Week of Oct 19, 2009

Exactly a week ago, I sold an AIG Nov 45 Call @ $4.85. AIG was traded at high $43 then. Thanks to recent drop, I closed this call today at $2.87. A net gain of ~4% in a week. I am quite happy with this trade even though I am fully aware that potentially AIG could drop further from here. I am trying to lock in on the profit for my Nov target. 

On a separate note, I sold STP Dec 16 Put @ $2.05. This is a potential 5.5%/month gain. Hope my choice is right.

Oct 16, 09

Back in end of Aug, I wrote a AIG Nov 33 Put @ $5.50. It was the first trade I made that is longer than one month. I decided to close this today @ $0.82. All in all a net of 13.53% in a month and a half. I am quite happy with this. If I hold my other Nov trades even, I would have basically achieved my Nov target. Additional gain would be the icing on the cake. I have a AIG Nov 45 Call and STP Nov 16 Put. My AIG is in green where as STP is in red. Let's see what happens.

In the mean time, I just wrote STP Dec 14 Put @ $1.25.

Week of Oct 12, 2009

This week is the last week for Oct expiration. I have two open trades. C Oct 5 Put @ $0.63 and STP Oct 16 Put @ $1.63. Unfortunately both are in the money, but fortunately, if both stocks could hold at their current level, I would still be in the green. I am looking forward to Nov as I have an AIG Nov 33 Put @ $5.50. Also, I wrote AIG Jan 35 Put @ $5.95. As you can see, I am rather conservative if you may say, or "chicken". I tend to write quite far out of the money. I am trying to minimize my risk to hope to achieve average of 3% or more return monthly through option writing. So far, I made loss in July -2%; +5% in Aug; +6% in Sept; +1% in Oct. Will see how Nov goes.

Also, I have been sitting on 100 shares of AIG and have not had a chance to utilize it, till today. I decided to write AIG Nov 45 Call @ $4.85. It is kind of risky as we are in the midst earning season. But, it could go either way as I see the outlook is still uncertain. Should AIG goes up, I will need to see if I want to give up my shares or roll forward.

10/15/09:
It is too unfortunate that market has given in on the recent up trend just a couple of days before the Oct expiration. I just closed my C Oct 5 Put @ $0.25, which I opened @ $0.63. About 6% net. I also closed my STP Oct 16 Put @ $1.00 (~2.5% net).
For STP, I did a spread to roll over to Nov @$1.7.