Giskard's Journal - slingin code to reach FI

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giskard
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Re: Giskard's Journal - slingin code to reach FI

Post by giskard »

June 2020 Summary

Total Wage Income (post tax): $13300
Options Premium Sold: $1560
Dividends: $519
Business Income: $0
Spending: ~$4500.
Ending Net Worth: $785k

I've been bad at recording spending lately and while I barely spent anything in May, I spent quite a bit more than normal in June (new office chair, AirBnB trip, some fireworks, etc). I also bought a new vehicle which I paid about 10k in cash for, but I didn't record that in the spending here. Not even trying to operate the side business right now. The market just got destroyed by covid.

May 2020 Summary

Total Wage Income (post tax): $19900
Options Premium Sold: $1614
Dividends: $233
Business Income: $163
Spending: ~$2500
Ending Net Worth: $749k

I ended up working a ton in May, and really ramped up the amount of puts I was selling (which I continued in June). Mostly I was still long all of my stock positions here so benefited from recovery in the markets. I shifted a lot of my US stock exposure to foreign stocks, cash and PMs. The business I built selling courses just fell off a cliff completely due to the industry its in.

April 2020 Summary

Total Wage Income (post tax): 16820
Options Premium Sold: $981
Dividends: $274
Business Income: $760
Spending: ~$3000
Ending Net Worth: $692k

I got my tax refund this month with was pretty large because I overpaid by a lot and I guess I had more deductions than I figured I would. This year I've already incurred so many long term and short term taxable gains from stocks sales and selling options I'll probably owe some money. Really crazy to see the net worth change over these few months. Massively recovered this month as you can see. My portfolio is currently really heavy into tech stocks and gold miners.

March 2020 Summary

Total Wage Income (post tax): $10414
Options Premium Sold: $734
Dividends: $502
Business Income: $250
Spending: ~$3000
Ending Net Worth: $597k

Huge hit to my portfolio this month. I believe spy was down about 30% and my net worth dropped by about 15% by the end of March. So I wasn't all that freaked out, but I did start to rotate out of anything I was holding that was financial (banks & insurance). Made some money this month on ZM calls, but lost some trying fool with buying SPY puts like an idiot.

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giskard
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Re: Giskard's Journal - slingin code to reach FI

Post by giskard »

July 2020 Summary

- Total wage income (post tax): $20,100
- Dividends: $250
- Income selling options: $3400
- Spending: ~$4000 (vacation)
- Ending net worth: 871k
- M/M change: +85.5k

+9% increase in net worth, mostly up due to my speculations on precious metals and the miners. Also crypto somewhat. Lot of income this month. Worked a lot and sold a lot of puts which I was able to close early and roll over. Sold some high IV stuff that quickly moved up. Ended the month with about 45k in open puts exposure, all cash secured.

JollyScot
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Re: Giskard's Journal - slingin code to reach FI

Post by JollyScot »

Those are some nice bumps in Net Worth. Its difficult coming to terms with the fact that even when earning ridiculous amounts the stock market is outpacing all of it.

Much like you I went heavily into bullion and bullion mining. Although I have been waiting for a pop much longer. Didn't go for the tech stocks, although I understand they are more in demand just now and have low cost bases, the multiples are just too high.

Seems like everyone is pricing in them dominating every sector forever with little competition and more unlimited growth. Maybe, but that seems to be changing. Difficult monopolies to unwind though and is likely to be painful kicking and screaming affair when it does come.

Still my bullion investment has resulted in an almost 300k bump in net worth. Making the contract I'm doing immediately seem like a waste of my time relative to 4 months ago when I agreed to extend. However I still have a general principle of completing the agreed work. We will see at the next extension.

Hopefully you can get back to your own thing soon enough. The increases you have seen looks like you will hit actual FI number you need with your higher expense base soon.

