October options trading review

This month I received $1,485 in premiums from selling options on a portfolio worth about $290,000. 😀

The biggest premium earned this month was from a BlackRock put option, a whole $259.
I did an in-depth video explainer here in case you missed it.

My options trades and other investments were discussed in a recent episode of the Explore FI Canada podcast.

An Alternative Investment Path to FI

I had a fun conversation with Chrissy and Money Mechanic on how to reach financial independence by using alternative investments.

What all 3 of us have in common is we invest with borrowed money to leverage our assets and create higher investment returns.

And huge congrats to Chrissy because she and her husband recently achieved FIRE. 🙂
It’s especially impressive since they have 2 children and only relied on the income of one working spouse.

The podcast episode touched on a lot of different topics including video games and meme stocks, haha.
If any listeners want additional details about my research strategies, risk management, or how I find asymmetric opportunities let me know.

If you’re a relatively new reader here you may find some interesting trivia in the episode about myself and my wide interest in investable assets.

And check out their other episodes as well, as they interview lots of amazing folks across the country. 😀

Options progress so far in 2021

Altogether I have made over $7,500 selling call and put options in my non-registered margin account.

The more options I trade the easier it becomes to manage larger positions. 🙂

October trading breakdown

Here are some key points from this month.

• I sold 12 put options.
• I bought 2 options to close my positions, including one roll with ContextLogic (WISH.)
• My total trading commission was $24.
• I rolled my $WISH option forward so nothing expired in-the-money in October. 🙂

Below is a table summarizing my transactions.

• Initial underlying price – The market price of the underlying stock/ETF when I made the options trade.
• Price difference % – How much the underlying will have to rise or fall to be In-The-Money (ITM).
• Initial days to expiry – How many days remain until the option expires, from the day that I traded it.
• Initial Delta – Measures the initial probability of an option expiring ITM. eg: if a put option has a Delta of -10%, there is a 10% chance it will be exercised.

Once again none of my options have been assigned in October. However, I have a couple of call options sold in September that are currently in the money.

Expecting November assignment

I have 2 CNQ.TO calls with a strike price of $48, and 1 TD.TO call with a strike price of $86.

Both expire in November, so maybe this will be the first time my options get assigned.

What’s funny is that most of my options are Puts. However, the 2 options that are likely to be assigned 18 days from now are actually Calls. This speaks to how overvalued the stock market is. It just keeps going up with no signs of falling. Maybe being forced to sell right now isn’t so bad. I can reduce my margin debt, and lock in some profits for the year, which helps to spread out my tax burden across time. 🙂

If my TD and CNQ stocks get called away my plan is to sell put options to buy them back again, hopefully at a lower price than I sold them at.

Let’s see how things play out. 🙂

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Random Useless Fact:

Scenes in movies are not always in real time.

“I bet I can beat him.”