Options Update – March 2018

With the markets recent volatility, some readers have asked that I share an update on my options activity.  I continue selling puts against companies I want to own more of and using proceeds to purchase more shares of these companies.

Below are all my trades since July of last year:

The last update on trades had generated $46,022 in revenues. I’m approved for “naked” options trading meaning I can sell puts on companies I don’t own and without having the cash to purchase said security. My collateral is owning shares of companies as equity to cover.  This update shows I’ve now generated $55,334 in revenues. Most of this money has already been used to purchase more dividend paying stocks.  The closeout column is what my total profit will look like if I closed out all trades today.  I’ve already closed out quite a few positions, you can see the trades.  I’m actually down to $7,300 from $12,000 in the last update with the market corrections.  The difference in the revenues and profits is what it would cost me to close out all the trades, about $48,000.

I’ve already booked profits of $7,781.50 on closed trades.  Since my booked profits are nearly equal to Total profits, my open trades are neutral right now.

Note: These profits won’t include dividends which I do receive from investing in other dividend paying stocks with the revenue.

Since last update, I’ve made at least 15 trades, you can see the dates on all my trades above.

One of my top trades was closing out a $115 Visa put I sold.  I (BTC) bought to close that put and made a net profit of over $1400.  Yes, $1400 on 1 single put!  I also closed out some TEVA puts for similar gains.  My biggest gain to date was a BDX put I closed out for a sweet $1650 net profit!

My V puts continue to be rock solid.  I sold an additional V put and quite a few new puts in HSY, MO, IBM, XOM etc.  In fact, I used some of these profits to buy an additional 40 shares of V in this account recently.

So what happens in the case that one of these companies is lower near expiration (in the money)? Well, I have a few options.

a. I can do nothing and I’ll be required to purchase 100 shares of said security at the strike price. It’s sort of like I’m buying the company right now at a discount.

b. I can decide to purchase back the put for more money at a loss of approximately (strike – current share value) x 100.

c. Third option is to “roll” the put forward. What this means is that I simultaneously purchase the put back and sell another longer dated put so that I haven’t lost any money.

Any profits will go directly into purchasing more shares of solid dividend-paying companies.

This is just another avenue I’m using to earn additional profits so that I can get this dividend snowball moving faster.  I actually just broke the $12,000 forward dividends goal ahead of schedule.  I’ll probably be posting about that soon.  The extra options income is certainly helping speed up the process.  My forward dividends are currently  $12,286, up from $11,197 a month ago.  My goal by the end of the year is to be at a forward dividend income of $13,000.  I’ll need to put to work about $23,800 at a 3% yield which shouldn’t be a tough task.

Best long ideas currently are SQ, V, BRK.B, MO, CVS, DIS to name a few.  I’ll be adding more to these companies throughout the year at these prices.  Yes I know that SQ and BRK.B don’t pay a dividend, but I’ve decided to have a speculative portfolio that contains non dividend paying stocks up to 10% of the portfolio value for now.