Saturday, April 21, 2012

Introduction

Hello, this is the bullrider. Not really but that's what I call myself. Several years ago I designed a trading system that worked reasonably in a bull market but was designed to go flat any other market, hence the name "BullRider". While I no longer trade that system I kind of adopted that as my online alias. Now I'm managing several portfolio using the basic covered call strategy and use the SPY etf as the primary underyling. That is what this blog is all about.

In December 2008 I dedicated one of my investment accounts to writing covered calls against broad market ETF's The primary inspiration for this strategy was Mark Wolfinger's book "Create Your Own Hedge Fund" and I thank him very much for the major ah-ha moment I had reading his work. I'll try to write more about that later but for the moment I just want to get his blog up and running, (my first btw). As soon as I figure out how to do it, I will post a spreadsheet that cronicles the history and performance of this account I effectionally call "The BullRider Hedge Fund".

In a nutshell the fund performed as follows:

2009 29.63%
2010 14.86%
2011 5.02%
2012 10.79% YTD (4/20/2012)

Note, these represent total account performance which include up to 10% in cash.

In each case I've beat my benchmark, the S&P 500 index as represented by the SPY etf and with significantly less drawdowns.

Going forward I expect to post all trading activity withing this account as they happen so you can follow along with what I'm doing. I also will periodically post random thoughts on my trading methods, and why I'm so pleased with my approach of growing an account with limited risk and hassle.

I welcome any and all comments.