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giskard
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Re: Giskard's Journal - slingin code to reach FI

Post by giskard »

JollyScot wrote:
Mon Aug 10, 2020 2:25 am
Much like you I went heavily into bullion and bullion mining. Although I have been waiting for a pop much longer. Didn't go for the tech stocks, although I understand they are more in demand just now and have low cost bases, the multiples are just too high.

Seems like everyone is pricing in them dominating every sector forever with little competition and more unlimited growth. Maybe, but that seems to be changing. Difficult monopolies to unwind though and is likely to be painful kicking and screaming affair when it does come.
Seems like a top, but what if covid goes on 3 years? Tech is the only thing growing now and it just looks set to continue. Underneath all the froth the big tech companies actually do have insane revenue growth rates. The small companies have insane growth rates + insane valuations. But some of the big ones are nearly fairly priced if you look at something like PEG ratio.

Breaking up big tech is a huge risk but after they broke up Standard Oil each of the individual oil company stocks actually went on to do better independently. Not saying that would happen with big tech, but I can see e.g. AWS, Amazon Retail, Amazon Digital, Amazon Grocery, Amazon Advertising and Amazon Whatever else all doing well by themselves.

Another thing is that if you are sitting on a lot of capital gains its hard to pull the trigger and sell. So yeah it makes me uneasy, but its one of the only sectors that has strong arguments for why it should continue to attract money.
JollyScot wrote:
Mon Aug 10, 2020 2:25 am

Still my bullion investment has resulted in an almost 300k bump in net worth. Making the contract I'm doing immediately seem like a waste of my time relative to 4 months ago when I agreed to extend. However I still have a general principle of completing the agreed work. We will see at the next extension.

Hopefully you can get back to your own thing soon enough. The increases you have seen looks like you will hit actual FI number you need with your higher expense base soon.
It messes with your mind! You just have to tell yourself its a fluctuation and its not a trend though (I suppose). I have a hard time doing that, I get caught up in the emotional reaction. I'm getting better about it, but part of the problem is its always a swing of an increasingly large amount of money if you do it right. I remember when an intraday thousand dollar swing spooked me. Now I get intraday 20k swings (yeah that spooks me a little, like I said - trying to deal with it). I'm about to post next months numbers and I had some losses so I'm happy that brought me back to down to this planet a bit.

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giskard
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Re: Giskard's Journal - slingin code to reach FI

Post by giskard »

August 2020 Update

Income wages: 8.1k
Income selling options: 2.9k
Spending: 10k (vacation + special assessment)
M/M NW Change: + 29.4k
Net worth: 900.7k

Sept 2020 Update

Income Wages: 14k
Income selling options: 2k
Spending: 4k
M/M NW Change: - 35k
Net worth: 865K


Summary

I went on some vacations (which means I don't earn money), got hit with a huge special assessment and spent a lot of money over this time period. Basically Between the spending and gains and losses evening out over the past couple of months I'm basically back where I was in July.

The next couple of months will be different. Spending should go down and I picked up another contract that will net me a large (temporary) increase in income. I guess I already hit the FICA max this year so why not right? I'll be working 10 hour days for a while, at least 6 days a week :? ! I already put a lot of time in on this other contract but I get paid out monthly from that so it won't show up in the income for a while. The good news is that its for something I'm very interested in and work I'm trying to shift more toward doing fulltime.

Thinking ahead

Right now we're in a weird time. Home prices are crazy and the markets are tight. I'm thinking ahead about trying to buy a house, settle down a little bit and try to do more permanent things to lower expenses and build a FIRE lifestyle. I'd like to be able to grow food, and have have more space to be able build things, fix things, and store things. It would be excellent to have a dedicated room as a private office.

I could save a lot more money if I had more time. As it is I'm so busy with so many projects going on, just trying to keep up with working out and eating healthy is hard for me.

But the interesting thing is that I feel most satisfied in this lifestyle. If I'm fully involved in interesting projects even to the detriment of everything else, I'm pretty happy overall. Can't wait to go back to working on my own projects like this. I'm thinking about it after this current contract ends. I just need to have to steady wages for a while if I'm going to get a house.

