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.
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.
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.
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!
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%.
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!
Trades: NONE
Gut Check:
- Stocks still down, but there were some spikes upward in there. If I had set my strikes incorrectly, I might have lost money. Still feels really passive not to take some risks, but at the same time, I'm not obsessively watching the markets. Starting to wonder if it's a good tradeoff by making a (lot) less money in exchange for safety.
- CIM dropped a lot after announcing a 2 cent decline in dividends (was 11 cents in the first quarter). No useful Covered Calls to write at this time. Waiting for it to go up again. IF it goes up again.
Trades:
- May 26th: Bought 3x CIM @ 2.79 for both the Margin account and the TFSA account.
- Tried to short 300 shares of FB. Order rejected by QuesTrade -- "not enough shares to short"!
Gut Check:
- Sitting tight on CIM instead of selling any options, since ex-dividend day is probably coming up in June.
- Can't even do a fairly sure trade like FB. I'd psyched myself up all night to do it, since no matter what it's still speculative -- one press release by an analyst and it could reverse its downward trend and spike up in price, like last week with the Needham announcement.
- FB price is plunging again. Down over 50 cents from open, which was my cut-off to get out of the short position. Damn! If I could have shorted it, I'd be up an easy $150. Oh well.
Trade History:
- Sold 5x DNDN Covered Call Strike 14.00 @ 0.25, expiration November 17th
- Sold 8x PCX Covered Call Strike 6.00 @ 0.17, expiration September 22nd
- Sold 8x RENN Covered Call Strike 7.00 @ 0.30, expiration October 20th
- Sold 3x YPF Covered Call Strike 15.00 @ 0.50, expiration July 21st
- Queued a buy for 3x CIM @ 2.75
Gut Check:
- Implementing the new trading strategy to remove speculation and spend less time watching the market instead of trying not to get assigned.
- Feeling nervous because this will commit me for several months for some of these stocks. There may be severe regret if they pop up from their current slump and shoot to fantastic values.
- DNDN sold at 0.25, but when I checked the quotes shortly after, it was in the ~0.30 range! Don't know why I got such a lousy price. :-( And for some reason it is showing 0.85 to close the position.
Trades:
- None yet. Queuing some Sell-to-Open Covered Calls but waiting to see if stock prices rebound a lot over the next couple of weeks.
- DNDN: Queue Strike 9.00, Limit 1.00
- Price of 5.30 to make 2% ROI if I am assigned.
- Price of 0.31 to make 2% ROI if the option expires
- Price of 0.04 to make any money at all after commissions.
- PCX: Queue Strike 5.00, Limit 1.00
- Price of 1.17 to make 2% ROI if I am assigned.
- Price of 0.15 to make 2% ROI if the option expires
- Price of 0.03 to make any money at all after commissions.
- RENN: Queue Strike 5.00, Limit 1.00
- Price of 1.78 to make 2% ROI if I am assigned.
- Price of 0.16 to make 2% ROI if the option expires
- Price of 0.03 to make any money at all after commissions.
- YPF: Queue Strike 15.00, Limit 1.00
- At any price, I would make money if I were assigned.
- Price of 0.37 to make 2% ROI if the option expires
- Price of 0.04 to make any money at all after commissions.
Gut Check:
- Oh boy. All stocks down. A LOT.
- I am trying to be more organized about selling my Calls, and maybe not be so anxious to lock in a price -- especially after the fiasco with DNDN where I sold a Call, only to have the stock rebound in price above my Strike, forcing me to buy it back.
- I will probably wait 1 week or so to see whether the stocks keep recovering their price.
- DNDN and PCX are supposedly oversold, so they could keep going up.
- RENN is down a lot, probably dragged down by general sentiment after the Facebook IPO fiasco. I could write a call now, but it might still rebound.
