Today, 5/7/12, I sold 2 May12 $16 Covered Calls for a net deposit of $55.73 in an IRA account.  This transaction represents a simple return of about 1.19% and an annualized return of about 36.15% with 12 days left to expiration.  My basis for these ANR shares in is now $15.43.

The weekly Covered Calls I sold on these ANR shares expired worthless last week.  I would have preferred to sell the weekly Calls expiring this Friday but decided to sell the monthly Calls that expire in two weeks in order to capture a larger premium.  There is just not very much money in the weekly $16 Call right now.  With any luck either the stock will be called away or I will be able to sell the May 25 weekly Call on these shares.

ANR does not pay a dividend so these ANR shares are most definitely a trade and not an investment.  S&P has a 12-month price target of $19 and a hold recommendation on ANR.  MarketEdge has a price opinion of $16.15 and a Neutral recommendation.  The 23 Yahoo analysts covering ANR are more optimistic with a 12-month price target of $23.26 and a recommendation of 2.0 where 1.0 is a Strong Buy and 5.0 is a Strong Sell.

Today, 5/2/12, I bought 91 shares of DCIX to increase my holdings in one account to an even lot of 100 so that I can begin to sell Covered Calls on them.  I then sold 1 DCIX Dec12 $7.50 Covered Call for a net deposit of $26.24 in IRA account.  My basis for these DCIX shares is now $7.57, excluding dividends received.  These transactions represent simple returns of about 3.35% and annualized returns of about 5.07% on my prior basis.

I had been sitting on 9 shares of DCIX in this account since I acquired them as a spin off from DSX in January of 2011.  I did a little what-if calculation and found that rounding out the lot would reduce my basis enough to sell the Sep12 $7.50 Covered Call and be close to break even.  I suspect that these Dec12 Covered Calls will expire worthless but, if not, I think I should be able to roll the out.

DCIX began to pay dividends in August of 2011 at .03 per quarter.  The dividend increased to .15 in December 2011.  At the current price, the dividend yield is about 8.39%.  My yield will be a little lower because my basis is above the current price.

It is my suspicion that, as the world economy improves, there will be more international trade and goods being moved my container ships.  That should bode well for DCIX.

Neither S&P nor MarketEdge have price opinions or recommendations for DCIX at this time.  The 6 Yahoo analysts reporting on DCIX have a 12-month target of $8.92, down from $9.17 early in March, and a recommendation of 1.7 where 1.0 is a Strong Buy and 5.0 is a Strong Sell.

Today, 4/30/12, I sold 12 ALSK Oct12 $5 Covered Calls for a net deposit of $32.91 in two IRA accounts, eight in one and four in the other.  My basis for these ALSK shares is now $10.91 and $12.08 respectively, excluding dividends received.  These transactions represent simple return of about .30% and an annualized return of about .61% for the eight contracts and a simple return of about .18% and an annualized return of about .38% on the four contracts.

Last November I contemplated adding an additional 100 shares to the lot of four to reduce my basis, which would also increase my dividend yield.  At the time I felt a little uneasy about ALSK.  There had been a lot of debate about ALSK, most of which was negative or neutral at best.  So, in the end, as tempting as it was, I decided not to add additional exposure at that time.  Now, I am glad that I did not add the additional shares.  ALSK has fallen from being a $7 to $8 stock to being a mid $2 stock.  The most obvious reason was the dividend cut to .05 from .22 quarterly.  At .05 the yield on my basis is now 1.83% for the 800 shares where it had been better than 7.21%.

S&P has a 12-month price target of $4.00 and has a hold recommendation while MarketEdge has a price opinion of $2.56 with an Avoid recommendation.  The 3 YHOO brokers have a 12-month price target of $3.42 and a rating of 3.2 where 1.0 is a strong sell and 5.0 is a string buy.