The house thing is a big IF. I just don't see how this all doesn't fall apart about in 6 to 24 months. But its a long cycle. Can I wait that long? Not sure. I never wanted to become a real estate investor so maybe it doesn't matter. I just need to focus on my own circumstances and think about it in terms of my own income / payments and the interest rates. But its hard not to look at the bigger picture and see the housing market melt down when forbearance ends.

Is anybody else in the same situation of desperately needing to change housing arrangements but hesitant to pull the trigger because of the current market and all the impending doom?

Update on options trading

My options selling income went down because I basically let everything roll off and didn't sell more last month. In that account I have about 50k cash and only about 10k exposure to puts sold against it. I also got assigned a lot of gold/silver stocks (actually at decent prices so not really a loss here) and that cash position was up to 80k at one point. I've been selling calls against all of the assigned stocks in September. Earlier this year I had about 80% ratio of exposure vs cash so I have way less exposure overall.

I'm expecting a lot of volatility at the end of the month/ November but the VIX has dropped and it just doesn't make sense to have a lot of exposure at lower premiums when the market could make a sharp move down. I figure if I wait a month I'll get much higher premiums, ride it out the volatility in cash and then start selling again.

I'm also just starting to put in a bunch of good till cancelled limit orders on my account that would only get hit if some crazy moves happened. Well, they do get hit sometimes and this tends to make better returns (but less money, since they don't get hit super often). So this is also a way I'm also changing my trading style here.

Yesterday's Trump tweet (cutting off stimulus talks, tanking the market immediately) is proving that this is probably the right strategy :lol:

ertyu
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Re: Giskard's Journal - slingin code to reach FI

Post by ertyu »

why gtc orders and not selling leap puts?

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giskard
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Re: Giskard's Journal - slingin code to reach FI

Post by giskard »

ertyu wrote:
Wed Oct 07, 2020 12:54 pm
why gtc orders and not selling leap puts?
The sweet spot of the amount of premium you can make is less than 45 days out. I also like the flexibility of being able to roll positions every month (or not, as I did last month), instead of having that exposure kept on for multiple months at a time.

The 45 day mark is touted a lot by the tasty trade guys as the place where you get the most premium for the risk: https://www.tastytrade.com/tt/shows/the ... 26-2016--2

JollyScot
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Re: Giskard's Journal - slingin code to reach FI

Post by JollyScot »

I know a little about the pulling the trigger on a house. My parents have been waiting for months thinking everything is expensive and everything should collapse. I was a little more along the lines of if I want the house then the cost is X and I have now fixed that cost. It is only an issue if prices drop if I were planning to sell.

At the time of purchase I wasn't, as of now after the property experince and watching the world crumble around us. I am less sure as to wether what I have is the best choice. However you don't want a wave of inflation that is designed to save the underwater house owners to result in you ending up with a bigger bill. At this point I am not sure what is more likely, in almost every respect that market should be in the toilet. It might be offset by the amount that is being dished out.

If it is what you want to do long term then I would just jump in, once the price is paid and you own it ouright if it goes down it doesn't really matter other than a psychological thing.

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giskard
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Re: Giskard's Journal - slingin code to reach FI

Post by giskard »

JollyScot wrote:
Mon Oct 26, 2020 6:33 am
At the time of purchase I wasn't, as of now after the property experince and watching the world crumble around us. I am less sure as to wether what I have is the best choice. However you don't want a wave of inflation that is designed to save the underwater house owners to result in you ending up with a bigger bill. At this point I am not sure what is more likely, in almost every respect that market should be in the toilet. It might be offset by the amount that is being dished out.

If it is what you want to do long term then I would just jump in, once the price is paid and you own it ouright if it goes down it doesn't really matter other than a psychological thing.
All things considered I'm leaning toward your line of thinking and just going to go ahead and do it soon.

