This morning I BTC 2 ALSK Jun08 12.50 Covered Calls and STO 2 ALSK Oct08 12.50 Covered Calls for a net deposit of $91.01 in an IRA account.  My basis is now $14.70 after including option premiums received.

ALSK will go ex-dividend on 6/26/08 and I did not want to have it called away so somebody could catch the dividend.  So, I rolled these Calls out.  ALSK pays a dividend of .215 which translates to 6.82% at current valuations.  I noticed in my tax statements that part of the dividend is actually a return of capital which is not taxable.

I own 1100 shares of ALSK in various accounts and still have 4 GGC 15 Oct08 Put contracts outstanding.  I have rolled the Puts out at least once and may attempt to do it again unless they have previously been assigned to me.

This morning I was assigned 2 LEH Jan09 75 Puts.  I immediately (well almost) sold 2 LEH Jun08 30 Calls for a net deposit of $162.50 in an IRA account.  My basis for LEH is now 71.53 including all accumulated options premiums.

I am really surprised that it took this long for these LEH shares to be put to me.  I really wanted to roll them out again but they were so far underwater that I could not roll them out and net any additional premium.  I could certainly have just bought back the Puts but not giving up is one of my biggest investment faults.

On the other hand, LEH does pay a small dividend and the option premiums are relatively high.  I could roll this option out and up easily (if it becomes necessary) because of that.  There is a lot of fear associated with LEH right now.  It is certainly not something for the risk averse.  I think I will be okay with this one unless it starts to rise so fast that I cannot effectively roll out or it goes bust and I lose it all.  I don’t think either will happen just now.  Time will tell.

This morning I sold 2 TIE Jul08 20 Covered Calls for a net deposit of $70.50 in my taxable account.  My basis for these TIE shares is now 26.91 exclusive of dividends received.

As I said yesterday, I would sell the Jul08 Calls if I failed to get my price on the Jun08 20 Calls.  As you might surmise by this post I did not get my price.

TIE has been trading in a range of around 15 and just below 20 for the past couple of months.  I feel pretty confident that these options will expire in Jul08 allowing me to again sell Covered Calls on these shares.  If I am wrong I will, as is my custom, buy them out and sell new Calls further out to capture additional time premium.