Month End Summary – September 2018

While the indexes gained more ground in September, my account lost some value again. My paper losses came from GS and FB shares yet again. I’ve sold calls on both lots and am slowly lowering my average cost per share, but not quite keeping up with the price drop yet. Eventually, they will both turn around and I’ll get out, but in the meantime, I believe it’s worth keeping my money tied into these two giants since I’m earning good premiums while I wait. My account ended September with a Net Asset Value (NAV) of $102,133.62  according to Interactive Brokers (IB) after ending August with a NAV of $103,688.12. I had a loss of $1,554.50 (~1.5%) on paper for September and had $525.76 in net realized gain from my four closing trades on a GS covered call, an IWM naked put, an ADI naked put, and my XLB covered call being assigned. I received $72.83 in interest ($6.53 less than last month) and $80.00 dividends from GS. Quicken reported that I have an account value of $102,081.77, which is equal to what IB shows after subtracting $0.04 due to rounding difference errors accrued over the past few months on top of the $51.85 in interest accruals IB is crediting for me. I’m 91.8% invested in this account, 7.25 percentage points below the end of August. Four of my options are set to expire in October. My IWM $171 naked put is the one sitting on a paper loss so far. My XLF $28 naked put is in the money, but it’s not expected to be a loss after more time value erodes. My AAPL naked put is trading below $0.30 now and I should probably go ahead and roll it out and up. My FB $180 covered call no longer looks at risk of being assigned, but I’ll keep watching it closely since this stock is so volatile. I’m still debating selling another XLB naked put or finding another ETF or stock to work with. This is my asset allocation in my IB account as of the end of September: – Large-cap ETF: 0.0% – Mid-Cap ETFs: 0.0% – Small-Cap ETF: 16.74% – International: 3.75% – Individual Stocks & Other Sector ETFs: 62.24% (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, September 28, 2018: – Dow Jones: YTD change +8.83%, 12-month change +20.76% – S&P 500: YTD change +10.56%, 12-month change +17.91% – NASDAQ Composite: YTD change +16.56%, 12-month change +23.87% – Russell 2000: YTD change +11.51%, 12-month change +15.24% – S&P Midcap 400: YTD change +7.49%, 12-month change +14.21% These are my returns according to Quicken through the end of September 2018: – YTD Return: +2.13% (not annualized) – 1 Year Return: +4.09% The VIX ended the month at 11.76 and the VXN ended at 16.56. The VIX finished September 1.1 points lower than the end of August. The VXN finished 0.52 points higher. The VIX peaked on September 7, when it hit an intraday high of 15.63. The VXN peaked the same day at 20.51. These ending levels are close to the lows seen since mid-January, not too far from where they’ve traded most of the year with a few exceptions that pushed levels a little higher since February’s peaks.