5,150,000 SEK Well seemed the post on May 8th was a short term bottom. Rebound rate (% per day) is not that strong compared to previous dips. Currently OMX is ca 1650 and previous high around 1720. Apart from banks the Swedish market is looking rather expensive so switching some long term holdings into more Spain and Italy ETFs.
5,230,000 SEK Been a while since last post. Been busy switching jobs at work. Decided to escape the corporate bullshit in the strategy department and switch back to science/engineering. Then went on vacation. Lots of volatility in account since last post trading due to the never ending greek saga. Was back down to 4.2 M SEK at low point. Seems the can has been kicked quite a bit further down the road now especially if they get some debt relief. Very strange negotiating tactics from the Greeks. Pushed it to the limits with bank closures only to realise that they actually didnt have a backup plan if they EU didnt cave since they didnt have a Euro exit plan and noone else was going to give them money. Markets just moved on political actions and given the huge number of players I say it was impossible to predict what was going to happen. Just get an idea of the market levels when a deal looks either on or off. Hopefully it will go quiet for a while. Underneath all the noise from Greece the Euro area looks to be improving so unless something else pops up I woulld expect new highs in the main indexes over next month.
5,150,000 SEK Quite a bit of stress from both work and trading volatility over the past few months. Could ideally do with a long break from both of them. Perhaps slowly coming to the conclusion that I don’t need to try and hit it out of the park anymore and the big gains have been had in this bull market already. Something in the order of 10 to 15% is now going to give a decent supplement to annual salary. Looking at a few alternatives going forward: using less size, switching to option spreads or just keep doing the same thing with less money in the trading account. Currently holding slightly leveraged euro stocks and still expect them to rise in next few months due to a combination of QE and low exchange rate (which seems to be stealing growth from the US). If they get back to new highs, at least at the moment its very tempting to then just take off any remaining long leverage and pick up a few percent by selling covered calls, take a break and not do anything else until next year.
4,100,000 SEK Unlike the SP500 european markets have had a bit of a roller coaster ride this year. Leveraged long position started during the most recent Greece crisis was taken out on Friday and with it most of the profits for the year so back to the start again. Yeah %&¤#ing annoying. Will be looking to go long again from lower levels unless there is some economic data to back up the scare stories. Pretty much everything got hit hard in the Swedish market on Friday. Very little discrimination between stocks. Maybe because lots of trading indexes and ETFs or margin calls maybe? If the scare is China then its easy to see why companies like Sandvik, Volvo etc would be hit but less easy to understand how its going to affect Swedish telecom operators so started buying them. Telia is now 47 SEK and expects to pay “at least” a 3 SEK dividend. So 6.3% dividend and if it gets back to the 52 SEK a few weeks ago another 10% capital gain. Put orders to buy every SEK down to 40. Suspect Monday could be very interesting. Asia markets starting lower after the falls in the US, mom and pop getting frightened by the news over the weekend placing fund sell orders.
3,950,000 SEK Well I thought Monday would be interesting but no idea it would be that interesting! Expected it to be a big down day, perhaps 4 or 5 %, and was prepared for that but not the huge drop down at the chaotic US open. In the end very pleased to end the week at a similar level to which it started. About 360,000 SEK of mini futures got knocked out on Monday so on the back foot after that. Given the volatility was reluctant to buy more minis which could be knocked out and options were also expensive. So increased the borrowing on the account to buy lots of Swedish Telecoms and Banks, all of which pay dividends >6% with stable earnings and PE<14. Seemed like indiscriminate selling based on very little factual data. US and EU economic data still look good so until something suggest otherwise I see it as a correction in a bull market. Hopefully last week was one of those rare opportunities which come along only a few times a year. At the end of the week holding is now approximately the following: Swedish Telecoms and Banks 2 M SEK ETFs (Mainly Sweden, Italy and Spain) 4.8 M SEK Swedish Bank mini futures (can survive 30% drop from here) 0.55 M SEK OMX mini futures (can survive 20% drop from here) 0.35 M SEK OMX call options (5% ITM) 0.3 M SEK So total holding is 8 M SEK but borrowed 4.1 M SEK to give net of 3.9 M SEK Plan to hold the options and minis until the upwards momentum fades and/or we get back to previous pre-correction level. Then sell and pay back some of the loan. Longer term hope to hold the stocks and funds, collect the dividends (6% versus loan rate of 3%) and sell covered calls against them. So become a boring long term investor…..