Yesterday I sold 1000 shares of NFLD at a net loss of $4054.00 in my taxable account.

This was a highly speculative stock that I had owned for several years.  I sold Covered Calls on NFLD until they were no longer offered.  My last options expired in Jan09.  The company was on a quest to develop an artificial blood plasma substitute to be used when human blood plasma was not available.  The possible uses were when there are mass casualties and for use on the battle field, among others.  NFLD seemed always on the verge of a major breakthrough and had performed field trials a couple of times.  The results of the field trials just did not prove as effective as hoped.  In any case, I noticed Monday night that last June NFLD had filed for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection while they liquidated the company.  I should have seen that article some time ago but had mentally put NFLD on the back shelf.  I thought that NFLD would eventually solve the problems with making an effective artificial blood plasma which would make my investment golden.  It didn’t happen that way.

I logged in to my account at ETrade this morning and found that I had been assigned 3 Jan09 7.50 NFLD contracts.  I’ve written about why I have/had NFLD activity at all in a prior post.  One of the lessons I have learned in the past year is to stop looking at these more speculative stocks and concentrate on more stable companies.

I sold 3 NFLD Jan09 2.50 calls for $19.75 in my taxable account.  I now own this stock at $4.19.  The only reason that I kept this one at all is that the company continues to work on its blood replacement product and periodically it makes progress that dramatically raise the stock price.

I sold 7 NFLD Jan09 2.50 Calls for $91.75 in my taxable account.  My basis in this stock is now $4.05.

NFLD is attempting to develop a blood substitute for emergency situations where real blood may not be available.  They appear to be close but trials in Dec 2006 did not prove to be as successful as anticipated.  They continue to push forward on their research.  This will be a great product if they can make it work.  In the mean time… 

I first sold NFLD puts on this stock in Nov 2006.  My first set expired worthless as I had hoped.  My second set did not and I rolled them out until they were assigned to me in July 2007.  Jan09 options are the last ones listed so unless the company begins to show some success with resulting interest in its stock this will be my last option on NFLD.  My guess is that I will sell the stock after these calls expire in Jan09.