Well, the good news is that all my positions expired out of the money. The bad of course is that means all my positions are down significantly from mid-May. Things are looking up a bit however. This morning European markets bounced big time with Germany and France up 3.8% on positive Greek news. The S&P was almost 1% higher in futures trading but ended the day up 0.61%.
This month I decided to go ahead and write calls on all my positions. You may recall that last time around I skipped a few because the underlying stocks were below my cost basis. Because I anticipate more range bound volatility (at least until the Fed makes it's first move) I believe the need to "buy to close" a few positions is far out-weighed by the benefit of additional income.
This month dividends ticked up a bit to $1241.00 and options premium brought in $3,217 at $144.25 in commissions yielding a total $4,313.75. As a result my cash balance is now $17,393.05.
I have an ultimate goal of $40,000 in cash and I should cross the half way point next month. That said, I'm starting to consider increasing some positions, specifically COP and ED. Conventional wisdom suggests ED will drift lower into the the Fed move. It's yielding 4.42% now and any serious weakness could drive that yield close to 5%. As for COP, I'll be looking at it should there be significant weakness in oil prices.
As always, comments are welcome!
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