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!

PCX shocker

Trades: None

Gut Check:
In May, I decided to stop obsessively watching the stock prices and just sell covered calls several months ahead but at "safe" strike prices -- that is, with a strike price of what I bought the stocks for.

Then I stopped looking. The Covered Call for YPF is expiring soon, and now that I've looked, I discovered that PCX has plummeted to around 23 cents -- from $6 when I bought it!
Damn.

My margin account is about 1/2 of its book value.

Not sure what to do except just to wait it out and see if it will ever recover. Can't even write Covered Calls on it.

Can't write Covered Calls on CIM either since the price is low and there aren't useful premiums to get.

Mostly just sitting. Might get to write a 12 to 15 cent Covered Call on YPF early next week for the TFSA account. We'll see.

Overall I think it's been too much watching and worry and I'm going to start pulling out as well as withdrawing money when I can.