I thought I would toss a quick update to my portfolio to allow full disclosure of my portfolio.
My portfolio finished down about 2% (Wish I could you exact amount but monthly report from my broker isn’t available yet). I’ll get into details in a bit.
Too add insult to injury, I’ve realized that my account really shows overall Yearly P/L very poorly. When you add money into the account, it dilutes it! Example — you have $10k and you are up $5k for the ytd (50%), if you add $10k to the account, it immediately shows your YTD as now 25%. I guess it’s just a number, but I did add a little money into my account and it diluted my YTD.
I can tell you this much, I now have $13.8k in my account and I’m showing a YTD P/L of $5,024. This displays as 56.93% YTD (although I’ve diluted it by added cash).
My overall account is up from about $13k prior month, but I lost about $260 last month (will double check numbers when statement comes out).
Why Down 2%?
If you take commissions out of the equation, I was just about dead even. I caused a lot of movement in account(which I later regretted). I opened my world up to Butterfly options (which I am cautious with, post to foll0w.) Some of my “go-to” long options (referred to as LEAPS) just didn’t perform this month. I also hedged a lot which ate into my account’s bottom line.
Are you Upset?
Of course I would have wanted to repeat the previous month’s performance, but I know that not every single month is going to be a winner. I had a moment towards the end of the month where I considered moving some of my LEAPS, but I thought “I would just want to re-buy them.” Since they have an expiration of Jan 2014 and I am still confident about those positions, why sell out?
How is this month going?
Three days in I’m up just about 2%, but I’m recommitting to long term options, which tend to have bad weeks or even months before the desired movement (post to follow).
Where do I stand as of this moment?
Although I’ll more post to follow, I’m Long on
- Citigroup Inc. (Symbol: C),
- Ford (Symbol: F),
- IYR (very small position),
- IVR (very small position),
- Apple Butterfly Option (Symbol: AAPL)
- Silver (Symbol: SLV)
- Gold (Symbol: GLD)
- ETF QQQ (Powershares Trust Series 1)
- VXX (Short-term Futures ETN)
I’m short on JCP and at the moment nothing else.
I look forward to business as usual when it comes to October.
Happy investing.