Financial Planning Weekend Update - July 18, 2015

Expiration weekend and another month in the books! The markets as a whole had a pretty good week, moving to the top of the current trading range as the Greek business resolved, China's markets stabilized and the VIX fell to "calm" levels. On the other hand most of my positions are "under water" but since this portfolio is invested for income from dividends and covered calls, that really doesn't matter much.

July Roll Outs

On Friday afternoon I rolled out three of "in the money" positions at the same strikes as July. The only oddity was the PG position that I rolled to August 28 because the weekly $1 strike increments for the 21st won't appear until Monday. Net profit: $782.60. The remaining six positions will be established on Monday as usual.

MO was now so deeply in the money that there was no reasonably profitable strike in August. So I decided to let it be assigned. That's not as bad as it looks. Each share had returned $1.04 in dividends (March and June) and $0.78 + $0.87 + $0.79 ($1.04 - $0.25 when I rolled in May) + $0.65 for a total of $4.13 less the $1.51 I lost on cost basis that's $2.62 or about 5% profit in 4 months.

So what will I do with the $30,000.00? On Monday I'll buy 400 shares of Ventas (VTR) a healthcare REIT with a dividend yield of 4.91% and a beta of just .38. There will be a couple thousand left over that will go into the cash pile.