Trades:
- Sold to Open 8x PCX Covered Call, Strike 6.00 @ 0.15 (May 19th expiry)
- Sold to Open 8x RENN Covered Call, Strike 7.00 @ 0.30 (May 19th expiry)
- For the options period expiring May 19th, after additional new funds and nasty loss early this month, I will emerge with a measly 2% or so ROI.
Gut Check:
- Both stocks went down. Not as drastically as DNDN, but quickly enough that I missed the good prices yesterday -- especially RENN, which had a price of 0.55, which would have made a very tidy sale price.
- Prices were still going down today--looks like France/Europe election issues yesterday, and more Greece troubles early today. I took a chance that this might continue all day today, maybe even this week, and decided to take the prices above before time value ticked down even more even if share prices held sort-of-steady.
- With my usual bad luck, prices could jump back up after. Urgh.
- But my Trading Strategy isn't supposed to be about speculation! It's about seeing what's available now, and deciding to take it or not. And once I've secured a certain level of profit, I need to just let go and not regret. It is the stress of regrets that's taking a toll on me.
- Strange... Just checked now (0650h PST) and Google Finance shows PCX price gapped up at open. But QuesTrade had shown it ticking down at market open... Hmm...
- DNDN is now trading at LESS THAN $10! The company posted mild profit gains, and that was apparently just not good enough. Might be more scary times squeezing profit out of this next month... Now I'm glad I'm at a Strike 14.00 waiting for expiration.
- There's the possibility of buying that back and getting another Strike. I'm tempted to try it, even if it is speculation, though at a Strike of 12.00 it might be a safe bet, when the share price is ticking down toward $9.
- ROI for the month still in the positive, but only because of new cash. No more huge wins like the early lucky days of very volatile stocks, I guess. But still better than the 1% everyone's projecting.
Trades:
- Previous PCX Covered Call expired May 4th. ROI 1.29% on the $4,808 spent buying the 8 contracts.
- Queued Sell to Open 8x PCX Covered Call Strike 6.00, Limit 0.10, expiry May 11th
- Queued Buy 8x RENN at Limit 6.60.
- If filled, will do a Sell to Open 8x RENN Covered Call, Strike 7.00. Price was around 0.50 when the market closed on Friday. This would be a nice 7% return on the $5405 available cash in the account.
Gut Check:
- Decent return on a Weekly Option on the PCX. Price of the stock is going down, however. But even if it hovers and the option premiums are decent, then I'm still okay.
Trades:
- Bought 3x YPF @ 14.28
- Sold to Open 3x YPF Covered Call Strike 15.00 @ 0.50, expiry May 19th
Gut Check:
- My first TFSA account buy. If I lose money here, I can't just top it up. Can't go into margin either, so there'll be more "idle money" in this account, making ROIs smaller compared to committed capital.
Trades:
- Added 10,000 CAD to the Margin trading account, and 5,000 CAD to the TFSA account.
- Bought 8 contracts PCX @ 6.00
- Sold 8x PCX Strike 6.00 @ 0.15, expiry May 4th.
- On the $4,808 spent buying the 800 shares, this is 1.69% ROI if assigned (due to auto-assignment fees), 2.12% if the position expires.
Gut Check:
- Got the Weekly on the PCX because I wanted to have cash on hand for this month's conference calls for DNDN, PCX, and INVN. Price of PCX has been very volatile this morning. Hopefully it'll close this week at 6.00 or slightly above -- or at least not drastically low.
- Still feeling a bit anxious about my decisions after April, but I need to push forward.
- Still two and a half weeks left to make money. Hopefully I can turn things around and not feel anxious about making excessive amounts. The early months of 10% ROI were fortunate, especially when the benchmark returns for options is 1% per month. I need to concentrate on getting assigned, returning to cash, and still coming out ahead a few percentage points.
- I'm about 10,000 away from asking for Options Level 4, which will let me do cash-secured Puts. Looking forward to choosing trades more likely to end in a cash position at options expiry!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
