Investments Trade Log

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giskard
Posts: 320
Joined: Sat Apr 30, 2016 12:07 pm

Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by giskard »

Updates: buying calls on drive manufacturers ($STX, $WDC it's a duopoly) because of hard drive shortages and huge price increases. I think it's possible this will be noticed and could be medium term in length 3-6 months?.

Every other computer component has had shortages and price increases recently except for HDD and SSDs (until now). I'm seeing 20 to 50% price increases on mass storage. Because the semiconductor shortage eventually has to hit here too, right?

I'm putting about 10 or 20k into this trade, not super big position and expecting it to play out quickly?

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Lemur
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by Lemur »

Sold 10 PLTR PUTS for $23 strike price expiring end of the week. I chose my strike price based not on delta but on what strike would give me a 1% or greater return for 1 week. I was given a $240 premium post commissions for holding up $23,000. So 1.04%.

Played some Excel games....Yeah this will add up. I used the premiums to just add to my positions that I think could have short-term run ups.

In other news, MAC is up 4% and actually looks like it is generating a upward trend. All my investments are up in this bull market...hitting all time highs in net-worth again.

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giskard
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by giskard »

Lemur wrote:
Mon Apr 26, 2021 5:45 pm
Sold 10 PLTR PUTS for $23 strike price expiring end of the week. I chose my strike price based not on delta but on what strike would give me a 1% or greater return for 1 week. I was given a $240 premium post commissions for holding up $23,000. So 1.04%.
IV went back down so I stopped messing with PLTR. I think it will run again but for now the hype has died down a bit so I have not messed with it much lately.

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Lemur
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by Lemur »

@giskard

I had a good run but I gambled not closing that CSP out and have been assigned 1000 shares. Earnings is coming up though by May 11. I've been debating how to play this...leaning towards doing an ITM CC and getting out with a credit.

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Seppia
Posts: 2016
Joined: Tue Aug 30, 2016 9:34 am
Location: South Florida

Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by Seppia »

I have bought a bit of Clorox and Kimberly Clark, and a month or so ago some Reckitt.
I also have a relatively large position in British American Tobacco I'm not so proud of, but in general I like the idea of setting up inflation hedges (I own very little real estate IRL)

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giskard
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by giskard »

Lemur wrote:
Sat May 01, 2021 10:36 pm
@giskard

I had a good run but I gambled not closing that CSP out and have been assigned 1000 shares. Earnings is coming up though by May 11. I've been debating how to play this...leaning towards doing an ITM CC and getting out with a credit.
I think they will do well, my base expectations is that they will essentially always upside surprise on earnings.

Fundamentally speaking they are basically the only big tech company that is ideologically willing to work with branches of the US military. They are now entrenched will continue to rapidly grow earnings by swallowing up government contracts. Companies like Google with AI expertise actively reject US government military contracts, so Palantir has a special advantage.

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giskard
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by giskard »

giskard wrote:
Mon Apr 26, 2021 12:25 am
Updates: buying calls on drive manufacturers ($STX, $WDC it's a duopoly) because of hard drive shortages and huge price increases. I think it's possible this will be noticed and could be medium term in length 3-6 months?.

Every other computer component has had shortages and price increases recently except for HDD and SSDs (until now). I'm seeing 20 to 50% price increases on mass storage. Because the semiconductor shortage eventually has to hit here too, right?

I'm putting about 10 or 20k into this trade, not super big position and expecting it to play out quickly?
Update: this trade is not going all that well. I was up a lot last week and this week it got crushed after Yellen's comments caused the big selloff Tuesday (which she walked back and if you read the whole interview didn't warrant the selloff anyway).

The new cryptocurrency that uses hard drives is definitely causing at least a temporary shortage and massive price spikes so I will continue to hold this trade & add to it. I think the market is being irrational / does not see this development happening yet. It's going to be as bad as graphics cards with the current demand.

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Lemur
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by Lemur »

@giskard

I'm down on PLTR in the short-term. Covered call expired but now I'm looking at an unrealized loss. So...this is going to be interesting. Earnings is this Tuesday and I've no idea if this stock is going to fly high or sink more. I could do another CC while IV is high but the greedy side of me doesn't want to cap gains if this stock has the potential to fly.

NOKIA woke from the grave and now is getting analyst upgrades and Jim Cramer. So its rising. I have CC's for $5.50 expiring June 11. If these shares are called away, then I will profit off Nokia. I was down almost $15k at one point!

I have continued to push all aftr-tax savings and premium money into SPG shares.

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Lemur
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by Lemur »

Ended up doing a CC on PLTR for $23 strike price expiring June 11. Did the trade this morning before the further fall in the underlying.

Ouch on this one. Had I just closed out my CSP last week for $20 instead of letting it hit expiry and being assigned...I would not be looking at a $4.5k loss right now. OTOH, no one could have predicted the sudden drop and I would have looked like a good trader if it went the other way after I was being assigned. Ah well.

I try to remind myself despite the recent trading blunders, I'm up $9k on short positions for this year. I've a ton of paper losses.

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Seppia
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by Seppia »

Don’t want to be rude or anything, but I would really be weary of any strategy that can fail on “no one could have predicted the sudden drop”.
Because all sudden drops are unpredictable.

