For the last couple months, we’ve been letting the 6-month CDs in our emergency fund CD ladder expire so that we could move the money over to Ally Bank’s 9-month No Penalty CD product. We did that again this month, but with one significant difference, this month our local credit union (Austin Telco Federal Credit Union) provides a 1-basis point higher yield than Ally’s product. So why would we go with Ally?

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I had two covered call positions waiting on August expiration, which was Saturday. My AA HO (Aug 09 $13 strike) almost certainly expired as AA closed at $12.56 on Friday — I just can’t be sure until Monday morning given past experiences with TradeKing notification. And I’ve received assignment notification on the short-term JGL HY (Aug 09 $27.50) play even though HD closed at exactly $27.50 Friday. Not quite sure why some one would exercise that, but they did. So what do I do next?

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After doing some research last night, I identified three short-term covered calls to track briefly this morning. I ended up pulling the trigger on a trade involving Home Depot (HD) and the Aug 2009 $27.50 strike call option (JGL HY). Here’s my analysis.

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I received an e-mail from TradeKing just a little more than an hour ago informing me that my AJO HE options (Aug 2009 $31 strike) had been assigned and my shares of AFL sold. This is pretty much what I expected to happen given the option contained so little time value: assignment before the ex-dividend date of Aug 19th. So here’s a summary of round-trip trade.

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I’ve recently finished a year-long stint on my employer’s “401k Committee”. We’d been searching for a new 401k plan provider in order to lower fees paid by both the company and individuals, as well as increase participants investing options. One thing we quickly learned was that many 401k providers are now offering plans that allow participants to opt out of the administrated, standard mutual-fund plan and fully control their assets using a “self-directed brokerage” option. This, in effect, gives you IRA-like control over your investments while still staying within the plan.

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