On Wednesday, 9/24/08, I sold the following Covered Calls for a net deposit of $172.50 in my taxable account and various IRA accounts.

8 DIVX Dec08 10.00 - My basis for these DIVX shares ranges from 15.99 to 20.64.  I am a little concerned that DIVX may reach the strike price by December expiration because tech stocks tend to go up during the 3rd and 4th quarters.  Maybe the general economy will prevent that this year.  However, since I am still underwater on DIVX I will roll these out if necessary.  I intend to continue selling calls on DIVX until I can get it sold without taking a loss.

2 PDS Jan09 22.50 - My basis for these PDS shares is 21.45.  PDS is a good (monthly) dividend payer and occasionally has good option premiums.  I sold the Jan09 Calls because I don’t really want it called away unless I can take a profit on them.  It is my intent to hold PDS to collect the dividends and option premiums as part of my core holdings.  I will roll these calls out if necessary.  I own another 200 shares in this same IRA account.

As I reported earlier I was assigned 2 PDS puts at 22.50 when Aug08 options expired.  I also own 200 PDS with a basis of 26.95 on which I earlier sold Dec08 30 Covered Calls.

On 8/18/08 I sold 2 PDS Sep08 22.50 Covered Calls for a net deposit of $30.50 in an IRA account.  My basis for this lot of PDS stock is now 21.70.

One of the reasons that I like PDS is that it pays a monthly dividend of .129 per share equal to an annualized 6.98%.  If I can continue to sell Covered Calls on PDS at the current rate my annual return is closer to 15% on PDS.

PDS today announced an acquisition of Grey Wolf, a competitor in the same industry.  PDS issued 42M new trust units as part of the deal.  That is dilutive to existing stock holders.  PDS has fallen some since the announcement (about 1.20 as I write this).  This deal is probably a good thing for PDS in the long run.

Here are the results for the options that I still had outstanding when the markets closed on Friday, 8/15/08.  I had four Put assignments and 22 Calls across multiple accounts that expired allowing me to keep all of the option premium.  The 22 Calls are summarized by stock across accounts resulting in 16 stocks being represented in the following list.  I will begin to sell Calls on these stocks starting tomorrow.