BMY has been above $25 since late July.  I originally sold the Sep calls in May thinking that BMY might stay below that level.  Obviously I was wrong.  My basis is below the $25 strike price so I could have let it be called away and made a profit.  However, BMY pays a pretty good dividend of 32 cents or at about 4.79% at its current price and about 5.37% on my basis at the last dividend payout in August.  I prefer to continue holding BMY for the dividends and the extra revenue from the option premiums.  At this time I intend to continue rolling out these Covered Calls as long as I can and perhaps roll them up to a higher strike price if I can do so as a net credit transaction.

S&P currently has a 12 month price target on BMY of $30 and a 4 star Buy rating.  MarketEdge has a price opinion of 25.57 and has the equivalent of a Buy rating for BMY.  In fact, as I scan the recommendations of the various analysts available to me, they all have the equivalent of a Buy rating on BMY.  Now, I suppose that might be a bearish signal for a contrarian.  But I guess I am not very concerned with that as long as I continue to receive a decent return on my investment via the dividends and potentially opinion premiums.

Thomson Reuters continues to rate BRCD as Under Perform as recently as 8/31/10 while S&P has reduced its 12 month price target to 5.00 from 5.50 and has a 3 star out of 5 rating for BRCD.  Market Edge Second Opinion has a price opinion of 5.04 and a neutral rating for BRCD.

When I sole the Sep10 Covered Calls in July, I thought that I might need to roll BRCD out and had hoped that I might be able to roll it up at the same time.  As it turns out I would need to pay to roll the strike up so decided to just roll it out.  The various analyst research reports are supportive of just rolling the Calls out.  On the other hand, BRCD is in essentially the same business as 3PAR which was recently bid up by HPQ and DELL.  There certainly exists the real possibility that somebody will come along and make a bid for BRCD which would leave my $5 strike price in the dust.  I suspect that it is this possibility that has caused BRCD to run up 70 cents or so in the past week.

BRCD does not pay a dividend and has been a real laggard in my accounts.  I will be quite happy for it to be called away one day.

S&P currently has reduced its 12 month target to $19 from $22 for VLO.  VLO has had a 52 week high of 21.54 and a low of 15.55.  It seems to have had a lot of resistance near or just above 21 over the past year but the trend has been down with recent resistance between $18.50 and $19.  My Aug Calls were written in Jun10 for the 20 strike and expired worthless.  I only went out 2 months again but lowered my strike by $2.  If need be I will be able to roll the October Calls out and possible up for an additional deposit in my account.

Since 2009 then I have received $160 in total dividends from VLO.  VLO reduced its dividend to .05 from .15 with its Mar10 payout.  I am hopeful that the higher dividend will be reinstated one day.  In the meantime I will continue to hold and write Covered Calls on the stock.

I wrote the following in earlier posts:

S&P has a 12 month price target of $5 for Sprint.  Jim Cramer recently featured Sprint on his show Mad Money.  He has a thesis that Sprint stands a very good chance of benefitting from an upcoming iPhone release that should allow Sprint to provide service for them.  At least that is what I understood him to say.  Jim expects Sprint to report better cash flow and that will cause analysts to upgrade it which in turn will cause it to rise.  He suspected a move to over 5, possibly to 6 in the next few months.  You can see some of his comments at the following link.  If the link does not work directly just cut and past it into your browser.

http://www.thestreet.com/video/10733498/mad-money-recap-sprint.html?puc=_yahooplayer&s=1#79531631001

Since then at least part of Jim’s thesis has come true.  S&P has already raised its 12 month price target to $6.  Sprint is apparently experiencing slower customer losses and appears to benefit from a planned 4G wireless rollout.  Even today, with the DOW down about 183 points as I write this, S is up .02.

Now, in August, S&P has a 12 month price target of $6.50 while MarketEdge has a price opinion of $4.45.  The stock closed down today at $4.00.  Most of the analysts that I can see have negative “sell” type ratings on Sprint.  So, I just decided to go ahead and sell these Covered Calls at $5 and wait and see what happens.  I may need to try rolling them out before Jan11 expiration.

S paid a small dividend (2.5 cents) up until December 2007.  It has not paid a dividend since then and I am not sure if or when they will resume.  Today I do not consider S part of my core holdings, mostly because it no longer pays a dividend, I am still content to hold it and collect option premiums to reduce my basis and one day expect to exit S at a profit.  I Sprint does resume dividends one day, and before I sell it, I will re-evaluate whether or not to continue holding it.  I doubt that I will repurchase it if I no longer hold it at that time.

S&P currently has a 12 month price target of $95 on FCX.  I feel pretty comfortable selling the November $85 strike.  If necessary I think I will be able to roll the Call up and out without too much difficulty.

I like FCX and would like to own more of it.  To that end I have also sold a Nov10 75 Put on FCX which I have written about in earlier posts.  That Put is currently underwater but my basis on it would be 66.82 if assigned to me.  Even so, I may end up rolling that Put out and possibly down as I did near the end of April.  I want to own more but as cheaply as possible. 

As I noted in an earlier post, FCX has doubled its dividend to .30 per quarter.  I am really pleased to see that as dividends are one of the major reasons for me to own any particular stock.  I fully expect that FCX will continue to raise its dividend over the next few years as the world economy continues to improve.