I bet more than I’ve ever bet. Looking back half it makes sense and half is what I would call ‘a bet’. Total I can lose ~8% of total worth of market opens down and keeps going down. Some of those would be trading losses and some portfolio losses. I don’t have a hedge (wow, can’t believe I used this word). But yea, if you want to win you have to be willing to lose. I made a few plays and hope at least 1 will work out. If it does, it pays for all rest.
- INTC – rumors that acquisition in play; something have to give; people jump on it; its’ been in the lows for some time already. It doesn’t seem to go down any lower recently. So? Well, there’s a higher chance of it going up much higher than it is to go lower. Plans might be revealed for INTC so let’s see. And it was long weekend so more rumors I thought. So I bet. Calls.
- SLB – good results, interesting technical. If trumps says anything positive about oil drilling then I’m in the money tight. Was low IV and it might break out. Just reported earnings on Friday and street liked it. Media mentions SLB as AI play. Yea some segment of 10% revenue is now some digital services which is good – and can grow. So I agree it’s a good earnings play, technicals break out (weekly/monthly goes back 25 years that this is a strong resistance now). Let’s see. If it doesn’t go now, it should go later; got some longer dated calls too but primarily I’m counting for tomorrow.
- BTC – got a sizable position. If we go higher from here and make new highs, I think it can really reach 200k – even this year. Market could go very sensitive and for every time Trump says ‘Bitcoin’ price could literally move 1% higher. Anyways, he’s got BTC and I don’t think he wants to lose it and see it lose value. So he’ll pump it one way or another – maybe real action or talking about action. Also, if he makes it easier for banks to own BTC then I’ll double down on calls following 6-18 months in IWM. Value of regional banks would go up coz more BTC is more assets and that would pump IWM while BTC would be going up. Great way to grow the economy in dollar terms while building risk into the system.
- LAC – yea wanted to buy stock and bet big coz maybe bottom too for Lithium and chance of some gov involvement to push LAC higher
- NFE – calls/stock; play on gas
- AMAT – nice breakout; might continue; some deal might get announced
So I covered gas, oil, btc, lithium bottom, intel bottom, gold. Basically, what I tried to do is:
- Understand themes of Trump and what can be said, rumored etc, and thus be affected
- Look at technicals if they’re good or ready to go
- Try to find bottomed out themes that might be in turnaround
- Low IV (AMAT, SLB) so cheap options
COIN and TSLA I got Thursday and Friday maybe I should have sold but I thought it’s more +EV to probably hold.
Just for my own sake:
- 1week calls with Friday expiration 8k
- Calls with expirations in 2 weeks for 3k
- Calls with expiration in 3 weeks for 4k
- Calls with expiration in 1 year for 1k
- Calls with expiration in 2 year for 0.5k
3k lost on SLB already coz I shouldn’t have bought the calls the way I did… Should have been worth 12 k and now they’re like 9k. But I thought, oh well. Gotta give it a try. Just now got a free trial
And some stats from Barchart
Now I can see that the better thing to do was to probably sell COIN and TSLA at open on Friday for 150% instead of holding (not sure how much of a valid/true statement it is). But then, if I expected SLB greater move then I should have done a strangle? Buy put and call. Like, I think going up is 60% probability (for me; completely subjective) but if it’s not; then 50/50 is still damn good and can do 10x anyways.
Lastly, it’s first time I’ll be managing these many options so not sure what to do tbh… I thought scenarios:
VIX up + stocks down:
- if option was to open below 40% of value then keep till expiration (i.e. stocks open lower; depending how low; can sell all or keep all till expiry). Like if calls were to open 80% lower I’m not gonna sell for scraps. There’s still Wday, Thursday, Friday. So, anything could happen for that 20% of the original price. But if it was 50% open lower? Hmmm… I think still I’d keep it. 20% lower open? I’d say I think I’d put SL at 60%. Would be nice to backtest this and find optimal SL and then apply that SL to options after open with repriced options.
- Anyways, it all depends on futures, open; but default is 50% SL
VIX flat + stocks flat
- Default SL 75%
VIX down + stocks up + US30Y down + news and hype then stock dependant
- SLB – buy more calls this Fri; 2 weeks, 6 weeks later
- INTC – buy more calls with 0.75% SL for 2 weeks later
- AMAT- buy more calls with 0.75% SL for 2,4,6,24 weeks later
- NFE – buy more calls with 0.75% SL for 2,4,6,24 weeks later
- TSLA – n/a
- COIN – n/a
Ah, and re-adjust SL to 80%. There will be a lot of lessons to be learned here. If I get knocked out here for a day or two I’ll get back later and try again better equipped.
