Hello again everyone, I hope you all had a great weekend. For today’s post I thought I’d share with you what I’ve been doing in my Robinhood account. I’m taking a break from options and spoiler alert – it’s not going well! That said, I put some money over there and want to share with you what’s been happening.
Let’s get to it…
Account
So my Robinhood account has been sitting idle since January when I effectively terminated my wheel strategy on Medical Properties Trust (MPW). Sadly enough, MPW has recovered some but I would still be down on the account so I’m not too upset about it. I added the money back to my high yield savings account and have mostly made back the approximate $300 loss.
With the account idle and me taking a break from options I decided to dive into the world of Options based ETF’s. I’ve been mentioning them quite a lot in my last few posts. They make using options to generate an income much easier and way more affordable.
The truth is, the stocks we should be trading options on almost always trade above $100 per share. To run the wheel strategy there you’ll need the $10k or margin. Since I don’t like trading on margin or tying up so much capital options ETF’s were a great way to stay minimally engaged at a more affordable price.
Ultimately, I decided to commit $2,650 dollars to the account.
What did I Buy?
After doing some research I uncovered what appeared to be hundreds of ETF’s that had some variation of an options strategy overlayed onto their underlying. This made selection much more complicated than I’d imagined but I landed on the assets below. For now, the performance has not been good but we’ll look a little closer at that in the next section.
Of the ETF’s above most of them have an increasing following which I thought could make even more sense if the market turned bearish. I thought possibly there would be some supply and demand forces also helping to lift the asset price. For now, that hasn’t been the case.
Current Performance
| Symbol | Market Value | $ Gain/Loss | % Gain/Loss |
| SPYI | $434.97 | ($18.18) | (4.01%) |
| FEPI | $413.04 | ($30.39) | (6.85%) |
| JEPI | $389.76 | ($14.00) | (3.47%) |
| ISPY | $364.05 | ($20.78) | (5.40%) |
| JEPQ | $357.14 | ($21.07) | (5.57%) |
| QQQI | $144.30 | ($6.20) | (4.12%) |
| PFRL | $100.90 | ($0.54) | (0.53%) |
| YMAX | $96.80 | ($10.00) | (9.36%) |
| YMAG | $93.75 | ($9.05) | (8.80%) |
| IVVW | $48.30 | ($1.10) | (2.23%) |
For a quick laugh, take a look at the S&P 500 chart from the day I started in investing in these assets. Ouch!
If it isn’t clear immediately, let me tell you my timing is clearly worse than anyone’s. Yes, as you can see I literally started this strategy at the all time high. Again, ouch! Fortunately, I didn’t go all in that day and did dollar cost average over the next week or two but it didn’t help much because by the time the market really fell last week, most of my capital had been deployed.
For those interested, here is my Robinhood account at the moment. Currently sobbing…
Not a pretty sight and funny enough prompted my brother to tell me (he didn’t know what I’d invested in), “it looks like that company has gone out of business.” haha! Regardless, the current state of these assets doesn’t look great but in the last section lets compare them to the S&P 500 or the Nasdaq100. Most of these assets track those two indices in one way or another.
Comparison
S&P 500 Return (3/28 – 4/21) – (5.6%)
Nasdaq 100 Return (3/28 – 4/21) – (6.8%)
| Symbol | Index Return | My Return | Better | Worse | Equal |
| SPYI | (5.6%) | (4.01%) | Better |
| FEPI | (5.6%) | (6.85%) | Worse |
| JEPI | (5.6%) | (3.47%) | Better |
| ISPY | (5.6%) | (5.40%) | Equal |
| JEPQ | (6.8%) | (5.57%) | Better |
| QQQI | (6.8%) | (4.12%) | Better |
| PFRL | – | (0.53%) | |
| YMAX | – | (9.36%) | |
| YMAG | (6.8%) | (8.80%) | Worse |
| IVVW | (5.6%) | (2.23%) | Better |
Taking a Break from Options – Key Takeaways
All in all, the portfolio performed better than their respective markets which is certainly nice to see. A few key points I need to add with regard to ISPY, JEPI, & JEPQ surrounding their dividends. I actually messed this up good, thinking I could buy them during the overnight market the day before the ex-date and still receive the dividend. Turns out that the transaction is recorded on the next business day and not the day they were purchased. Thus, each of those assets fell in value when the dividend was paid, I held the shares, but I did NOT receive the dividend.
Also, YMAX & YMAG paid a dividend which I did receive for a total of around $7. Not enough to cover the loss but would have meaningfully impacted the percentage return. I’d only be down around 4-5% on each with the dividend accounted for.
In any case, the market was not kind to us last week and I timed this just perfectly to ride the full way down. Not to mention the after hours blunder in which I purchased the lions share of my position in ISPY, JEPI, & JEPQ thinking I would get the dividend. You would think I could avoid these mistakes, I’ve only been doing this for 15 years.
God bless,
Jeff
