ATM.... AT-THE-MONEY OR AUTO TELLER MACHINE?:

Dividend-capturers saw fit to exercise my July ITM calls for today's dividend on RY- Royal Bank of Canada. Hence my first dividend in January of $101, plus extrinsic call price and ROP (return of principal) gained an annualized 10.1%.
I shall be on vacation until May Day, watching the market from my Droid.
Full disclosure: a couple of miscues to report - I hastily did a Buy/Write on KMP on ex-dividend date !, not before, so traded out of it for a minor profit; also Garmin which was an experiment in capturing annual dividends, moved their ex-d from anticipated April to whenever (November?), so I closed that out with a 1% gain - still no losses in DITM since the BP disaster a year ago.

These are the days, my friends -

That it pays to be in DITM. Casually glancing over my fully-invested portfolio of 15 stocks, only 1 - the troublesome TLT (which I hedge with the TBT) - is "under water" with the Down Jones off 250 points. Then the TLT does an about face of nearly 2% upwards.

Options Exaspiration only took one position away -gladly- my PEP, having rolled out a few others earlier in the month. Pepsi was put on in November, so after 5 months i only received just under 6% annualized, only about 1/2 of my current running average.

As I am going on vacation next week, I shall wait until my return to reposition, at which time there are some semi-annual and annual trades to capture.

I've been applying for an author position at SeekingAlpha, which may interfere with my blogging - as they want proprietary claim. It is a great site to retrieve good candidates for DITM, or anything else.

Happy Easter!

A SMOKIN' TRADE:

BTI - British Tobacco, was just closed out after another experiment in semi- and annual dividends.
Bought on March 3 for $8069 (including commission), it was closed out after receiving the $261 dividend - to be paid in May - and $214 for the call. Thanks to a nice rise in the stock (which rose faster than the $530 call buyback price)I was able to close it out before the June expiry, at $8336.
Total return for a month was $212, or 31.5% annualized. After T+3 settlement, the funds will be deployed elsewhere.

If you have any comments or questions on any trade, or do not wish to receive further e-mail updates, please e-mail brentleonard59@gmail.com

C(NOTE) YOU LATER:

Never a dull moment in the DITM world. With the Ex-D date looming for AT&T and Verizon at April 6, I did a buy/write on March 23 using the October call for T and the July for VZ.
Overnite I was assigned on the T calls before my first dividend (of a possible 3) - net of commission I earned $100 for 2 weeks, for a 21.3% annualized return. VZ remains in the account.
Nice Telephone "CALL".

1st Quarter DITM results:

Annualized DITM trades for the 1st quarter of 2011 ( closed out before April 1) resulted in an average of 12.28%. Most of these have been itemized over the past few posts, including my misfire on KMP (buying it on ex-D date instead of before), and a couple stocks which pay annual dividends.
Due to technological difficulties, you can email me at brentleonard59@gmail.com for the complete matrix, if desired.