Investments Trade Log

[Lemur]

- Sold off my bonds in the tIRA and used the money to purchase an AMD LEAP. AMD $60 01/21/2022 . Had another $2k left over but tossed it in VTI. No reason to holds bonds imo....

This was also my first foray into LEAPS. I'm bullish on AMD anyway so this seems like a no brainer. Aim to close out at 50%.

[giskard]

- Sold 1 put on QS for $65 strike expiring January 22. For just $6500 capital, I earned a $1600 premium (indicating an immediate 24.61% return) . IV is incredibly high but so is risk. Stock is trading at $80 as of this morning. As per my strategy, I aim to close this out at 50% profit.

Haha up 38% percent today, I think you had better close that out as I'm sure you got your 50% profit!!

Nice work on that trade, selling the put was probably the safest way to approach that frothy thing.

[Lemur]

@giskard. Yes was able to close out today at 50% profit. What a strange experience that was. And I'm officially off that rollercoaster. QS is the titanic ready to come down IMO...I just rolled out some PLTR CSPs today as well for 50% profit! (only had them for 2 days or so?) at the $25 strike.

All is well with my options trades lately. Having an exit strategy has really been useful but I have to focus less on upside and start strategizing when things don't go my way...I'm getting that 'I'm too lucky right now' feeling.

I read a lot today about the 'PMCC strategy' (Poor Mans' Covered Call). I can't actually sell naked in my brokerage (Father Vanguard does not give me that permission) but I can sell covered calls on my AMD holdings holdings to reduce the cost basis on the AMD LEAP I purchased.

[Lemur]

IV for ITM Put options expring next year on QS are over 300%.

[giskard]

Updates:

Earlier this week I moved more money into commodities based equities. Mining stocks via PICK etf. Looking to put on more exposure via ETFs and selling puts on equities involved in copper, steel and other raw materials. Specifically FCX, VALE and CLF.

I'm waiting longer to bet on natural gas & oil but I think there will be a time soon. I do think there is a good chance we get another round of lockdowns before the vaccine is fully distributed and oil market could get crushed one more time.

Crytpo continues to be exciting and the price action is very fun, but I am frustrated because I think it has sucked the oxygen away from gold which I still have a large position in. Overall not adding to crypto here.

I was getting worried about deflation but the huge stimulus that just passed, prospect of another stimulus, and the veto override of the defense spending bill make me think that is more and more unjustified. Biden admin is planning on a 2 trillion "build back better" stimulus, as well as a big green energy bill. We'll see how the Georgia senate race goes but I think inflation expectations hinge on that quite a lot.

[ether]

Took a margin loan @ 1.5% to invest into a decentralized finance group called Curve.

https://www.curve.fi/combinedstats

Pretty much their paying 5-9% APY if you deposit stable coins (cryptocurrency tied to USD). The main biz model being as a market maker for exchange between stable coins and as lender to crypto brokers that keep most of their wealth in volatile assets. All loans are secured via smart contracts and have 200% collateral. The only risk factors are stable coin issuer fraud and smart contract exploits. Should be interesting experiment

[bliss88]

Hi all, my second post on this forum. I have been following Saul's Investment Discussions on the Motley Fool. While I have mostly followed what most of the FI world including JL collins advises (invest in index funds VTI/VTSAX + Bonds, with ratio depending on one's risk tolerance), I put 10% of my net worth into 7 SaaS companies that I researched by following Saul's Knowledge Base. Summary of Saul's investing thesis: SaaS companies that have a strong moat, are "sticky", and strong financials (revenue, YoY growth, etc) outperform the market. In 2020 my investment in these companies has outperformed VTI/VTSAX by 2 to 7x. Of course, I also spend more time (and time is $) researching and tracking the SaaS companies I invest in. Nonetheless, it was eye-opening to consider a different way to invest vs index-investing. I'll continue to take a 2-pronged approach (at least 50% of my net worth in VTI/VTSAX and a certain % in SaaS companies), since I enjoy the #s crunching/tracking. Once I find myself not being able to keep up/follow my SaaS companies, I'll reduce my exposure (b/c I do see that one needs to keep an eye on them... eg one tech company's advantage can quickly be disrupted by an innovator, and stop growing/earning as much).

[nomadscientist]

@lemur

Both are likely to blow up, TSLA more likely than BTC; FOMO works because you are missing out on something, but people forget quickly what disaster they were "missing out on" five years ago.

Following fads for a while and then bailing out is probably a winner for people with good social antennae, regardless of underlying profitability or ultimate outcome.

I remember arguing with people on the Bogleheads forum about stock picking TSLA; many of them were in favor of it. That should have been a sign that the momentum would run for a while. But I have poor social antennae.

[classical_Liberal]

,,,

[giskard]

Today gold sold off an incredible 4% and silver was down 9% at one point.

I sold cash secured puts on silver miners: SSRM, AG and HL at Feb 19th expirations. I'm pretty sure I bottom ticked it on those but we'll see if it sells off again next week haha. I closed some other profitable CSP positions that had theta burned to nothing to reduce my margin requirements a little bit.

I know it was selling off because of real yields rising with bond yields going up, but I find it hilarious that gold could sell off that hard as Biden is talking about doing another stimulus in the trillions which includes 2k payments to all Americans & big infrastructure plan on the same day. This is on top of a blue wave senate win Wednesday.