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giskard
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Re: Giskard's Journal - slingin code to reach FI

Post by giskard »

October 2020 update

Income wages: 15.3k
Income selling options: 2.06k
M/M Change: +15.9k (1.81%)
Spending: 3.4k
Savings Rate: 77%
Ending NW: 881k

Gains - mostly from crypto. Losses - very modest losses in my equity positions. I let most of my put exposure roll off before the election but then right before the election I got a feeling that I was being silly and the whole thing was overblown and the VIX was too high. I decided the election would be much less of an issue that everyone was expecting and volatility was so so so high that it should be sold as the textbooks say :lol: .

So I sold another ~30k in put exposure and basically it went fine (I'm writing this halfway through November and just about everything is expiring next week on track to be unassigned). I did get assigned some Barick Gold shares on Friday but I'm cool with that and I actually still made money on the premium. I think the gold selloff Monday was overdone.

Crypto has been on a big run as more and more major investors endorse it and reveal positions. Planning to ride this wave up through the next couple of years and continue to accumulate. I like that crypto is not being hyped in the mainstream media yet in this cycle (just some financial media) and it is still making huge gains. The folks buying it now I think have stronger hands and deeper pockets. Right now 10% of my NW is in crypto and if that starts creeping toward 50% I will start to divest and diversify into something else.

I essentially am making 3 big trades now. 1 - tech stocks. 2 - precious metals. 3 - crypto. I'm also holding a lot of cash to sell puts. Over 10% of my NW is in cash. So days like Monday hurt because my portfolio is somewhat anti-correlated to the S&P500 overall. Tech stocks I am slowly reducing my exposure to. Overall my performance in 2020 is outpacing the SPY by a fair amount. Although my drawdowns are frequent and huge! So it's working but it can go really wrong really fast. I'm not totally comfortable with all my equity exposure right now and am looking to reduce it.

Just to ballpark performance to today -
Starting nw - 686k
Ending nw - 956k
Income 2020: 150k
Spending 2020: 53k
Ytd Performance: ((956 - (150-53)) - 686) / 686 * 100 = 25.2%
SPY ytd performance: 9.48%

I started a small (3k) investment at Masterworks and bought shares in a painting, we will see how that goes. I'm not going to do that very often but I'd like 1% to 2% of my net worth exposed to fine art just to have more diversification to alternative assets. So my target allocation there is 10 to 20k.

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giskard
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Re: Giskard's Journal - slingin code to reach FI

Post by giskard »

November 2020 Update
If speculators could find unlimited credit, one can't tell what crises would ensue.
- Baron James de Rothschild

Wage Income: 27k
Options Income: 1.6k
Expenses: 3.5k
M/M net worth change: +122k
Total Net Worth: 1.004 million.

I will say this is the best month I've ever had in terms of income and investment returns and today the moves in crypto pushed my net worth over 1 million for the first time ever.

It doesn't feel real yet (especially because mostly this was due to the big moves in crypto this month, and we know how that goes). Also I did pretty alright with a few other speculations that randomly paid off this month which I will mention.

One of them was fannie mae / freddie mac. Did you know in 2009 when they nationalized Fannie Mae the shares started trading on pink sheets and they still trade there? Over the last few years there was speculation that they would be recapitalized and set loose. What government did was probably illegal and unconstitutional in some ways and finally some of court cases have worked their way through. The favorable rulings this month are causing these shares to jump (I accumulated small amounts over the last few years). I'll be exiting these soon either because the preferred shares will get re-valued and exchanged or I'll just sell them.

Another crazy mania that I lucked into was Palantir. I bought LEAPS the 2nd week of November and they started getting bid up 10% a day for several weeks straight. I have exited about half of this, I'm winding the rest down shortly. I meant to hold these much longer but its hard to sit on 200 and 300% gains on calls of a volatile stock. I'll probably get back into this by buying shares when the price comes down or by selling puts to get assigned.

