Option Expiration and a New Option Position
It's time to get caught up on some option moves that have gone through in the past week or so. I had a call option get executed on January 18th and purchased 100 shares of Bank of America. Also last week I sold a call option on Halliburton. I'll detail the two option moves below.
I don't normally buy call options as my typical strategy is to sell put options and occasionally sell calls, but at the time my capital was low and I felt there was a huge opportunity to make some money. I wish I could have made a larger bet but I'm happy with the way things turned out. I purchased 2 $10 calls on Bank of America (BAC) back in March of 2012 for $2.11 each. At the time Bank of America was trading in the $9-10 range so there still needed to be a lot of upside as BAC needed to be trading above $12.16 before I'd break-even. That would have required a greater than 28% increase before I'd make any money. Bank of America was still the bane of investors at the time, but since I was able to purchase a LEAP and had almost 2 years for the share price to recover that was fine by me.
Fast forward to about 2 weeks ago and Bank of America knocked it out of the park with their Q4 earnings announcement and shares are now trading around the $17 level. This trade worked out perfectly except that I had to sell one of the calls in late 2013 so I could execute the option and purchase the 100 shares from on of the calls. I made around a 148% profit by selling one of the calls. My cost basis on the executed shares is $12.24 which at current price levels means I'm sitting on a 39% unrealized capital gain. I plan to hold these shares for a long time as Bank of America continues to improve their operations and eventually gets back to paying more than a token dividend.
On Wednesday January 22nd, I sold a call option on HAL. I continually acquire the shares through the ESPP program every quarter, and I'm planning on using these shares to either fund a down-payment on a rental property or to purchase other dividend growth companies. I sold the $51 strike call option for $0.54 that expires next Friday, January 31st. After commission and fees I received $46.00 in option premium that I can use as I see fit right now. This option can work out one of three ways.
(1) If shares of HAL trade for less than $51, I'll get to keep the full option premium as profit. This would be a 0.90% return in about 1.5 weeks, good for a 36.6% annualized return.
(2) If shares of HAL trade for more than $51, I'll be forced to sell 100 shares of HAL for $51. Adding in the option premium would give me a sale price of $51.00 + $46.00 / 100 = $51.46 per share. That's 1.8% increase from Wednesday's closing price of $50.54.
(3) If shares of HAL fall from current levels, I can buy back the call option for a profit less than in case 1.
I almost sold some shares outright but decided to go the call option route since I can get a solid return in about one week's time. Either way this option works out the shares will be getting sold soon to either raise cash for a down-payment or make some other dividend growth investments.
So far in 2014 I've received $110.27 in option premium. I've updated my Option Summary page to reflect these transactions.
I don't normally buy call options as my typical strategy is to sell put options and occasionally sell calls, but at the time my capital was low and I felt there was a huge opportunity to make some money. I wish I could have made a larger bet but I'm happy with the way things turned out. I purchased 2 $10 calls on Bank of America (BAC) back in March of 2012 for $2.11 each. At the time Bank of America was trading in the $9-10 range so there still needed to be a lot of upside as BAC needed to be trading above $12.16 before I'd break-even. That would have required a greater than 28% increase before I'd make any money. Bank of America was still the bane of investors at the time, but since I was able to purchase a LEAP and had almost 2 years for the share price to recover that was fine by me.
Fast forward to about 2 weeks ago and Bank of America knocked it out of the park with their Q4 earnings announcement and shares are now trading around the $17 level. This trade worked out perfectly except that I had to sell one of the calls in late 2013 so I could execute the option and purchase the 100 shares from on of the calls. I made around a 148% profit by selling one of the calls. My cost basis on the executed shares is $12.24 which at current price levels means I'm sitting on a 39% unrealized capital gain. I plan to hold these shares for a long time as Bank of America continues to improve their operations and eventually gets back to paying more than a token dividend.
On Wednesday January 22nd, I sold a call option on HAL. I continually acquire the shares through the ESPP program every quarter, and I'm planning on using these shares to either fund a down-payment on a rental property or to purchase other dividend growth companies. I sold the $51 strike call option for $0.54 that expires next Friday, January 31st. After commission and fees I received $46.00 in option premium that I can use as I see fit right now. This option can work out one of three ways.
(1) If shares of HAL trade for less than $51, I'll get to keep the full option premium as profit. This would be a 0.90% return in about 1.5 weeks, good for a 36.6% annualized return.
(2) If shares of HAL trade for more than $51, I'll be forced to sell 100 shares of HAL for $51. Adding in the option premium would give me a sale price of $51.00 + $46.00 / 100 = $51.46 per share. That's 1.8% increase from Wednesday's closing price of $50.54.
(3) If shares of HAL fall from current levels, I can buy back the call option for a profit less than in case 1.
I almost sold some shares outright but decided to go the call option route since I can get a solid return in about one week's time. Either way this option works out the shares will be getting sold soon to either raise cash for a down-payment or make some other dividend growth investments.
So far in 2014 I've received $110.27 in option premium. I've updated my Option Summary page to reflect these transactions.
Nice job on buying those calls. One of my biggest gains was some speculative SLV calls I bought a few years ago. While it's a little riskier, you also have a lot more upside. The same is true for buying puts if you think a stock is going down.
ReplyDeleteAAI,
DeleteI really like BAC under $10 and wish I could have bought more. Capital was short so I went the call route. I thought I'd be able to contribute to my Roth again so I could execute both of the calls, but I wasn't able to. Good problem to have though. The BAC calls seemed like a no brainer to me and it was more a factor of them just needing some time for the markets to revalue their share price.
Thanks for stopping by!