January Trades

Trades:

• DNDN and YPF got assigned.
• RENN call expired.
• Withdrew all cash from margin account.
• Queued to buy for TFSA: (dividend paying stocks)
• 2x DCIX @ 6.70
• 2x TWO @ 12.35
• Queued to sell RENN @ 6.60. Currently trading at less than 4.00.

Gut Check:

• What's done is done, I guess. I'm out. Horrible loss on the DNDN. RENN still stuck.
• Can't withdraw my TFSA but I'm not putting new money in. With what I got from dividends and the YPF assignment, I'm buying two more dividend-paying stocks to diversify a bit.

Regrets

I've been thinking back to last year, and how I went ahead and bought more stocks to sell options when the current ones were down a lot. I made money up front, but subsequently got caught in a downturn and everything plummeted. Most of it won't recover. Losses are in excess of 10,000. Possibly as much as 50% of the seed money. I've been wrestling with the regret of not having pulled back. Not having listened to my fear and doubt and just stopped. But then I think that I would have had a different sort of regret. The regret of missed opportunities. Of wondering about what could have been. No, I think a crash and loss of the type I'm experiencing now -- or will experience when I'm very likely going to be assigned on my Covered Calls in January -- was inevitable. And it is the only sort of thing that would have made me stop trading. Otherwise, why would I? I was making money. Lots of it! At least in comparison to what banks and mutual funds and REITs were offering. Stock trading is a very negative game. You're hooked till you lose. And then you could keep going to get back your winnings, but then you'd be like a problem gambler.

November Trades

Trade History:

• November 30th:
• Sold 5x DNDN Covered Call Strike 5.00, Limit 0.25, expiration January 19/2013

Gut Check:

• DNDN peeked up a *bit* because of good earnings news. It'll be awful if I get assigned, but if I don't do anything I won't make any money. Even if I did get assigned, the stock has been down for a long time and it's possibly unlikely it'll ever recover to what it was when I bought it. Anyway, we'll see what happens.
• 
  

October Trades

Trade History:

• Dividend of 9 cents per share ($9 per contract) on a total of 600 shares of CIM -- 0.23% ROI for December
• November 8th:
• Sold 8x RENN Covered Call Strike 4.00, Limit 0.10, expiration January 19/2013
• Sold 3x YPF Covered Call Strike 12.50, Limit 0.10, expiration January 19/2013
• January ROI will be about 0.34%.

Gut Check:

• Everything's down. Thinking of wiping the slate by selling everything and putting the money into dividend-paying stocks, but I'd never recover the loss. For now, selling what options I can. If I get assigned, it wouldn't be worse than selling right now.
• If either of the Calls get assigned, losses will finally be more than paper losses and will be pretty ugly.

September Trades

Trade History:

• No trades.
• PCX Covered Call I wrote in May now expiring worthless, so I am now putting down the $118.04 credit as realized. This works out to 0.52% ROI for September.
• PCX busted down to around 0.141 cents. No bids for Covered Calls. Some puts can be written, but for a December expiration. I am going to hold off doing anything here and just watch them for now.

Gut Check:

• Sad about PCX but not much can be done now. Just waiting. Based on the Puts, there's a lot of hope out there that they will recover by year end. Fingers crossed!

August Trades

Trade History

• Converted 49.79 USD. Questrade gave me 49.46 CAD. Withdrew by ETF to bank account.
• Changed YPF Covered Call Strike 15.00 expiration October 20th Sell To Open order from Limit 0.50 to 0.25. Executed on July 30th.
• ROI 1.27% if it expires worthless.

Gut Check

• Changed my Sell-to-Open order from Limit 0.50 to Limit 0.25 as the price on YPF had dropped significantly and it was no longer reasonable to expect that sort of premium even though around the July options expiration it had been at that level.
• If it didn't fulfill, I was ready to risk a Strike 12.50 at 1.35 in January. If I got assigned, I'd more or less have broken even and at least got my money back to put into something that required less watching.
• Still stuck waiting for options expiration on the other stocks.
• ROI for the July 21 to August 18th options period is 0.17% because of dividend payments from CIM to both the Margin Account and the TFSA Account. The other open Covered Calls haven't expired yet.
• ROI for August to November at this point looks like 2.26%.

August Trades

Trade History

• Converted 49.79 USD. Questrade gave me 49.46 CAD. Withdrew by ETF to bank account.
• Queued a Sell To Open 3x YPF Covered Call Strike 15.00 @ 0.50, expiration October 20th. ROI 2.80% if it expires.

Gut Check

• Overall feeling depressed by the horrible loss of equity value. After the current calls expire, I won't be able to sell any PINK:PCXCQ (Patriot Coal) options. There's some talk about it being a grossly undervalued company at the moment, but things look so bleak.
• Portfolio value is down to about half. Yikes!