While I may have lost Minefinders (MFN) on covered calls, today’s massive gold miners correction allowed me to pull back the Yamana $16 Oct 2011 covered call. I bought back those calls and sold Jan 2012 $17.5 calls, for a net credit of $0.31 per contract. Not bad – pocketed some change while adding another [...]
With all the market action, I’ve spent more time managing holdings than normal this past week. A quick update on some moves I’ve made: I sold out of my iShares Singapore ETF (EWS) early last week at $13.92. As it turned out, the timing worked out quite nicely as shares worldwide suffered major setbacks but [...]
Readers should know I fancy myself a value investor, not an options trader. But conservative investors can benefit using options even if they don’t know much about the Greeks or implied volatility. Two strategies in particular — covered call writing and naked put writing — can be extremely valuable to long-term investors in volatile times [...]
THE ENLIGHTENED-AMERICAN PORTFOLIO SPREADSHEET Enlightened-American Portfolio: +7.2% through August 1st, 2011 (my actual IRR, including cash balance) DJIA: +4.8% Nasdaq: +3.5% S&P 500: +2.3% DJ Wilshire 5000: +2.2% Russell 2000 (smallcap): +1.2% I must admit some pleasure at walking away from the portfolio for a month only to return to YTD results showing us outperforming [...]
Last week, I closed my Yamana Gold (AUY) April 2011 $13 covered call position at $0.22 per contract with the stock trading at $12.80, near its strike price. By week’s end, AUY traded up to $13.30, justifying the trade for the time being. I initially opened this position at $0.47 late last year so a [...]
THE ENLIGHTENED-AMERICAN PORTFOLIO SPREADSHEET Enlightened-American Portfolio: +0.8% through Feb, 2010 (my actual IRR, including cash balance) DJIA: -1.0% Nasdaq: -1.4% S&P 500: -1.0% DJ Wilshire 5000: -0.4% Russell 2000 (smallcap): -0.9% February was a sedentary month for us here at Enlightened American. Sometimes, indeed most times when dealing with investing, doing nothing is the best [...]
