September was a good month for my account, in large part due to the reversal of TLT, which allowed me to take a nice profit after having a paper loss at the end of August. The fact that the stock market did well in September as a whole helped me too.
My account ended September with a Net Asset Value (NAV) of $95,421.88 according to Interactive Brokers (IB) after ending August with a NAV of $91,851.89. I had a gain of $3,569.99 (~3.89%) on paper for September (more than double the S&P 500’s 1.72% gain for the month and the Dow’s 1.95% gain). I had $2,351.29 in net realized gains, which includes my five closing trades on IWM and QQQ covered calls, MDY and QQQ naked puts, and TLT naked calls, $60.69 in interest and $59.63 in dividends (FEZ and IWM). I also paid $5.47 for the monthly fee minimum. Interactive Brokers charges $10 each month as a minimum for trading fees on accounts that have less than $100,000.
Quicken reported that I have an account value of $95,326.76, which is the same as what IB shows after I add in the $56.70 in interest accruals and $38.42 in dividend accruals that IB credits in advance of the actual payment.
I’m 95.07% invested in this account as of the end of the month, 1.67 percentage points below the end of August. I have $4,706.83 left in uninvested cash and no option contracts set to expire in October since all of my contracts are set to expire in November and December. These later dated contracts have approximately $1,400 remaining in time value and almost $300 in intrinsic value on the MDY naked put.
This is my asset allocation in my IB account as of the end of September:
- Large-cap ETF: 39.91% (including QQQ)
- Mid-Cap ETFs: 37.2%
- Small-Cap ETF: 15.86%
- International: 3.96%
- Individual Stocks & Other Sector ETFs: 0.0%
- Bonds: 0.0% (Not listing my TLT short calls until assigned)
According to Morningstar, here’s how I compare to the major indexes (including dividends) through the last trading day, September 30, 2019:
- Dow Jones: YTD change +17.51%, 12-month change +4.21%
- S&P 500: YTD change +19.94%, 12-month change +3.73%
- NASDAQ Composite: YTD change +19.66%, 12-month change -1.27%
- Russell 2000: YTD change +14.18%, 12-month change -8.89%
- S&P Midcap 400: YTD change +17.08%, 12-month change -2.81%
My return according to Quicken through September 30, 2019:
- YTD Return: +14.13% (not annualized)
- 1 Year Return: -6.63%
The VIX ended the month at 16.24 and the VXN ended at 20.03. The VIX finished September 2.74 points lower than the end of August. The VXN finished 2.36 points lower. The VIX peaked on September 3, when it hit an intraday high of 21.15. The VXN peaked on the same day at 24.31. These volatility levels are in no man’s land – not too low and not too high. However, today’s sell-off in stocks and increase in volatility should give us some new opportunities to sell puts fairly soon as long as the price decline doesn’t fall for too long.