Here was yesterday's 'real-time' trade alert...
Monday, June 4, 2007
11:35 am PST
Bought 200 shares of AKS (AK Steel Holding Corporation) at $35.15 (ask).
Sold (2) AKS Jun 35 (AKSFG) call option contracts at $1.45 (bid).
Why? To make money. Is it sure? No. What main factors are considered? Market broadly strong, favorable stock price trend, sound company rating for option premium recieved, earnings already reported and no foreseen upcoming news releases.
Further advantages...
Short call option is covered and slightly in-the-money (ITM).
A 3.7% return is immediately recieved from premium.
Stock needs only be held for 10 days total.
Percent of 20k portfolio: 30%
Is percent exposure a risk? Not necessarily. Strong research parameters most never result in any (non-biotech) position taking precipitous 25-50% fall. But if it did...portfolio would take a 15% hit. This conceivably can be made up in about 2 months with this covered call strategy.
A 10-20% hit has happened on average with 1 or 2 (non-biotech) stocks each year - mostly due to a violent earnings report fluctuation. We close these positions immediately and move on with the 6% hit the portfolio easy to make up. As a rule, we avoid holding a position through it's release date. Again, this applies for most all holdings - not biotechs, which we do invest in.
One biotech firm at any given time in our portfolio produces very nice returns most invested months. We do however get hit about once per year for this larger 25%-50% drop. However with these holdings a 20% allocation to the portfolio makes the risk to drawdown MUCH less. About 10% that can be made up rather quickly.
Even still this strategy is easy to sleep at night. Historically, drawdowns have been: ~10% just recently and ~15% in early 2004.
That's the downside - and like I say...take a look at charts and see that day-to-day fluctuations with this approach (I deem) are worth the risk. [50% average annual returns with comparably low risk (ok we'll take your side...are CURRENTLY BEING proven with a much smaller account) - are nothing to balk at.]
Also note that that 20k ledger at the left of chart can be 20M, with the same 4-6 positions. And guess what? The same day-to-day fluctuations will chart out. Not bad (I think most would agree).
The upside: Annualized return for a two week holding at this rate is about 250%.
Of course I don't care as this means nothing - but managing risk is what 'GILL' has aspired to of late. And most would have to agree by now...this is a feat not easily achieved!
Paysense