Today, we had more transferred funds clear the ACH waiting period in our TradeKing account / GI portfolio, so we were able to execute another covered call: AJO HE (Aug09 $31) and the underlying Aflac (AFL).

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Dipping our toes in the water a bit this week, we did our first ever covered call trade (also called a buy-write.) Given our small GI portfolio size (only a couple thousand $ transferred and available for transactions at TradeKing), we chose to use the ETF known as UNG as the underlying, and a July $13 strike as the call (UNY GM). You might be asking “Why?” about now.

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Just a quick note to record that sometime between Wednesday and today, ING Direct lowered the yield on their Orange Savings Account to 1.40% APY. Their previous rate change in early March had established a 1.50% APY, so this is only a 0.10% cut.

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ING recently sent an e-mail to current Electric Orange (that’s their online checking account product) customers announcing upcoming changes to the bill payment tools. They also provided a link where anyone can preview the changes online or try out an interactive demo of the changes. The new changes are currently scheduled to go into effect the weekend of July 25th.

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A week ago I posted that we were starting a move of our emergency fund cash to Ally Bank in order to take advantage of their “No Penalty CD” product. This will allow us to stop laddering our funds in 6-month CDs, which are generally sporting pretty low rates right now. So I was just checking to see if the last transfer had completed when I noticed that they’ve already dropped the rate from a 2.15% APY to a 2.05% APY.

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