Like most investors who had a bullish tilt to their accounts, I had a good September, but could’ve done better if I had been fully invested. The Dow gained 2.08% in September and the S&P 500 gained 1.93%. I made some trades, but kept my risk level low, as I have done for most of this year.
My account ended September with a Net Asset Value (NAV) of $104,502.82 according to Interactive Brokers (IB) after finishing August with an NAV of $103,379.86. I had a gain of $1,122.96 (~1.09%) on paper for September and had $1,066.64 in realized gains from my four closing trades on my IWM, MDY, XLF, and ADI naked puts. I received $53.52 in interest, but no dividends in September since I’m not long shares of anything yet. Quicken reported that I have an account value of $104,453.78, which is the same as what IB says I have after adding in the $49.02 in accrued interest that IB is crediting for me.
I’m 79.06% invested in this account, 5.82 percentage points below the end of August. That change is basically from not replacing my XLF naked puts. I still have naked puts on AAPL (close to break-even not counting time value), ADI, IWM, MDY, and QQQ (which are all out of the money). I need to get some more exposure out there and had another opportunity on the short-lived dip in early September, but didn’t pull the trigger and missed out. Maybe, I’ll get around to entering some limit order this week that could hit on the next slight drop in prices.
This is my asset allocation in my IB account as of the end of September:
- Large-cap ETF: 0.0%
- Mid-Cap ETFs: 30.64%
- Small-Cap ETF: 13.12%
- International: 0.0%
- Individual Stocks & Other Sector ETFs: 36.57% (pretty much large cap really with ADI, QQQ, and AAPL included here)
- Bonds: 0.0%
- Short ETFs: 0.0%
According to Morningstar, here’s how I compare to the major indexes (including dividends) through the month’s last trading day, September 29, 2017:
- Dow Jones Return: YTD change +15.45%, 1-year change +25.45%
- S&P 500 Return: YTD change +14.24%, 1-year change +18.61%
- NASDAQ Composite Return: YTD change +20.67%, 1-year change +22.29%
- Russell 2000: YTD change +10.94%, 1-year change +20.74%
- S&P Midcap 400: YTD change +9.40%, 1-year change +17.52%
These are my returns according to Quicken from February 1, 2017 (when I established new account, albeit with very few trades for a few months leading up to my divorce in June) through September 29, 2017:
- YTD Return: +4.62% (not annualized)
- 1 Year Return: +6.39% (annualized until I have a year of data)
The VIX ended the month at 9.55 and the VXN ended at 14.98. The VIX is 1.04 points lower than at the end of August and the VXN is 0.51 points higher than the end of August. Both volatility measures finished September below the highs hit in the first few days of the month – 12.23 for the VIX and 16.13 for the VXN. Such low volatility, especially on the VIX, doesn’t give me a ton of motivation to sell more puts. The Dow has been up for eight straight quarters. It could go another few before cracking, but such a streak doesn’t make me want to jump in either.