August was good to all of us who were long stocks. My account gained nearly $2,000 by the end of the month and was worth even more briefly as I saw it top $104,000 for a few days. GS did some heavy lifting to bring my balance higher before faltering the final few days of the month. Even FB stopped bleeding and returned some money. (That trend already reversed course on the first day of trading in September.)
My account ended August with a Net Asset Value (NAV) of $103,688.12 according to Interactive Brokers (IB) after ending July with a NAV of $101,710.10. I had a gain of $1,978.02 (less than 1.94%) on paper for August and had $393.24 in net realized gain from one closing trade on my AAPL naked put. This gain doesn’t include the gain on the FB naked put that was assigned because it will be used to reduce my cost per share and will be factored in when I sell the shares.
I received $79.36 in interest ($8.70 more than last month) and no dividends. Quicken reported that I have an account value of $103,537.17, which is two cents more than what IB shows due to a rounding difference on top of the $70.97 in interest accruals and $80 in dividend accruals IB is crediting for me.
I’m 99.05% invested in this account, 8.66 percentage points above the end of July. I feel better having an account with almost all my money being put to work compared to some previous months where I left a lot on the sidelines. Right now, it looks like my FEZ September put will be assigned and my ADI September put won’t be. I’ll probably roll the ADI put before expiration. Also, I need to rewrite my GS and XLB covered calls this month and expect to before September expiration.
This is my asset allocation in my IB account as of the end of August:
– Large-cap ETF: 0.0%
– Mid-Cap ETFs: 0.0%
– Small-Cap ETF: 16.20%
– International: 3.86%
– Individual Stocks & Other Sector ETFs: 62.99% (most of this is 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 last trading day, August 31, 2018:
– Dow Jones: YTD change +6.73%, 12-month change +21.00%
– S&P 500: YTD change +9.94%, 12-month change +19.66%
– NASDAQ Composite: YTD change +17.47%, 12-month change +26.02%
– Russell 2000: YTD change +14.26%, 12-month change +25.45%
– S&P Midcap 400: YTD change +8.68%, 12-month change +20.00%
These are my returns according to Quicken through the end of August 2018:
– YTD Return: +3.69% (not annualized)
– 1 Year Return: +6.74%
The VIX ended the month at 12.86 and the VXN ended at 16.04. The VIX finished August 0.03 points higher than the end of July. The VXN finished 3.13 points lower. The VIX peaked on August 13, when it hit an intraday high of 15.02. The VXN peaked two days later at 19.10. These ending levels don’t show an extreme amount of complacency, but I’d still like to see a little more volatility, so we can make more selling options.