Oh I guess also Slack being bought out was a big winner as well.

I also let most of my options exposure roll off again after I added some right before the election. I decided the volatility expectations around the election were overdone and I sold the vol. I did get assigned a couple of things but still sitting on a lot of cash to sell puts against.

I've talked other places about how I went very long on gold & silver miners starting in 2019 and I've kept accumulating them. Well the price of precious metals has corrected a lot. Some people say this is because real rates are rising, others because of reduced inflation expectations, and other say its because bitcoin sucked all the gold investors into it instead. Anyway, that's been a pretty bad performer for me lately. I did trim some positions but basically still very long gold, silver, and the miners.

I fully expect to lose a ton of money in December and see a huge setback. But this was a fun update to write.

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giskard
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Re: Giskard's Journal - slingin code to reach FI

Post by giskard »

December 2020 updates and 2020 summary:

- Ending net worth: 1.1 million.
- 2020 total return on assets: 44% (that's pct return on investments)
- 2020 actual change in net worth: 65% (that's just change in net worth: returns + income)
- Avg monthly spending: $4.6k
- Avg monthly income (take home): 12k
- Total income from selling puts / calls: 19.5k

This year I really branched out in what I was doing with my money. I read a lot of books on macroeconomics, market crashes and monetary policy. I came to some conclusions that led me to invest heavily in precious metals and other hard assets. I had been accumulating a small stake in bitcoin and ether (4% of my net worth at the beginning of the year), which turned into a large stake mostly through appreciation but also increasing allocation to it (now 21% of my net worth).

I ended up doing a lot more concentrated bets this year and they (mostly) worked. This is the first year I've really done that and been able to do better than the S&P 500 by a margin like this. But it also makes me very cautious for next year. I know it's not easy to continue performance like this and I know the things I have allocated capital too are volatile so I need to be prepared for BIG drawdowns. I'm going to continue with my current thesis that this will be a decade of monetary debasement, low interest rates and fiscal actions by governments as the debt /gdp ratios in every developed country balloon.

I also started selling options and doing "the wheel" on various stocks I had a bullish thesis on this year. I read a book about options and just decided to do it in a low risk way to get my feet wet. I'd like to run some backtests and dig into my results to see how I actually did. I know on some things it ended up being a very good idea. Some stocks I was able to consistently run the wheel on and count on mean reversion and I know I did better than if I had just bought and held.

Looking forward


I'm thinking more about what I want my life to look like. I already live a simple life, I barely use a car I eat mostly food I cook at home. I live in a very inexpensive condo in a medium level expensive, but high-tax state.

My monthly spending is high but that is because this year I bought a car in cash and started renting a private office space to work out of. I also pay for health insurance out of pocket since I'm a contractor.

I think a good goal for this year would be to get a small house with some land and start to be able to grow some food. I'd like to live a more sustainable lifestyle than I do now. I'd like to quit renting an office space, and I'd like to be out of the city breathing fresh air. I'd like to work a little bit less and pursue more intellectual interests.

Unfortunately everyone else seems to want the same thing now. So I'll keep looking but I'm not sure I'll have a ton of luck changing my living situation this year.

JollyScot
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Re: Giskard's Journal - slingin code to reach FI

Post by JollyScot »

Been a productive year, at first I was thinking all those numbers are ridiculous. However had I been invested the way I was in the market instead of owning lots of house my result would have been similar. Although with some different choices.

It is a weird one to watch as at one point I held both bitcoin (first purchase was $300 ish sold at $20,000 the last run up) and Tesla (sold at $400 pre split). So had I stuck with them I would be a millionaire at this point. I didn't though so ah well.

For bitcoin, even though I understand what it is doing I just couldn't ultimately get on board with what the owners and those who push it think it is going to be.
For Tesla, similar thing the long term they're taking over everything view I can't get on board with either, I probably shouldn't have sold all my position here.

