November was a good month in some ways. My wife and I had our 14th wedding anniversary and we also paid off the car we bought 11 months ago, at the end of December 2009. Even though we had a low interest rate we decided to pay it off quickly and keep our fixed expenses down rather than risk that money in the market on top of the other deposits we made almost every month. It’s a nice feeling to have that fixed payment gone, especially when employment can be somewhat tenuous these days. Although I lost money in the market for November I was close to in line with the S&P 500 with the decline. If it wasn’t for my VXX position I would’ve had a gain for the month. My VXX position lost another $1,000+ on paper, but I feel better about it now that I’ve bought puts to cover much more downside risk. I did that close to the time it bottomed out as luck would have it, but the puts have a long enough duration that they still might come back into play. You never know, VXX could still rebound more and cut my losses. I don’t see it coming back to an overall profit anytime soon though. I’ll be out of it before that happens.
- I ended November with a combined balance of $118,005.76.
- $104,708.83 with Interactive Brokers in equities (including the deposit of $2,500 I made in the first half of the month.
- $13,296.93 with TD Ameritrade in bonds.
- After ending October with a combined balance of $115,827.52, I lost $321.76 on paper for October and finally broke my streak and had a realized loss for the month of $324.23. That ends my run of having a realized gain each month starting in July 2009.
- My combined balance in Quicken was back to being off some as it reported that I have $104,467.49 with IBKR. My AMTD balance was listed as the same. (I’m going to do another download tomorrow when the full month reports are available from IBKR to see if that fixes the discrepancy. I’ll update this post if it changes anything.)
- If all of my naked puts were assigned and my covered calls expired worthless I’d be almost 106% invested in my IB account. That would put $6,087.17 on margin for me. I plan to extend that in the next few days/weeks and by then December options will have expired and I’ll know exactly what I’m working with again and start the process over.
These are my returns according to Quicken through 11/30/10:
- My 1 year return: +0.63%
- Year to date (YTD): -.019%
- Annualized returns since 4/8/07 (my blog’s beginning): -8.27%
- Deposits for month: $2,500 on November 10th, 2010
According to Morningstar, here’s how I compare to the major indexes through 11/30/10:
- Dow Jones Return: 1 year +9.33%, YTD +8.29%
- S&P 500 Return: 1 year +9.94%, YTD +7.86%
- NASDAQ Composite Return: 1 year +17.28%, YTD +12.45%
- Russell 2000: 1 year +26.98%, YTD +17.52%
- S&P Midcap 400: 1 year +26.31%, YTD +18.85%
The VIX ended the month at 23.54 and the VXN ended at 25.39. That’s slightly up from the end of last month, but if this current pause in the rally doesn’t go much deeper I expect volatility to drop again. If you believe in the Santa Claus rally this might not be a bad time to sell volatility.