I remained on the sidelines most of September. I made a couple of tiny trades on options expiration day that I didn’t even post about because I was just messing around with what I thought were some mispriced options set to expire five hours later. I sold an IWM $220 naked put for $0.22 and a QQQ $365 naked put for $0.05. I didn’t think either had much of a chance of assignment, so I picked up an extra $24.98 after commissions. If something went haywire in the afternoon, I could’ve accepted the assignment.
I ended September with a Net Asset Value (NAV) of 136,013.22 according to Interactive Brokers (IB) after ending August with a balance of $136,923.22. That gives me a loss of $910.00 (~0.66%) on paper. Outside of my single day trades mentioned above, I had one TLT $140 covered put expire worthless and did not sell a replacement. My TLT position cost me $6.43 in borrow fees, $18.93 in short dividend fees, and $5.61 in short interest. The premiums from my covered puts are covering the short fees, plus a little extra.
I do need to sell another covered put on my short TLT shares, especially now that the share price has dropped nicely. My QQQ October covered call is out of the money nearly $15 and is only worth $0.20 as of today. I won’t bother closing it until I have a plan to replace it. I’m hesitant to do much else with such a skittish market lately. Before I sell another covered call, I’ll probably sell a naked put on MDY or IWM.