So opted out of both, who knew the whole market would have gone quite as mental as this year did. Congrats on the change, just make sure it doesn't evaporate as quick as it appeared.

SavingWithBabies
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Re: Giskard's Journal - slingin code to reach FI

Post by SavingWithBabies »

Wow! Congratulations. That is amazing :). I wish I wasn't such a crypto skeptic, lol. The rally has been fun to watch.

(Er, to be clear, I did read your posts and get it's more than just crypto and that is all the more impressive. Just been thinking about crypto.)

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giskard
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Re: Giskard's Journal - slingin code to reach FI

Post by giskard »

JollyScot wrote:
Wed Jan 06, 2021 5:44 pm
Been a productive year, at first I was thinking all those numbers are ridiculous. However had I been invested the way I was in the market instead of owning lots of house my result would have been similar. Although with some different choices.

It is a weird one to watch as at one point I held both bitcoin (first purchase was $300 ish sold at $20,000 the last run up) and Tesla (sold at $400 pre split). So had I stuck with them I would be a millionaire at this point. I didn't though so ah well.

For bitcoin, even though I understand what it is doing I just couldn't ultimately get on board with what the owners and those who push it think it is going to be.
For Tesla, similar thing the long term they're taking over everything view I can't get on board with either, I probably shouldn't have sold all my position here.

So opted out of both, who knew the whole market would have gone quite as mental as this year did. Congrats on the change, just make sure it doesn't evaporate as quick as it appeared.
You know that's a good point to explore about Tesla & Bitcoin. I've read Ashlee Vance's Elon Musk biography and I really believe he means well but I think that Tesla is a cult stock and doesn't reflect anything real so it can crash any day. Now you can easily come to the same conclusion about bitcoin (as you should).

To me the same thesis for gold applies to bitcoin, except that bitcoin ALSO has the attributes of Tesla as well: it is a cult not grounded in reality. I think it can go much much higher and the true believers are much more fervent and dips are eagerly bought by these true believers.

Watching Tesla this year actually inspired me to get longer bitcoin. I should have bought into Tesla at the dip in March too, but oh well. I still have to have some skepticism I suppose, but overall I've learned it hurts to be skeptical in a bull market.

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giskard
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Re: Giskard's Journal - slingin code to reach FI

Post by giskard »

SavingWithBabies wrote:
Wed Jan 06, 2021 6:26 pm
Wow! Congratulations. That is amazing :). I wish I wasn't such a crypto skeptic, lol. The rally has been fun to watch.

(Er, to be clear, I did read your posts and get it's more than just crypto and that is all the more impressive. Just been thinking about crypto.)
Thank you! To be fair about half of the gains this year were from crypto though, so you're not far off.

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Lemur
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Re: Giskard's Journal - slingin code to reach FI

Post by Lemur »

@Giskard

Nice gains! Seems we both had excellent 2020s with active investing :)

I don't touch crypto with a 10 foot pole because I don't understand it but I'm glad it worked out for you.

I'm curious how you're still playing PLTR? ....I've been wheeling this one too since November (as of this post, I've CSPs on the $25 for Jan 15 and Jan 22) but with what is happening lately (politically) and the more I read about this company...I think I want to start going long.

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giskard
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Re: Giskard's Journal - slingin code to reach FI

Post by giskard »

Lemur wrote:
Thu Jan 07, 2021 10:27 am
@Giskard

Nice gains! Seems we both had excellent 2020s with active investing :)

I don't touch crypto with a 10 foot pole because I don't understand it but I'm glad it worked out for you.

I'm curious how you're still playing PLTR? ....I've been wheeling this one too since November (as of this post, I've CSPs on the $25 for Jan 15 and Jan 22) but with what is happening lately (politically) and the more I read about this company...I think I want to start going long.
Thanks! Yeah you were doing well too, I was checking your journal the other day! Crypto is not for everyone so def understand. I'm not going to try to evangelize anyone here haha.

