Month End Summary – November 2018

November was one of the worst trading months for my account that I can remember, outside of the bubble bust last decade. My biggest losses came from GS and AAPL after they dropped off a cliff. I took a realized loss on FB too, but most of that loss came before November. I just took the loss in November. I didn’t take a realized loss on AAPL yet, but my two January $200 put options were assigned after trading on November 28. I didn’t bother writing a post on it, because nothing has really changed for me. I’m still under water on the position and already sold covered calls on those shares a week earlier. What makes my losses more painful is that the Dow and S&P 500 were both up for the month, 1.68% and 1.79% respectively.

My account ended November with a Net Asset Value (NAV) of $90,499.10 according to Interactive Brokers (IB) after ending October with a NAV of $98,574.95. I had a loss of $8,075.85 (~8.19%) on paper for November and had $11,706.26 in net realized losses from my eight closing trades on two AAPL naked puts that were assigned, an ADI naked put that was assigned, two different FB covered calls that I closed for a profit, 100 shares of FB I sold for a loss, a FEZ covered call that expired worthless, a GS covered call that I closed for a profit, 100 GS shares that sold for a loss. The assigned puts didn’t give me a realized gain since I rolled the profit into the cost of the stock shares to reduce the price per share. It’ll come out when I sell the shares.

I received $26.09 in interest ($32.87 less than last month) and no dividends. Quicken reported that I have an account value of $90,448.30, which is two cents more than what IB shows due to rounding difference errors and the $2.82 in interest accruals and $48.00 in dividend accruals IB is crediting for me. I’m leaving the two cents error for now to see if it reverses in December. If it doesn’t, I’ll add an adjustment to Quicken.

I’m 81.32% invested in this account, 35.73 percentage points above the end of October. I only have two options remaining that expire in December. My IWM covered call is far out of the money and is worth rolling soon. My XLB naked put is out of the money too and I’ll probably roll it early or might replace it with something new. With nearly $17,000 in uninvested cash, I need to find a new investment.

This is my asset allocation in my IB account as of the end of November:

– Large-cap ETF: 0.0%
– Mid-Cap ETFs: 0.0%
– Small-Cap ETF: 16.86%
– International: 3.88%
– Individual Stocks & Other Sector ETFs: 55.48% (most of this is large cap really with AAPL and ADI included here)
– Bonds: 0.0%
– Short ETFs: 0.0%

According to Morningstar, here’s how I compare to the major indexes (including dividends) through the last trading day, November 30, 2018:

– Dow Jones: YTD change +5.59%, 12-month change +7.62%
– S&P 500: YTD change +5.11%, 12-month change +6.27%
– NASDAQ Composite: YTD change +6.19%, 12-month change +6.64%
– Russell 2000: YTD change +0.98%, 12-month change +0.57%
– S&P Midcap 400: YTD change +0.26%, 12-month change +0.48%

These are my returns according to Quicken through the end of November 2018:

– YTD Return: -9.5% (not annualized)
– 1 Year Return: -9.54%

The VIX ended the month at 18.07 and the VXN ended at 24.02. The VIX finished November 3.16 points lower than the end of October. The VXN finished 5.10 points lower. The VIX peaked on November 20, when it hit an intraday high of 23.81. The VXN peaked the same day at 30.89. After last week’s much larger than normal weekly returns, I’m hesitating to sell new puts until we see some better follow through, especially after watching this morning’s price action and fade from the initial highs of the day.