This morning while IR was trading above 40 I BTC 2 Aug08 40 Calls and STO 2 Dec08 45 Calls for a net deposit of $151.01 in an IRA account.  My basis for these IR shares is now 49.46.

I thought about just rolling IR out to the Sep08 40 call but the chart made me think that it would better to roll up to a higher strike even though I had to go out to Dec08.  As you may know by now I don’t normally like going that far out but felt it was the better option (no pun intended…really) this time.

As you may have noticed, even at a strike price of 45 I am still underwater on IR so I really don’t want it called away just yet.  I’ll need to keep an eye on it so that if it moves above 45, especially in November or December, I can roll it out again.

On 7/23/2008, I sold 2 IR Aug08 40 Covered Calls for a net deposit of $50.50 in an IRA account.  My basis for IR, including option premiums and excluding dividends, is now 50.86.  IR is trading just over 36 today so I am still underwater.  IR is currently paying an .18 per share per quarter dividend for a return of 1.99% at its current valuation.

I think IR is, or should be, part of the infrastructure building and rebuilding in the US and world wide.  I wrote in a post recently about all of the road construction and reconstruction that I saw while on vacation.  I noticed IR equipment at several of the job sites.

I am not sure why IR has suffered in the past months.  I see at least one comment that it may be related to general fears about the economy and the price of oil.  Of course, everybody is pointing to oil as the root of all evil.  I suspect that sometimes oil is just a scape goat.  Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that the rising price of oil is detrimental but it is not the reason for everything to be going bad.

I am still catching up from being on vacation for 17 days so I am still a little behind posting recent activity in my various accounts.  I think I can post everything today.

July has been an okay month for me.  Or was it?  I own 200 shares of IndyMac Bank (IDMC) and used to own 200 shares of Countrywide Financial Corp (CFC).  Of course the CFC is now 36 shares of Bank of America (BAC) which is a little better than CFC. 

As I wrote earlier, I was assigned 300 share of Yamana Gold (AUY) in an IRA account which I am okay with.  As document earlier I rolled out several Jul08 options that I did not want to be assigned or called away.  All of the rest of my Jul08 option positions expired worthless allowing me to keep all of the option premiums.  Here is the list of those options that expired.  Note that the Total Received column may be higher because it is the result of rolling out a prior option.  For example, the AGU Put was originally sold in Dec07 and rolled out three times before it finally expired in Jul08.  The actual net received was 8.72 per share or $1744.  Still not too bad though.  Also, where there are multiple rows for a stock each row represents a separate trading account.