I still have a few LEAPS on PLTR but I sold most of them. I was just kinda waiting to see what happens with the stimulus and the runoff election. I think the market is all back to risk on so I'm going to start wheeling it again. The last month / weeks I have been doing a lot of put selling against mining stocks since they are all breaking out and it looks like inflation expectations have increased with the "blue wave".

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giskard
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Re: Giskard's Journal - slingin code to reach FI

Post by giskard »

Jan 2021 Summary

- Income: 11.7k
- Income selling options: 2k
- M/M net worth change: +50k
- Total net worth: 1.16 million

Feb 2021 Summary

- Income: 11.5k
- Income selling options: 4.1k
- M/M net worth change: +110k
- Total net worth: 1.27 million

This was a wild month, at one point I was up a quarter million intra month (lol WTF) because of both bitcoin and various equity investments. I think my net worth hit 1.4 million at one point, but gave a lot back when things started correcting at the end of the month. Anyway, I'm thankful for the gains.

Journal update notes

Welp it's great to be long bitcoin when it is in a bullrun. I'm a little in awe of the wild ride we are on. I actually sold a little GBTC I had in the retirement account so I could move some of the gains into some other ideas to keep things from getting so concentrated. I do plan to lessen my bitcoin exposure as the year goes but trying to do so carefully and slowly since it still has huge tail winds behind it from what I can see.

I continue to be disappointed by the performance of precious metals, but with bond yields hitting a breaking point and putting pressure on real yields this is to be expected. I have not changed my opinion on the precious metals, I believe that rates will either stop increasing or they will be formally capped as a visible policy measure or inflation will come to bear and real rates will get more negative. I actually did add to my positions in some mining stocks because some are trading a like 5x cashflow which is wild in this market.

I have a big tax bill to settle from doing so much trading this year but I'm happy to be out of the some of the more speculative tech stock investments & banking related stocks I owned. Kind of frustrating since I am not doing much investment now, just saving cash to pay the gubmint and build up my savings again.

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giskard
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Re: Giskard's Journal - slingin code to reach FI

Post by giskard »

March 2021 summary

End of month updates:

- Ending NW: 1.37 million
- M/M change: +104k
- Work Income: 10.k
- options income: 2.2k

Misc expenses:

Spent about 3k to buy some computer equipment to mine a new kind of cryptocurrency, will be interesting to see how that plays out. I'll keep the journal updated about this because it's not something I'm normally doing but it might become some interesting income.

Notable Events In The Markets:

Interest rates are going up. The 10 yr treasury hit 1.75% and it is putting a lot of pressure on high growth "long duration" stocks. This means tech stocks and the high growth marijuana stocks were selling off. I did lose some money on these trades m/m but not a huge amount. My allocation is probably 10-15% to these sorts of equities?

Crypto continues to move higher and get bought on dips. I'm still accumulating slowly but I will stop if my allocation gets to 50%, I'm at 30% now primarily due to appreciation. Looking to mostly stake this places for yield at this point and not trade it. Very encouraged by the fact that NASDAQ sold off pretty hard this month on raising rates but the crypto markets did not. My target for BTC is 100k, I will start reducing my GBTC exposure if this target gets hit.

Gold continues to disappoint but real rates are going up so this is to be expected. I still have a big allocation to precious metals and I'm good with that long term, just very frustrating to see it holding still in an environment it should be going strong but I do believe a lot of this is due to crypto so that is why I have an allocation to both.

Commodities seem to have paused here but everything in that infrastructure bill was incredible bullish for copper so I will be increasing my allocation there. I do hope we get a pullback because price levels in the copper miners are HIGH!

Personal events

Really struggling to continue to work at my job, thinking of taking some time off soon. Weather is starting to get wonderful so I probably will but damn it is hard to not get paychecks when you are used to it. I also will have to make some effort to reduce expenses and I've been so damn lazy and totally not ERE minded about that lately.

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