If you’ve been trading options for very long, you probably are aware of the necessity of having a good system for tracking your trades. There have been quite a few people who have asked for a copy of the spreadsheet that I use for tracking my options trades. I’m glad to share the template that I use. Here is a link to be able to download the spreadsheet:
One of the things I like about tracking my trades is the ability to filter for certain tickers. This way I can easily see how much premium I’ve collected, especially when I get assigned on a put and end up owning the shares. In a worst case scenario where the share price has dropped significantly and is taking a long time to recover, I will sometimes sell calls at a price lower than the price I bought the shares for. If I can see how much I collected in premium for previous calls and puts on that position, it helps me to at least not lose more than I had already brought in with premiums.
For example, at the end of July of last year (2024) I sold a put contract on ETSY as premiums were high because earnings were announcing that week. After earnings were announced the share price dropped significantly as sometimes happens with earnings announcements. I did roll the contract one time, but I was assigned on the put after my first roll. It had a strike price of $64 for the put contract. I turned around and sold covered calls on the shares waiting for the price to recover. The price stayed down at a lower level for quite a while so eventually I lowered my call strike price to try and get out of the shares while still bringing in some premium. I eventually ended up getting assigned on the call at a $48 strike price at the end of May which was $16 a share below the price I had bought the shares for. But during that time I collected $15.67 per share in premiums so I almost broke even.
There are other ways this could have been managed. I could have been more patient and waited longer without ever choosing a lower strike price on my calls than the price I purchased the shares for. The share price has gotten above $64 a couple of times since I sold the shares and is currently just a little below $64. But sometimes you just have to decide when it is time to take your losses and move on. This is type of situation has only happened a couple of times for me, but since I keep my position sizes small, there really isn’t any stress since each position is only a very small portion of my account.
Week 13 Results
Week 13 was fairly typical. Here were the positions we started the week with:
On Monday morning TSLL was safely above my strike. Though I knew that TSLA was reporting earnings on Wednesday afternoon, so I would keep my eye on it in case the share price dropped. The share price of OSCR had dropped, but I decided to wait and see if the price recovered as the week went on. I opened a new position by selling a put on TMC with a strike price of $7 and an expiration of 8/1 (11 DTE). For this trade I was able to collect a premium of $40.
When TSLA reported earnings on Wednesday afternoon the share price did drop and TSLL went down over 10%, but the share price did open above my strike price on Thursday morning. As the trading day progressed on Thursday the share price did dip below my strike price, but ended the day at $10.78. On Friday the share price recovered even more and ended up above $11 so I was able to let my TSLL put expire.
The share price of OSCR was looking really good on Wednesday as it had climbed above $15 a share. But then Thursday saw a decline in the share price and ended below my strike of $14.50. On Friday the share price didn’t recover like I had hoped so I ended up rolling it out another week for an additional $39 credit. Things aren’t looking too bad as the stock closed the week out at $14.45, just 5 cents below my strike.
Summary
So here is a list of all of my trades for the first 13 weeks of this journey:
For week 13 I was able to collect $78.88 in premiums. My target for week 13 was $76.11. Total net premiums collected have been $1,036.56. That means this is the first week we have reached over $1,000 in net premiums. Our target for the first 13 weeks is $949.22. I’m currently using $3,300 in cash for my open put positions which leaves us plenty to work with in the case of a market downturn and we end up having to manage a bunch of positions longer term. Below you can see a summary of our weekly progress and also a snapshot of the account value and positions at the end of the week.
Feel free to leave any questions or comments below. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Read: How to Grow $10,000 Using Options Trading – Week 12 Update