Today, 1/6/11, 2 VZ Apr11 32 Covered Call contracts were assigned and the stock called away from me for a net profit of $800.04 on my basis in an IRA account.

VZ is ex-dividend today so I am not surprised that it was called away early.  In fact, I was anticipating it.  They are paying out .4875 per share which is about a 5.39% yield on its current price.

I would have liked to have continued to hold on to VZ but it is deep enough in the money that I didn’t see a way to roll it out for a net credit, which pretty much surprised me.  So, I will now look at either selling some Puts on VZ or perhaps just buying it back to capture the dividend and selling Covered Calls on the new stock.

I tend to think of VZ as part of my core holdings because they pay a good dividend and because I believe telecom is a good growth industry.  I think that VZ in particular will benefit this year when the iphone begins to join its wireless networks.  I suspect that VZ will gain some of that market at the expense of AT&T.

On 7/19/10, 3 CKR Sep10 12.50 Calls were executed and the shares were sold from an IRA account as 12.55 per share.  My basis for these CKR shares was 15.93, excluding dividends received. 

I only accidently noticed that these shares had been called away when I was doing some research in my account.  For whatever reason, E*Trade does not provide an alert when shares are sold as a result of a merger or reorganization, which is what happened in this case.  I’m pretty sure I lost money on these shares, even after dividends are considered but because I have not always kept track of the dividends received I don’t really know for sure.  I only know that I’ve received 30 cents per share since the beginning of 2009.

CKR was taken private.  The last I looked the offer was at 11.50 per share so I was surprised to see that I actually received 12.55 per share.  I sold the Sep10 12.50 Calls back in Mar10.  Maybe getting the higher price had something to do with that but I don’t really know.

On 12/24/09, 4 NLY Jan10 17.50 Covered Calls were exercised and my 400 shares were called away from an IRA account.  My basis for these NLY shares was 11.41, excluding dividends received, giving me a profit of $2416 after commissions.

NLY went ex-dividend on 12/24/09 and I should have known it and rolled it out to keep it from being called away.  NLY pays a 16%+ dividend at it current price of 17.35.  At the last dividend payment I was receiving 24.19% on my basis.  NLY just raised its dividend to .75 from .69 making the returns even greater.

As I said, I should have been paying closer attention and rolled my Jan10 Calls out to protect the stock.  Since I didn’t I decided to just buy the shares again which I did on the next trading day, 12/28/09.  I then sold 4 NLY Feb10 19 Covered Calls for a net deposit of $58.98.  My basis for these new NLY shares is now 17.65.