I pulled out a little gain in May, but my account trailed the indexes for the month. If GS could recover, I’d have a decent year to date return for this market. I need to roll some of my July options early that have already pulled in decent returns and that early roll could help me pick up some ground on the indexes through the summer. Specifically, AAPL and FB could be rolled higher. I’ll be on vacation for a couple of weeks and need to get everything lined up before I take off, so I don’t have to worry while I’m away. I might even buy a SPY hedge if the premiums look cheap next week.
My account ended May with a Net Asset Value (NAV) of $101,669.25 according to Interactive Brokers (IB) after ending April with an NAV of $100,863.62. I had a gain of $805.63 (~0.80%) on paper for May (compared to the Dow’s 1.05% gain and the S&P 500’s 2.16% gain) and had $642.52 in net realized losses from my five closing trades. The $1,690.83 realized loss on my 100 WMT shares and the paper loss I’m still running with on GS hit me hard in May. Other than those two, I did will with closing my FB and IWM puts for a profit of over $400 each. My two other trades were the WMT covered call that I closed early for a $190.72 profit and the GS put that was assigned. I rolled the GS put’s premium into the cost per share of GS, so that’ll show when I sell the shares versus in May.
I received $66.40 in interest ($4.21 more than last month) and no dividends in May. I’ll receive dividends in June for my GS and WMT shares I held when they went ex-div while I held the shares. Quicken reported that I have an account value of $101,459.86, which a penny less than what IB shows due to a rounding difference and the $66.40 in interest accruals and $132 in dividend accruals IB is crediting for me in advance of actually receiving them in June.
I’m only 90.02% invested in this account, 5.40 percentage points above the end of April. With $10,145 left uninvested, I’m not giving myself a full opportunity to take advantage of the continuing bull market. I feel like I’m investing in fear somewhat and on the other hand I feel I’m wise to have cash available and not be overextended before leaving the country for two weeks. Since my divorce, I’ve been able to reestablish my emergency funds account and should be able to get back to taking more reasonable risks in the second half of the year. I only have one option left to expire in June since I won’t be here on expiration day and it’s down to $0.01, which means I need to start aiming for some August expirations and avoid having all of my contracts set for July expiration. I might go ahead and roll FB and AAPL to August since those contracts are already available.
This is my asset allocation in my IB account as of the end of May
– Large-cap ETF: 0.0%
– Mid-Cap ETFs: 0.0%
– Small-Cap ETF: 15.84%
– International: 3.93%
– Individual Stocks & Other Sector ETFs: 70.98% (pretty much large cap really with AAPL, ADI, FB, GS 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 May’s last trading day, May 31, 2018:
– Dow Jones: YTD change -0.24%, 12-month change +18.91%
– S&P 500: YTD change +2.02%, 12-month change +14.38%
– NASDAQ Composite: YTD change +8.10%, 12-month change +20.30%
– Russell 2000: YTD change +6.90%, 12-month change +20.76%
– S&P Midcap 400: YTD change +3.05%, 12-month change +14.86%
These are my returns according to Quicken (I only made a few trades for the few months leading up to my divorce in June 2017) through the end of May 2018:
– YTD Return: +1.67% (not annualized)
– 1 Year Return: +6.77%
The VIX ended the month at 15.43 and the VXN ended at 16.78. The VIX finished May 0.50 points lower than the end of April. The VXN finished 4.28 points lower. The VIX peaked on May 29, when it hit an intraday high of 18.78. The VXN peaked weeks earlier on May 3 at 21.87. Both volatility measures are not close to extreme readings in either direction, which creates a decent opportunity to sell new options or buy some hedges – or both.