Most of the stocks that I own and write Covered Calls upon also pay dividends.  Dividends occur on a regular basis and add significantly to my annual investment income.  Year to date I have received a total of $2.540.58 in dividends in my various accounts.  My year to date average monthly dividends received is currently $845.86.

My YTD dividends are down by $69.93 on a monthly average from last year.  That represents a 7.63% decrease to date year over year.  Although down, this is an improvement over last month.  I attribute the decreased average dividends to several of my dividend paying stocks being called away in the past few months.  During March, I received notice of the following dividends paid in various accounts for a total of $1,015.66.

Please notice that PGF and PGH both pay monthly dividends.  The annualized dividend yield for the monthly dividend payers is based upon the simple and false assumption that they will pay the same dividend each month for the next 12 months.  The actual annualized dividend yield may be more or less than illustrated here.

I use my basis per share to determine the simple and annualized percentage return because I feel that it gives me a better representation of the value of the dividends as they relate to my portfolio.  My basis may be above or below the market price which causes my return to be lower or higher than published yields for a stock.  I calculate my basis per share as my acquisition price less any option premiums received on those shares.  I do not use dividends to reduce my basis.

Today, 3/18/13, I Sold 2 Oct13 5.00 Covered Calls for a net deposit of $26.47 in an IRA account.  My basis for these BALT shares is now $10.85, excluding dividends received.  This transaction yields a simple return of about 1.20% and an annualized return of about 2.04% on my prior basis with 215 days to expiration.

BALT is a dry bulk shipper.  I already own 900 share of Diana Shipping (DSX), which is also a dry bulk shipper.  A difference between the two is that BALT is still paying a dividend although they cut the dividend to five cents last year and then again to one cent. The current dividend yield is about 3.08%, while DSX suspended its dividend after its Nov08 payment.  However, I do expect that DSX will resume paying dividends sometime in the future.

I am rolling the dice here by continuing to hold BALT.  There is a lot of negative news about the industry being very over built.  I believe the success of any of the dry bulk shippers depends very much upon an improved world economy.  That will eventually occur of course so the question then becomes which shipper will survive long enough to reap the rewards?  Cramer recently suggested buying DSX as he sees the Dry Shippers Index rising and that DSX is one of the better-positioned shippers.

None of the analysts or firms that I can see follows BALT so I do not have any guidance on price targets.  Even Yahoo is light on the analyst information available.

Most of the stocks that I own and write Covered Calls upon also pay dividends.  Dividends occur on a regular basis and add significantly to my annual investment income.  Year to date I have received a total of $9,581.02 in dividends in my various accounts.  My year to date average monthly dividends received is currently $871.00.  The year-to-date dividends currently represent about 32.90% of my average monthly investment cash flow and about 2.22% return on my current basis value.

My YTD dividends are up by $83.10 on a monthly average from last year.  That represents a 10.55% increase to date year over year.  I attribute the increased average dividends to a few companies raising their dividends and to my purchasing additional dividend paying stocks.  During November, I received notice of the following dividends paid in various accounts for a total of $451.43.

Please notice that PGF and PGH both pay monthly dividends.  The annualized dividend yield for the monthly dividend payers is based upon the simple and false assumption that they will pay the same dividend each month for the next 12 months.  The actual annualized dividend yield may be more or less than illustrated here.

I use my basis per share to determine the simple and annualized percentage return because I feel that it gives me a better representation of the value of the dividends as they relate to my portfolio.  My basis may be above or below the market price which causes my return to be lower or higher than published yields for a stock.  I calculate my basis per share as my acquisition price less any option premiums received on those shares.  I do not use dividends to reduce my basis.