Selling Options for Fun & Profit As I mentioned way back in January,  I had the intention of merging the DDI #1 portfolio (moving it from WellsTrade) with my existing Fidelity account to generate both daily dividends as well as option income. After months of sort of moving things around and getting re-focused on creating systems for generating income, I’ve got the Fidelity account dialed in for primarily option trades as a source of income – so that’s what I’m doing there, covered calls, put spreads and even some *naked* puts – eeegads!  Yeah, naked puts, I will write them when I ..read more

A Change in Direction… Coming into the start of the year (2018) I was really focused on consolidation and streamlining of all of our financial assets. To that end, one of my goals was to consolidate the DDI Portfolio (Wells Trade) at my existing Daily Trading account (Fidelity). The goal was not only to reduce the number of accounts I held, but also the Fidelity account would allow for addition option trades to generate even more passive income. The downside to all of this is that I would be giving up my 100 free trades that Wells Fargo (Wells Trade) was offering me. I decided it was a small e ..read more

Consolidating the DDI Portfolio For some time now I’ve wanted to be able to write option contracts (buy and sell puts and calls) in the DDI Portfolio to generate additional income. However, the WellsTrade account where I manage the portfolio won’t allow me to trade options. I suspect this has to do with not wanting to hand out free option trades in addition to the 100 free equity trades they offer me each year. So as the new year begins I thought what better time than now to take the DDI Portfolio to the next level and move it into my existing Fidelity account where I have free range to ..read more

Waiting for the Pull Back… Eight long months ago, I was so excited to have a $5000 one day (unrealized) gain in the DDI portfolio. Yet my enthusiasm was definitely tempered by my concern of a good sized pull back.  Since that last post, we have had a few up and down waves in the market, but yet no sizable pull back to date. The Dow has gone from about 21,000 on March 1st to hovering around the 23,400 mark today. We’ll continue to enjoy the upward rise….and hope that any correction is small and short lived! Cleaning the Cobwebs Shortly after my last post in March, I went through the DDI Po ..read more

So I wasn’t planning on doing another DDI portfolio update so soon, but after logging into my Wells Trade account today and seeing a $5000 GAIN I was blown away. Of course, the gains are great and I hope they continue – but the real question remains, how sustainable is this current market rally? The markets seem to be in love with President Trump, but I’ll be the first to admit, I’m getting a little nervous about a possible LARGE SCALE pullback. Where do you think this market is headed? Are we going to 25,000 on the DOW or 15,000? Are you buying, selling? Both? Let me know what you’re adding o ..read more

Ok, so it took me a while….but I just uploaded part 2 to my YouTube Videos “The 2 Things Dividend Income Investors Must Know”. In this video I show you how using MorningStar – http://www.morningstar.com can make finding and evaluating dividend paying stocks quick and easy! Bonus! – In this video I also show you one of my recent additions to the DDI Portfolio and *why* I was so excited to find this diamond in the rough. Take a look and let me know what you’re investing in as this market continues to climb higher and higher in early 2017!   ..read more

So I just published a quick video on YouTube showing how well the DDI Portfolio has performed over the last year as well as since inception. How well did the DDI Portfolio do compared to the S&P500? Watch the video and see for yourself. Let me know how your income investing  is going – always interested in hearing what others are up to ..read more

Today I sold some shares of one of my best performers and picked up a few shares of a couple new names. Over the last few months I’ve been mostly focused on adding new names to the DDI Portfolio in an effort to “Fill in the holes”. After all, the goal is to generate income *EVERY* day! Looking back over the last 8 years while building the DDI portfolio, I believe I’ve built a good base of companies that have worked hard to provide an increasing stream of monthly income. After watching the destruction of the 2007 Global Recession it’s not unfathomable that the DDI portfolio could take a 60% hai ..read more

Goals are one of those things that if you don’t write them down *AND* pay attention to them, they are of little value. Looking back over my successes in life, I’ve noticed that when I write my goals down and spend even just a few minutes a day acting on them, or even just thinking about *HOW* I might be able to achieve them, it’s likely I’ll be successful in completing them. The DDI goals aren’t as specific as I’d like them to be, but it’s a start. I think they should also be more of a stretch, but for now I’m focusing on writing them and achieving them! The one goal that I’m primarily focused ..read more

Over the last week I’ve been checking out a bunch of other financial bloggers and I’ve come to realize, cash flow and passive income is great, but what’s better is “WHAT” it buys you. For some people that might be fast cars, big houses and parties every night, but really for me the big win is FREEDOM, the freedom of TIME that the passive income provides. A good friend of mine once told me, “I’m not afraid to lose money in business, I can always make more money.” But the thing we can’t get back is TIME – time is really what I want. As I read a lot of the finance blogs, my own included, there’s ..read more