[white belt]

I know it was selling off because of real yields rising with bond yields going up, but I find it hilarious that gold could sell off that hard as Biden is talking about doing another stimulus in the trillions which includes 2k payments to all Americans & big infrastructure plan on the same day. This is on top of a blue wave senate win Wednesday.

My guess is that the BTC fever means money is flowing into BTC as a hedge against fiat currency debasement rather than gold. I’m ok with that because it means I can improve my gold position.

[thedollar]

Things are insane right now.

So many new investors buying companies with no profit at extreme and highly inflated market caps because the stock price will supposedly only continue to increase.

Well sadly... they are very likely entering a world of pain. This will not stand! Insanity will be replaced by normalcy in time but the transition is going to be painful for a lot of new investors.

brb while I grab some popcorn (and hodl)

[classical_Liberal]

...

[white belt]

So many new investors buying companies with no profit at extreme and highly inflated market caps because the stock price will supposedly only continue to increase.

Well sadly... they are very likely entering a world of pain. This will not stand! Insanity will be replaced by normalcy in time but the transition is going to be painful for a lot of new investors.

I would caution against assuming current trends will be replaced by "normalcy" any time soon.

Here's a quote from Erik Townsend on Macrovoices that paints possible outcomes:

"I think we're looking at one of two possible scenarios. Number one is the possibility that we're at the late stages, that parabolic euphoria stage, of a late stage bull market where we're getting close to the final blowoff top and everything reverses and heads down from there [...] The other possibility [...] is a crackup boom; the scenario where governments just go crazy with printing more and more money. That money has to go someplace and where it ends up going is into asset prices causing everything from real estate to stocks to commodities and eventually the goods in the inflation basket (cost of gasoline, bread, butter) all goes up. The crash in that scenario comes in the form of a crash of the real purchasing value of the currency. You never see a crash in nominal stock prices."

Full episode here: https://www.macrovoices.com/932-macrovo ... ne-in-2021


Also, if you're defining "normalcy" as back to a time when value investing makes sense, then I would also caution you that some have argued traditional value investing is actually just a short volatility trade: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11725&p=231902&hilit=value#p231902

[white belt]

Speaking of investment trades, my 70 shares of URNM I bought back in November for $29.06 are up to $46.50. Looks like most of the rise is attributed to the creation of a strategic uranium reserve: https://trib.com/business/energy/feds-a ... 99bc9.html

I will probably hold this one for a while as I anticipate that URNM will continue to climb during the Biden administration. At some point the advisors to the Democrats are going to realize that they need nuclear power to transition away from fossil fuels.

[giskard]

Speaking of investment trades, my 70 shares of URNM I bought back in November for $29.06 are up to $46.50. Looks like most of the rise is attributed to the creation of a strategic uranium reserve: https://trib.com/business/energy/feds-a ... 99bc9.html

I will probably hold this one for a while as I anticipate that URNM will continue to climb during the Biden administration. At some point the advisors to the Democrats are going to realize that they need nuclear power to transition away from fossil fuels.

I know right, I started buying some Uranium miners in November and I think they can keep going up on this general commodity rally.

[Crusader]

I didn't read the rest of the thread, so I appologize if this was discussed before or elsewhere. But, I am quite pessimistic in terms of the COVID situation. I think it will be many months before things go back to normal, and until then, the governments are spending money on the measures, assistance, medicare etc. Many people lost their jobs.

What does this mean for investing? How should we adjust? (I mostly invest in the index, 75% and fixed income/bonds, 25%). My thinking is that even if we have inflation, by owning stocks (i.e. parts of companies), you still own something concrete, so the dollar value will reflect inflation. As for the economy not doing well, well, there isn't much we can do about that, so my strategy has been to change nothing.

[biaggio]

I don't know. Here's one simplistic line of reasoning. Developed markets received awesome injections of new money, much bigger than during the GFC---notice the spike in supplies (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1 or more broadly https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MZM). The velocity of money, the number of times a dollar is spent to produce nominal GDP, has been going down (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1V or https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MZMV). This means (or rather could mean) that it's being hoarded by wealthy companies and private individuals.

A large chunk could end up with big well-performing companies that are included in the main stock indexes so sticking to indexing looks like a sound idea to me.

[Crusader]

Interesting, thanks for that, biaggio! Maybe what's happening is that the injections of money are going to the poor communities that have to spend it all and so the money ends up being in the hands of the big corporations. Knowing all this, maybe the smart thing to do is to invest in the industry that deals with the essentials: food, utilities, medicine.

EDIT: a very basic, quick investigation made me think that my hypothesis is wrong. Maybe now people are spending less money on luxury goods from food and trying to save on utilities and so the profits are lower as well. These market trends seem very hard to predict. I am sticking to the index.

[Der Leiermann]

My thinking is that even if we have inflation, by owning stocks (i.e. parts of companies), you still own something concrete, so the dollar value will reflect inflation.

This may seem logical (it was to me) but has it been the case in the past? Ben Graham, the grandfather of investment gurus has done some research on that hypothesis. In the time period from 1915-1970 there was sometimes high inflation and negative stock growth or negative inflation and high stock growth (and everything in between). His conclusio is that there is no strong relationship between stock market returns and inflation. Source: The intelligent Investor, chapter 2