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.