Today I sold 2 CCJ Jan09 22.50 Covered Calls for a net deposit of $30.50 in an IRA account.  My basis for these CCJ shares is now 34.70 excluding dividends received.

My Dec08 Calls on CCJ were at the 20 strike price.  It has been slowly moving up for the past six weeks although the Metal Mining group is still out of favor.  CCJ closed at 19.35 today.  I am still underwater by a considerable amount so don’t want it called away.  I considered selling the Jan09 20 strike for about .75 and the Feb09 22.50 for about .80 but decided that I would rather sell a little further out of the money with a closer expiration date to give me greater flexibility if I need to roll CCJ out and hopefully up.

CCJ does pay a small .06 per quarter dividend so it generally meets my desire to hold dividend paying stocks.  However, there are stocks out there with better dividends.  At some point I will probably want to “trade up” to a better paying stock.