Assignment Risk, Short Calls, And Ex-Dividend Dates

If you are short call options in a stock or an Exchange Traded Product (ETP) like SPY or IWM you need to be aware of ex-dividend dates.  If your calls are in the money, even barely, your options may be assigned right before the security goes ex-dividend—and then you may have a problem. For example, let’s say you hold a credit call spread position: short …

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Top 11 questions about dividends

Based on searches that lead people to Six Figure Investing, these are the top 11 questions people ask about dividends: When is XYZ’s ex-dividend date? This information can be hard  to find.  Some companies provide the entire year’s dates on their webside (e.g., iShares), others like Vanguard only reveal the information a few days before the ex-dividend occurs. I have summarized / estimated ex-dividend dates …

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Overview of dividend capture strategies

I have written several posts on dividend capture strategies. My favored, although far from perfect strategy: Dividend capture with covered calls Some approaches I don’t recommend: SPY dividend capture ideas that don’t work Dividend capture—three approaches to skip Additional background and tools, and an example: Dividend capture overview Covered calls–are you ready? Combo orders–maximizing profits on covered calls DIA dividend capture: creating the position DIA …

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Saving money with combination orders

If you ever plan to trade more than straight long options you should learn to use combination orders, specifically debit and credit orders. . A combo order allows you to execute multiple trades simultaneously at a single integrated not-to-exceed price.  Some examples: Creating a simple covered call position, buying the underlying equity and selling-to-open calls Creating a call bear option spread, selling the lower strike …

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Dividend capture by buying SPY and shorting IVV?

If your devious dividend capture plan involves you hedging against SPY’s price movements by selling IVV short until after SPY goes ex-dividend you can forget about it. The IVV (Barclays Global) price doesn’t drop by SPY’s dividend amount on SPY’s ex-dividend date. It continues to track the S&P 500 until it goes ex-dividend a few days later. Your master plan will net out with you …

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