I lost a few bucks in February, but not as much as the major indexes thanks to most of my options beginning the month out of the money. I don’t have the same benefit on all my investments coming into March, but the few that I have (ADI, AAPL, NFLX) out of the money will help me overall, unless stocks sell off deeply. For now, it looks like I’ll be taking some option assignments in March unless I go ahead and take the losses on the options rather than sell covered calls on them. The good news is that I’m still positive for the year, so I have that going for me.
My account ended February with a Net Asset Value (NAV) of $100,922.05 according to Interactive Brokers (IB) after ending January with an NAV of $101,128.79. I had a loss of $206.74 (~0.2%) on paper for February and had $703.40 in realized gains from my two closing trades on my AAPL and NFLX naked puts. I received $72.50 in interest ($4.99 more than last month), but no dividends in February since I wasn’t long shares of anything. Quicken reported that I have an account value of $100,855.81 which is the same as what IB says I have with the $36.24 in accrued interest that IB is crediting for me.
I’m 103.00% invested in this account, 4.45 percentage points above the end of January. I didn’t change much in February other than rolling options into future months. I raised my NFLX strike by $30 while I kept my AAPL strike the same, just two months farther out on the calendar. So, time value erosion and the new premiums I brought in helped to make the small change in my percentage invested. I’m tempted to take profits early on NFLX, AAPL, and ADI to free up cash for trades if the stock price drops from today and the two previous days continue until we retest February’s low.
This is my asset allocation in my IB account as of the end of February:
– Large-cap ETF: 0.0%
– Mid-Cap ETFs: 0.0%
– Small-Cap ETF: 15.75%
– International: 0.0%
– Individual Stocks & Other Sector ETFs: 87.99% (pretty much large cap really with AAPL, ADI, GS, NFLX, and WMT 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 February’s last trading day, February 28, 2018:
– Dow Jones: YTD change +1.69%, 12-month change +23.10%
– S&P 500: YTD change +1.83%, 12-month change +17.10%
– NASDAQ Composite: YTD change +5.35%, 12-month change +24.85%
– Russell 2000: YTD change -1.36%, 12-month change +10.51%
– S&P Midcap 400: YTD change -1.69%, 12-month change +9.53%
These are my returns according to Quicken from March 1, 2017 (I only made a few trades for a few months leading up to my divorce in June 2017) through February 28, 2018:
– YTD Return: +0.92% (not annualized)
– 1 Year Return: +7.41%
The VIX ended the month at 19.85 and the VXN ended at 22.01. On the final day of the month, the VIX was 2.50 points higher than at the end of January and the VXN was 2.41 points higher than the end of January. The VIX topped out at 38.80 on February 5. The VXN made it as high as 35.49 on the February 8. Both volatility indexes finished well off these early-month highs, but they are spiking today as stocks sell off substantially into the afternoon.