Three June Highlights: ADM, ITW, and SPLS

It felt like it has been a long time since I sold any shares in the Rescue My IRA account, so I went through my records and found that I did sell shares in May – two special situations, with COP and ACM.  Before that, there were two sales in April – NVS, also a special situation, and T.  That last one, T, was the last time I recorded a stock gain in the account; I guess that is why I’m feeling it’s been a long time.

I won’t rehash the NVS, COP and ACM situations in the post today.  I thought I might take a look at what I have been doing in the meantime to meet my revenue goal in the account: earning 1 percent return or more per month.  

As I mentioned in the last post, I’ve been doing this through dividends and covered call premiums – in trading action this week, I passed $2,000 in call premiums, as a matter of fact.

There are three positions I’ll highlight to show how the premiums have added up to this level of return:  ADM, ITW, and SPLS.  On each of them, I’ve completed two adjustments during June:

• ADM – rolled out June contracts to July, then July contracts to August, netting $292.99 for the month;
• ITW – rolled out June contracts to July, then July contracts to August, netting $181.96 for the month; and
• SPLS – rolled back and down a September position to July, and then rolled out to August, netting $226.96 for the month.

While none of these are bad results, the action is quite a bit different than what I expected I would be doing in the account.  But we are in the summer doldrums, and this week was marked by the second largest down day in the markets for the year so far. 

I’m comforting myself with the thought that by buying shares with the cash I am generating at this point, and keeping most of my lots at a strike with a gain built in, time will take care of me.  There’s likely to be a rally soon, with it being an election year and summer coming along.  Things will get back to normal then.