOT. The lawsuit won’t have a real impact for months if not years it seems, but could keep it from climbing much – not that MOT needs any other hinderance. I bought my five March 12 covered calls back for .21 each and sold my shares for $11.2607 (I’ll take every part of a penny I can get). All puts and calls and stock trades added together, I lost $2769.69. I should’ve taken a loss on some of that in December so I’d save on taxes. That’s a big lesson learned for me from last year.
VIP – I got back in on VIP again. This time I only sold two naked puts. Last time I sold three puts followed by three naked calls. I’m planning to sell calls again, but not until I see how my puts start off. VIP was at 38.32 when my limit hit to sell two April 35 naked puts (VIQPG). I received 408.50 after commissions.
I have a limit to sell more DSX puts if/when it dips again. I’m also considering a new energy play to sell puts on since MRO not tradable for me for a month due to the wash rule.
How did you get the $11.2607 price? Did you do a market order and it got price improvement?
Yep, bid/ask was 11.26/11.27. I sold 500 shares at market.
forgive me, but why does Quicken say 12 month returns like minus 1% if you gained $19 K in capital gains, what am i missing? Kadena
The 12 month return is the last 12 months (Feb 07 to Feb 08). The $19K is for Tax Year 2007 (Jan 07 to Dec 07). This year has been rough.
Options Strategery’s comment is true. In addition, the $19K was my capital gains for last year and did not take into account stocks I was holding long and was down on, NVDA, MOT, etc. Those got worse in January along with others that I had paper profits on and gave up. I’d still show a big net realized (capital) gain through today if this was the end of the year, but will be balancing that out with upcoming losses on NVDA among others.
*For those who are newer to My Trader’s Journal, Kadena used to comment a bunch, but took a break from investing after going in big buying puts on QQQQ and then it went the other way. I think he reported to us it was a 30% loss in a day for his portfolio. He is in the US military in Japan and only day trades some now.
Alex, did you see my comment that I made on your Feb 14 post about the wash rule? I don’t know if it applies in the case of MRO here but I would hate for you to not make a profitable trade based upon an erroneous understanding of the rule.
Bill
Bill, thanks for pointing me back there. I had missed your comment, but I was referring to my taxable account in that post and just wasn’t clear since I also mentioned the shares I have in my IRA. The MRO, MOT and NVDA shares are all in my taxable account too.