In my experience, all of the retail investors that have been writing options have been wiped out sooner or later. It’s the kind of thing that works great until it doesn’t and it goes to zero.
The whole “a long string of very impressive numbers multiplied by a single zero always equals zero” etc etc.
Be careful out there

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Alphaville
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by Alphaville »

haha i've been looking at ethereum fly upwards recently and i'm like "oh yeah, i could be doing that" but i'm too busy setting up other systems in my life to get close to that kind of nonsense, and must for now just ogle.

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Lemur
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by Lemur »

@Seppia

True I think I was just trying to rationalize a poor decision...reality is I just veered from my strategy though. I almost always close out my CSPs and CCs at a profit until I started getting greedy and letting them hit expiry to get out that last bit of profit. Then I got caught pants down.

@Alphaville

Umm...systems. Might be time for me to revisit ERE things. When the market crashes, I don't feel so resilient lol.

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Seppia
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by Seppia »

Added a bit of MMM during the dip.
I’m not excited investing at these levels in general, but the “problem” with saving so much money is that past a certain cash % it has to go somewhere.

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Alphaville
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by Alphaville »

Lemur wrote:
Tue May 11, 2021 9:07 am
@Alphaville

Umm...systems. Might be time for me to revisit ERE things. When the market crashes, I don't feel so resilient lol.
yah, money is just one leg of many :D

🕷

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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

Prepare for adversity and insanity.

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ajcoleman22
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Joined: Mon Apr 16, 2018 8:45 am

Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by ajcoleman22 »

Couldn't the "everything bubble" simply be inflation? If everything is a bubble, nothing is a bubble.

SavingWithBabies
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by SavingWithBabies »

This article has been making the rounds on the topic of inflation: The Ultimate Guide to Inflation
So, I don’t see good evidence that real inflation has been 2x-3x higher than CPI reports as some folks suggest, but I do think that CPI understated it enough in recent history due to some calculation changes, that over a three-decade period, it hasn’t fully captured the rise in prices for an appropriate basket of goods. Even broad money supply per capita only went up about 5% per year during the period, which represents an approximate ceiling for how high CPI inflation could have been, and as we’ve covered, CPI inflation is usually slower than broad money grow by a varying gap.

More importantly, a lot of the discrepancy comes from the fact that, due to offshoring and automation, combined with rather high broad money supply growth, we’ve been in an environment where some categories have seen rapid price deflation, while other (often more essential) categories of goods and services that haven’t been automated or outsourced, have risen in price faster than broad CPI.

Plus, wages have barely kept up with inflation, which is compounded by the fact that more education (and thus more student debt) is required on average to get those same inflation-adjusted wages. In other words, on an inflation-adjusted and education-cost-adjusted basis, median wages have decreased.
From what I've read about lumber, the problem is not raw supply but rather the industry anticipated a slow down in the housing market which did not materialize. I read one estimate that it should correct within 18 months. I'd expect something similar for corn and soybeans as farmers decide what to plant next year and then harvest those crops (assuming yields are good).

ajcoleman22
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by ajcoleman22 »

@Lemur Do you have any resources you recommend for people that want to learn about options trading?

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Lemur
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by Lemur »

@ajcoleman22

I learned through Tasty Trade's "Mike and his White Board" Playlist to start:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmQ20J_ ... tastytrade

Also need to learn the greeks:
https://www.optionsplaybook.com/options ... on-greeks/

For the mathematical / visual learner...
http://www.saurabh.com/Site/Talks_files ... _small.pdf

Lastly this book is not about options but Jacob recommended this to me last year at some point:
https://www.amazon.com/More-Than-You-Kn ... 0231143729

Its a great book that helped me find my measure of risk tolerance. The book looks at finance through the lens of other disciplines as well as giving some good wisdom on risk/probability. Useful for options trading psychology which may be just as important as the mechanics of trading.

I never read a book on options specifically, but I did take an options course through my Master's Degree which helped me tie in the above information. Once I read enough digging through forums, I just started with real money because well you have to have skin in the game to really learn.

Any time I ever got burned was getting greedy and/or straying from my strategy.

Today I stick with very simple options trading strategies - rolling cash-secured puts & covered calls and the occasional PMCC (Poor Man's Covered Call) which is a strategy where you buy one long term call leap and sell shorter dated calls against it. I did awesome with a Bank of America PMCC this year and only breaking even on AMD. 90% of my trades are to take advantage of theta...selling short-dated calls/puts and closing out at profit. Mostly 30-45 DTE, 20-30 Delta. 50% profit aim. The one time I got burned in 2021 was recent - letting PLTR hit expiry and now I've to sit on that to close it out for profit - I had plenty of chances to close that. I never gotten into complicated options strategies like iron condors or butterflies, etc. mainly due to 3 reasons: 1.) I use Vanguard as my brokerage which has a terrible platform for options trading 2.) I'm too stubborn to move from Vanguard and 3.) I don't see the risk/reward ratio of these complicated strategies - nor do I have the time or willpower to get into more complicated trading and having to stare at charts all day.

My strategies have worked well in slightly bear, flat, or slightly bullish market but won't work too well on a strong bull or choppy market. I almost never go long mainly due to fear of losing capital and regretting that choice.

Hope this helps.
Last edited by Lemur on Tue May 18, 2021 9:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

ajcoleman22
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by ajcoleman22 »

Wow, that was way more than I was expecting. Thank you so much. I have a lot of reading ahead of me.

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