My trading Plan

I've started the experiment of trading in my IRA account. I've tried a mixture of Stocks and Options. I had 2 significant losses which really hurt my account value. Since then, I've reduced the frequency of my trades and settled on small incremental gains. I'm using a combination of Covered Calls and Calendar/Diagonal options strategies. This Blog will document my trades.

1. Goals.
    To grow my small IRA account to a value in which I can have consistent yearly income by the time I am eligible to withdraw from my IRA. I am almost 37 yrs old so that gives me 22yrs to do this.

2. Strategy
   a. Covered Calls.
       Those that are familiar with covered calls know this strategy well. I will choose companies which pay a consistent dividend and strong solid companies that have weathered these volatile markets.
   b.  Calendar/Diagonal Options trades.
       This will be similar to the Covered Calls strategy except that I will purchase Leap Calls (or Puts) for the stock surrogate. I will then sell weekly/monthly options against this long call.

3. Covered Calls
   My goal is to sell Covered calls which will give me an annualized return of 15%. I will choose stock that I want to own long term as well as pay a 2-5% dividend/year.

4. Calendar/Diagonals
   I will purchase a Long call more than 1 year out at a level consistent with lower part of 10 yeart chart. I will then sell weekly calss ATM or slightly OTM to gain .20 of extrinsic value per week. I will reclaim the initial cost of the long call and continue to sell weeklies until Long call is close to expiring. I then will sell the long call for what's left of intrinsic and extrinsic value.