Month End Summary – April 2020

April was a much better month for those who were positioned for a bounce. Since I have so much of my account allocated to shorting TLT, I didn’t get as big of a recovery yet, but I know it’ll come eventually. My account did get a bump from TLT option values falling some, but TLT itself rose a couple of dollars. My other options losing value helped more than anything else. I’m still doing better than the indexes for the past year and for the year-to-date.

My account ended April with a Net Asset Value (NAV) of $95,384.17 according to Interactive Brokers (IB) after ending March with a balance of $90,183.92. I had a paper gain of $5,200.25 (+5.77%) on paper for April (roughly half the Dow’s 11.08% gain and the S&P’s 12.68% gain). I had no realized gains in April since my only closing trades were option assignments where the gain is rolled into the share price until I close the position. I received $24.79 in interest. I received no dividends in April since I didn’t own anything that I was long when they went ex-div. IB charged my account $8.75 in monthly minimum trade fees. That goes away when I get my account over $100,000 again.

Quicken reported that I have an account value of $95,389.62, which is two cents less than what IB shows after I add in the $5.47 in interest accruals that IB credits in advance of the actual payment. I’ll wait another month again to fix the rounding error to see if it rounds back the other way and fixes itself soon.

I’m only 40.47% invested in this account as of the end of April, 1.38 percentage points more than the end of March. I have $56,779.46 left in uninvested cash and one option set to expire in April. This total might be off some since I’m $18 in the hole per share on my 500 short shares of TLT. My one IWM May $110 put is $15 out of the money today after finishing last month $20 out of the money. I’ve thought about closing it early since I have a paper profit of nearly $800 on the option, but I’m waiting because I wouldn’t mind buying IWM at $110 this month if we get another big price drop.

This is my asset allocation in my IB account as of the end of April 2020:

• Large-cap ETF: 22.95% (including QQQ)
• Mid-Cap ETFs: 0%
• Small-Cap ETF: 11.53%
• International: 0%
• Individual Stocks & Other Sector ETFs: 16.25% (only MSFT for now)
• Bonds: -87.40% (not including my 5 TLT June covered puts and naked calls)

Here’s how I compare to the major indexes:

• Dow Jones: YTD change -14.69%, 12-month change -8.45%
• S&P 500: YTD change -9.85%, 12-month change -1.13%
• NASDAQ Composite: YTD change -14.18%, 12-month change -0.38%
• Small-caps: YTD change -22.05%, 12-month change -18.92%
• Mid-caps: YTD change -16.69%, 12-month change -10.99%

My return according to Quicken through April 30, 2020:

• YTD Return: -4.62% (not annualized)
• 1 Year Return: +4.32%

The VIX ended the month at 34.15 and the VXN ended at 35.28. The VIX finished April 19.39 points lower than the end of March. The VXN finished 16.01 points lower. The VIX peaked on April 1, when it hit an intraday high of 55.69. The VXN peaked the same day, at 60.59. Volatility is up today and I plan to watch it for a few days before making my next trade.