I had a good year financially considering the distractions I had. We all had to deal with COVID, even if we didn’t catch it ourselves. I also had my ex-wife with Alzheimer’s living with me until a few weeks ago, had my fourth back surgery, my dad had cancer (successful) surgery, and my son is a senior in high school. To deal with the stress of the year, I spent more time out running trails in various parks around metro Atlanta and less time focused on my own investment accounts after working on my clients’ accounts. While my health is in a good place now, I missed a lot of gains in the stock m ..read more

The only option I had set to expire this week was my QQQ covered call. On Wednesday, when QQQ saw a $14 price swing intraday, I decided to get out of the option early. While QQQ was trading at $389.80, I bought to close my one QQQ December $385 covered call for $7.21 and paid $721.57 including $0.57 in commission. I wanted to hold the option until it expired today, but didn’t want to lose more on the rally. The ETF closed Wednesday at $396.91, and I felt I made the right move. Then it gave it all back on Thursday when I could’ve saved a few hundred dollars on closing the covered call. Again, t ..read more

My two November options expired worthless today giving me a full profit on the trades. My TLT November $140 covered put was trading was more than $8 out of the money and my ABNB was almost $47 out of the money. ABNB was down roughly $7.50 today and I was still that far out of the money. Knowing those two contracts weren’t at risk of being assigned, I sold new options this afternoon. I replaced my TLT covered put and sold another TLT naked call. Then I came back in a few minutes before the close and sold an IWM naked put. While TLT was trading at $148.44, I sold one TLT January $151 naked call ..read more

October was another decent month for my account, but I missed out on taking advantage of the sell off as much I would’ve liked to. I’ll get another chance of course. I’ve left a lot of money on the table this year, but that’s how I needed to manage my account based on other potential expenses I have coming up that might require some cash infusion from my investments. It’s unlikely I’ll have to pull from this account, but couldn’t get my head around risk for this account. I ended October with a Net Asset Value (NAV) of $138,204.76 according to Interactive Brokers (IB) after ending Septembe ..read more

On Friday, I thought QQQ’s resistance at its 50-day moving average might last more than one afternoon, so I entered a limit order to sell a covered call. Not being overly confident in that line of resistance, I used a strike fairly far out of the money. While QQQ was trading at $369.78, on its road to over $372.60 by close, I sold one QQQ December $385 covered call for $3.70 and received $369.32 after paying $0.68 in commission. I chose the $385 strike because it is just above the highs QQQ bounced against the first week of September. I could see the ETF pushing back to that previous high, and ..read more

I’ve been waiting for a good opportunity to sell a put to cover my short TLT shares and the recent dip I decided I should go ahead and take some more profit before it bounced again. While TLT was trading at $143.77, I sold one TLT November $140 covered put for $1.5 and received $149.38 after paying $0.62 in commission. I waited much longer than I thought I would to pull the trigger on this option, but I didn’t think TLT would stay above $150 for long and didn’t want to sell the put while premiums were so weak. Selling an extra naked call would’ve been good while TLT was up, but I didn’t get to ..read more

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 Interactiv ..read more

Sticking with last month’s theme, I’ll keep this relatively short because my right hand is still not anywhere close to 100% and I need to focus on my clients’ accounts over updating my blog. As luck would have it, I had no realized gains in August, so that makes this summary much easier. I ended July with a Net Asset Value (NAV) of $136,923.22 according to Interactive Brokers (IB) after ending July with a balance of $135,632.37. That gives me a gain of $1,290.85 (~1%) on paper. I sold a QQQ covered call and a TLT covered put during August, which could both be closed this month, even thoug ..read more

After saying in my update a week and a half ago that I thought I’d sell a covered call on my QQQ shares and a covered put on my TLT short shares fairly soon, I finally got around to making both trades today. TLT is off its highs and might have a decent amount more to slide, but I decided to go ahead and sell a covered put to cover my cost of shorting the shares in the forms of short interest and short dividends I pay out. While TLT was trading at $145.92, I sold one TLT September $140 put for $0.69 and received $68.37 after paying $0.63 in commission. I almost went out as far as October for th ..read more

I skipped writing a monthly update last month due to a surgery I had on my upper back that inhibited my right hand’s ability to type. I’m not recovered yet, but I’m able to type some. I’ll keep it brief though because I’m very slow now and I have a lot of work to do still. I’ve had a couple of decent months to help raise my account value, but I’m still very underinvested. I ended July with a Net Asset Value (NAV) of $135,632.37 according to Interactive Brokers (IB) after ending May with a balance of $132,979.58 and June with a balance of $135,064.74. That’s a gain over the past two months ..read more