Another month has come and gone……and it was a good month. Lots of travel, time with family, time with friends and a healthy market pushing to record highs. In the month our account increased over 7%….. above our monthly goal of 1-2%. YTD the account is now up almost 28% versus the S&P at 23%.

In July we started tracking the % of stocks, options and net positions that were profitable. The tracking provided some interesting and helpful insights. We are frustrated with not making more profit with the options (covered calls are not the best strategy in a rising market). In addition to selling calls we added naked puts to many of the positions. The naked puts have helped offset the losses on the calls as the stock rises. When we started the tracking under 70% of the net positions were profitable (black line). This has improved to 93%. The tracking highlighted a couple of positions we struggled to turn around….so we closed them and allocated more money to our winning positions.

The table shows the current stock holdings in the portfolio. Column on far right is the annualized return on the position (stock+option+dividend). We have one losing position with NIO. Considering adding short puts to the NIO strategy to try and improve performance. In addition to short calls we have short puts on ABT, ATEC, BCRX, DGX, DXCM, PBR and SDC. Overall the options are still negative with DXCM having have a big influence on the overall option number.
If you have any questions on any of the holdings or the tracking don’t hesitate to ask.
We are up at the cottage in Canada for about a month closing things down for the winter. Weather has been cooperating. Chilly but reasonable. Nice time of the year to be at the cottage…..very quiet and no flies. A better internet would be nice….but what we have is adequate. Hopefully the market stays strong through November…..but the new highs do make me nervous!