Fellow Traders,
The 3rd quarter is officially history. Given the impact of a so-so economy and the political antics in Washington it should be interesting to see how we finish out the year. Most of what I’m currently reading says to look for a big run-up to the end of the year after Congress gets done trying to get our attention on the budget debate and the debt ceiling. Stay tuned it should be interesting!
Enough of that, let’s take a look at how The Money Tree made out this month.
Number of Closed Positions: 9
Profit on Closed Trades: $1,418.22
Total Capital Used on Closed Trades: $91,073.63
Average Number of Days Trades Were Open: 124.7*
Return on Invested Capital: 1.56%
You’ll note the average number of days trades were open is much higher than usual. That’s because I finally closed out my position in SUNE (formerly WFR). I had that position for well over 2 years. We’ll talk more about SUNE later in this article. Excluding SUNE, the remaining 8 closed trades had an average holding period of 33 days.
Let’s dig a little deeper into these 9 closed trades. Seven of the nine closed trades involved naked puts. The remaining two were covered calls. All nine closed positions were the result of the options expiring OTM. I had puts expire in ABT, CAT, CCJ, EXC, LNCO, MSFT, and TEVA.
I sold the ABT SEP $34 puts when the underlying was trading at $35.29. ABT continued to fall and was ITM for some time before recovering and finishing OTM.
I sold the CAT $80 puts for $0.72 when the underlying was at $82.38. At expiration CAT was at $84.75.
While CCJ was at $19.54 I sold the SEP $19 puts for $0.50. At expiration CCJ was at $19.38.
I sold the EXC SEP $30 puts at $0.60 when Exelon was at $30.20. The puts expired OTM with EXC closing at $30.13.
LNCO was at $25.55 when I sold the SEP $24 puts for $1.30. At expiration LNCO closed at $29.04.
My trade in MSFT also turned out well, I sold the SEP $30 puts at $0.25 when MSFT was at $31.42. They expired OTM with Microsoft trading at $32.79.
My final NP trade involved TEVA. As regular readers know, I’ve been trading this one for several months now. Once again I sold the SEP $37.50 puts; this time for $0.50. At the time TEVA was trading at $38.81. At expiration it closed at $37.72. If you haven’t taken an opportunity to look at TEVA before, I highly encourage you to do so. I’ve been trading it since late April and it has treated me very well.
Now let’s look at my two covered call trades. First up is my trade in KO. Back on August 23rd I bought KO for $38.42 and concurrently sold the SEP $39 calls for $0.34. On September 12th KO went ex-dividend making me eligible to receive the $0.28 dividend. With KO trading at $38.94 on expiration day I decided to roll my calls out into OCT. Doing so gave me an additional net credit of $0.62.
Last, but certainly not least is my covered call trade in SUNE (previously WFR). Long time readers know I’ve been in this position for quite some time. NO MORE! I closed out my SUNE trade on 9/25. Over the course of 2+ years I had managed to work my net cost basis in SUNE down from $10 (the strike price of my original puts) to $7.74. After my SEP $9 calls expired OTM I decided to keep a close eye on SUNE and sell my shares at $8 or better. Last Wednesday, I got my chance and sold SUNE for $8.10. My annualized ROIC was a laughable 1.91%. However, I’m still proud of this trade because I stuck with it, didn’t give up, and worked on it until I was able to exit with a profit. With more experience under my belt and better stock selection I hope to avoid a repeat performance.
Now let’s look at my open trades.
Number of Open Positions: 7; 4 naked puts, 2 covered calls, and 1 call purchase
Net Cash Flow in September from 4 new naked put Open Positions: $591.70
Cash Flow from 2 covered calls: $288.50
Capital Used on Open Cash Secured Naked Put Trades: $36,350.00
Capital Used on Open Covered Call Trades: $24,313.90
Capital Used on $VIX call option purchase: $760.00
Net Cash Flow on Invested Capital: 1.43%
I have previously opened positions in GDX, and KO. My new open positions are in ABT (OCT $33 puts), CCJ (OCT $19 Puts), EXC (OCT $30 puts), TEVA (OCT $37.50 puts), SYY (CC OCT $32), and $VIX (DEC $13 calls).
Going into October I am considering an additional trade in CCJ (OCT $18 puts), and new trades in CAT (OCT $80 puts), CLX (OCT $80 puts), GIS (OCT CC trade, stock goes ex-dividend on 10/8), T (OCT CC trade, stock also goes ex-dividend on 10/8), DE (OCT $80 puts), and PG (OCT $75 puts).
Regards,
Troy
The Money Tree 