April Trades

Trades:

• Sold 5x DNDN Covered Call May 19th Strike 14.00 @ 0.40
• Queued Buy-To-Close at 0.20

Gut Check:

• Missed the brief window where the April 27th Strike 12.00 was at 0.10. Oh well.
• Price of DNDN was down pre-market, and down in the morning. I queued a close at 0.20 in case the price really drops, and in any case I might close prior to May 7th, especially if the price has gone down a lot. The conference call to go through Quarter 1 earnings could swing prices either way.
• Funded account 5000 CAD. It should go through by next week and I'll transfer it over to the TFSA.
• Not sure what to buy yet but I'm thinking of a 1 Billion+ market cap stock that pays more than 8% dividend and can yield 1% selling On-The-Money Covered Calls.
• I'm hoping I can more than break even on my loss earlier this week. To come out with even 1% for the April to May options period would be very nice.
• DNDN could very well close below 11.00 today.
• That would be so goddamned irritating, after I exited my Strike 11.00 call at 0.55! Even now, the morning of the last day, it is close to 0.40 to exit. So I wasn't far off.
• But if it closes below 11.00, there wouldn't have been a need to close the position at all. On the other hand, I don't think I would have liked to cut things quite so closely, especially when it had been very high most of Thursday, threatening to go to 12.00.

April Trades

Trades:

• Queued a Sell to Open Covered Call 5x DNDN April 27th, Strike 12.00, Limit 0.10.

Gut Check:

• One day left to expiration and so far it looks like DNDN has flatlined from its bull run. Took a chance and queued a fairly safe (?) Sell to Open Covered Call Strike 12.00 Limit 0.10. Fingers crossed.
• Luckily I didn't go with the earlier idea of a Buy to Open 0.40 May 4th Strike 12.00. Hope this works out better and expires worthless.

April Trades

Trades:

• Queued Sell To Close 5x DNDN May 04 Strike 14.00 Limit 1.00

Gut Check:

• Thought of taking another chance on DNDN by queuing a Buy To Open 10x DNDN May 04 Strike 12.00 Limit 0.40 . It's moving up strongly, may well exceed 12.00 by the end of the week. But the difference between the Bid and Ask is quite big (0.10 last time I looked). And if it doesn't work out well enough, I can't sell it at a high enough price. Ultimately decided against it. No more greed-based / impatience-driven speculation.
• The Limit 1.00 on the Strike 14 is unlikely, but with the stock moving up so strongly, I figured I had nothing to lose in positioning myself now.

Totally missed the boat -- now looking ahead

Trades:

• None

Gut Check:

• Looking back, what I should have done was reverse my position early in the week. Immediately buy it back, and buy a Covered Call (to sell later) since the price was trending upward quite quickly.
• Now, the price seems to have flattened a bit even though it gained almost 20 cents yesterday. After-market was down.
• I was thinking of buying a Call and hoping it would ride up 10 cents or so, but at the same time I think I've also had enough speculation. Price speculation was never part of the plan. Trading only what I immediately see was the plan.
• There's another earnings conference call on May 7th. The last one caused the price to drop. If there's good news here, it might move the price up. I could...
• Sell the May 18th Strike 14.00 covered call this week. And if the price trends downward, exit before May 7th if there is still profit to be made, in case the conference call causes prices to jump.
• Queue to sell a May 18th Strike 14.00 at Limit 1.00. This is a lot more than the last price of 0.40, but if the price keeps moving up, it might actually be feasible. In any case, I can adjust the price based on price movements tomorrow. I would also therefore be participating in the upside without cash outlay (buying a call to sell later).
• Wait till the conference call on May 7th before doing anything.
• Right now I have basically no cash in the account, just the stock. And I don't want to keep shoring up the account with more cash. Not yet. After I handle my taxes, I'll think about putting money into another position or two.
• Can the stock rise 50 cents in the two remaining days? I'm thinking of a Strike 12.00 Covered Call and let it go to expiration.
• The Bid closed at 0.11 yesterday. A buyback even at 0.01 would see fees eat up a lot of that. I should wait till mid-day to decide.
• Possibly wait till Friday, although by then time value would be next to nothing.
• After-hours price yesterday was 11.36, so I'll definitely have to look at pre-market today (April 26th). A Bid price of 0.04 is the least that will still show some profit after commissions.

April Trades

Trades:

• Queued a Buy-To-Close 5x DNDN Strike 11.00 Limit 0.55
• This is the maximum buyback I can do without going into overdraft on the account.
• Filled at ~0940h. ~3% loss.

Gut Check:

• DNDN is still rising. Over 11.50 and will probably keep climbing. During the day, a temporary dip might allow me to close the position at 0.55.
• The Buy-to-Close order was filled, thankfully. Of course, now I will be supremely pissed off if the stock takes a dive!
• Probably no point writing an option for Strike 12.00 or 13.00. Both are more or less at just time value now, and the Ask was equal to the Bid on the Strike 12.00. I'll probably sit tight for now. Might possibly write something on Friday, but at this point I'm starting to get gun-shy.
• Feeling annoyed and anxious.
• At least DNDN is inching back up. I can probably write a Strike 14.00 soon, and then I won't care if I'm assigned. I'd really like to exit DNDN with a healthy profit despite a lousy April.

Trading Strategy going forward

After my recent experience with having to hold DNDN while it had gone down a lot in value, I thought more about my trading strategy, and looked at various stocks online to see if a new heuristic might pan out.

Strategy 1: Write options on stocks that pay 3%+ dividend.

This was a good idea in principle, but I couldn't really find any where I could write a decent option on and that still satisfied the dividend criteria.

