A little further down the path on dividend trading--late June

Regarding option assignment, I obtained a fair amount of data this week.

• Out of the possible 17 options contracts I was short on that could have been exercised for dividend capture only one, a BestBuy (BBY) option was assigned. This data suggests that if you can lock-in a little profit in the few days before a stock goes ex-dividend on a buy/write that the odds of being assigned are significantly lowered--even if the option is significantly in the money ($10 in the case of BBY)
• One other data point -- the fact that only one of my 7 BBY options got assigned gives me hope that playing the odds on the Strike prices that only get partially cleaned out is a viable strategy.
• In the school of hard-knocks category, I closed out my GSF position, but adjusted the credit offer the wrong way--I was't thinking this was the point at which I wanted to increase my offer as much as possible--I guess I have been doing too much buying and not enough selling.
• That's the bad news on GSF , the good news is that either with the assigned call (profit of .21 per share, or with the dividend plus option premium (profit of 0.425 per share) this was a strategy yielding 12%+ on an annualized basis.
• Final analysis on IVV (SPY wannabe) options -- none of the options were exercised at ex-dividend time, plus finding out the ex-dividend date is a bear. Skip this next time around.
• Final analysis on FBR. 6.8% annualized yield ex-dividend 28-June. I tried to get into $7.5 options buy/write without success (not even a 7.5 debit worked). $10 options on the 27th might have been a fair play. The stock was at 11.5 and about 50% of the $10 options did not get exercised. The stock was very volatile however. All of the $7.5 options were exercised--so the $7.5 buy/write was a loser strategy from the get-go with no lock-in profit available.