Strategy 2: Write Deep-In-The-Money call options to ensure I get assigned and returned to cash.

This might work out, but it seems that the best money on call options were At-The-Money or Near-The-Money.

Strategy 3: Buy high-dividend-yield stocks and make options secondary.
There are stocks paying 16%+ yields, so this could work out. But if I can make that much in a matter of months, the risk vs. reward perspective is against this strategy.
I am considering this for a TFSA (Tax Free Savings Account), however.

Feeling really anxious

Trade History:

• None

Gut Check:

• DNDN is still climbing. Closed at 11.31 today.
• The Strike 11.00 Ask is 0.61. I sold it at 0.17. HUGE loss if I sell it now. But I should probably keep waiting. A loss is confirmed -- at this point -- no matter what. I might as well wait for the time premium to decrease and accept the price on Friday. It could go even higher by then. 12.00? Damn.
• I am feeling very upset. Anxious. Embarrassed. Angry. Annoyed. Everything. I never wanted to hold stock too long or have to deal with fluctuations. Selling Covered Calls and getting assigned to go back to a cash position was the plan.
• I need to somehow learn from this and do better in the future.
• I need to be able to hold stock without panicking. I tried to keep making money on DNDN because it's not giving any dividends so it's just dead inventory sitting in the account. There's money to be made, but it's hard by Covered Calls when the price can keep going up like that. I don't want to handle having to predict price!
• I'll have to buy dividend paying stable stocks and accept less options profit due to less volatility. And a comfort in holding stock for a long time.
• For now... I have a plan in mind but the anxiety is wearing at me.
• I think what is mostly making me angry and embarrassed is posting my first loss. I narrowly escaped last month with a Buy to Close and another Sell to Open, making a fraction of 1% gain. Now in one week I'm about to wipe that all out. And this compared to previous months where I was making 10% returns!

April Trades

Trades:

• Queued Sell to Open 5x DNDN Covered Call, Strike 11.00, Limit 0.17, expiry April 27 (weekly)
• Filled at 0.25
• April-24: CORRECTION -- Filled at 0.17
• Queued Buy to Close 5x DNDN Covered Call, Strike 11.00, Limit 0.05,expiry April 27 (weekly)

Gut Check:

• There's a conference call to go over first quarter results in early May, so I didn't want to lock myself into a full month-long options contract.
• The price of DNDN appeared to be firmly below 11.00, but by mid-day it was peeking over 11.00. Drat. Price of the Strike 11.00 is now over 40 cents.
• I'll probably have to buy this one back unless the price goes back down.
• The main worry now is if it keeps going up, past 11.25, in which case I'll have to post a loss.
• The Strike 12.00 price remained quite steady through all this, and low enough to not be worth selling a Covered Call on it.
• Have to wait and see now. I might put in a Buy-To-Close at Limit 0.05.
• Why is it whenever I sell a Covered Call, the price goes up almost immediately afterwards? :-(
• April-24: I could have sworn I saw the order filled at 0.25... But when I checked the trading platform this morning, it showed the Sell-to-Open was filled at 0.17? Well, nothing I can do about that now since I didn't collect evidence to the contrary.

Another QuesTrade Platform FUBAR?

Trade History:

• Can't Trade -- QuesTrade's IQ platform is not working.

Gut Check:

• I log onto QuesTrade's new "IQ" platform, and what happens? No information -- It loads no information on my account, no positions, no nothing. I click of Live Help and it says no one is available right now -- probably all firefighting the same glitch. And on options expiration day!
• Price of DNDN is over 10 and there are already some pre-market movements that increased the price from closing of 10.03 yesterday. Can't close my Strike 11.00 at 0.01 anymore. Not till much later. Now I'm wishing I had not cancelled the order to close the position at Limit Price 0.01, since I can't react to the market at all with the trading platform down. :-(

Coming up to Options Expiration

Trades:

• (yesterday) Cancelled Buy-To-Close DNDN Strike 11.00 @ 0.01

Gut Check:

• The price of DNDN is firmly below 11.00 (closed at 8.98 on April 18th), so I've taken a chance and cancelled my Buy-To-Close order, and will instead just let the Covered Call expire normally.
• I think I won't sell any options until DNDN's May 7th conference call to go over first quarter results.
• Once the option expires, I'll queue a Sell order to close my DNDN position with a limit price of maybe 15.00.

DNDN Stock Plummets

Trades: None

Gut Check:

• At the time I write this, DNDN's price has dropped to a lot less than $9, apparently due to good news for competitors.
• I'm trying not to feel regret at having bought back my Strike 10.00 call last month.
• At the time, the price was more than 10.00 and climbing, so without a crystal ball, the trend looked like it might go back to 11+. Even if it stayed just at 10.00, it would have expired in the money and I would have had to buy it back at a loss from commissions. By buying it back early and writing another call, I got to instead secure a slight profit.
• Now that it's fallen to less than 9.00, clearly I could have waited till expiration. But that's hindsight. If I keep regretting every move, I'll go crazy.
• The April-20 Strike 11.00 asking price is around 0.05 now. I'm wondering if I should go ahead with an earlier buy-back and sell a lower call -- and risk a sudden price jump and having to buy back another call. Hmm... If it drops a lot, my currently queued buyback at 0.01 might get filled anyway.
• Whatever happens, I'm stuck with a stock that is almost half the price I bought it for. Sure, I can make maybe 2%-5% a month depending on ongoing volatility, but the value might never recover to my original purchase price. Damn.
• Still waiting on my redemption of funds from the League REIT. I'm definitely switching to Cash-Secured Puts, and probably selling stock immediately if I end up getting assigned. Stock price risk is just too annoying.