Monday: June 5... During lunch-break I shorted two PUT leaps on Marathon (MARA). The vol is 145% right now, and this is the very same miner that Soros has been bullish on... so win/win and time to YOLO now? lol I also decided to out-right purchase 10-round lots of BitFarms today as well. Being old, tried & tested, and very well diversified with very cheap electricity, this gave me the push I needed. Particularly because BRC-20 has now come to the Bitcoin blockchain, which is going to give the miners a second life after the fallout when Ethereum left the space. There is another reason... Biden wants to pass even MORE taxes through the house. Miners are going to get hit by a whopping 30% if the demented boomer gets his way. Well, that's going to get even more competitors knocked out. BitFarms is mostly in Canada where it gets tax breaks. Haha! Another win/win. And, there is something else. I added another column to my options chain. Time Value. The % was confusing at first, but I figured it out. Time value is calculated from the options premium - intrinsic value. Then it is converted to a % by dividing by the underlaying value of the stock, and then THAT % is finally annualized. I feel a little smarter today than yesterday... And last week I felt much smarter than the week before. This probably means I'm going to run into hubris very soon. Oh well, come what may, I now officially own part of one of the best miners in the industry. Even though I am NOT a believer in BTC mining.
Thursday: June 15 The RealReal Yesterday I couldn't do any trades at work because my damn sim card screwed up, and then my battery went to shit as well while trying to repair. That sucked, as yesterday was the FOMC of all things. I decided to short 100 PUTs on The RealReal, but instead wanted to chop that in half today after reading over a lot of complains on how the company does its flawed appraisals. By the end of the day, I only got filled for 17 options anyway, and I really didn't want to lower my offer any more. Unfortunately, the news is out that Michael Burry went long on this stock as well, which is lifting it much higher than I'd like. But for now, we'll see what happens. I am grateful that I stayed away from this during the IPO. I had suspected something like this would happen, as being an appraiser myself, I know damn well the company wasn't going to have an easy time out of the gate. The problems the x-employees mention now, are exactly what I could have told the previous CEO would happen from the start. I am a bit biased toward the novelty of the stock because of my appraisal background, and I admit this could be part of my downfall if I bet too big here. But at least I have Dr. Burry behind me now... Also, the owner of the company has stepped down and we seem to have a more competent CEO trying to at least stop the losses and get adjusted EBITA into the black inside of 2024.
Monday: June 19 Despite all the negativity vs crypto, suddenly a big (possible) catalyst for the upside is on the table. BlackRock has filed to get the first Bitcoin ETF. There has only been one time in their history where they have been denied for an ETF. Due to Mr. Fink's reversal on his negativity toward Bitcoin, I now MUST leverage up on this asymmetrical bet. Between BlackRock (possibly) getting the ETF soon, and the Bitcoin Halving coming in 2024, I MUST set-up for possible explosive moves here. Yes, macro is terrible, but these opportunities don't come very often. I went LONG today and purchased 100 OTM CALLs on Bitcoin going out to Jan 2025. For now I will sit and wait things out... And then tonight, I find out that Fidelity is also planning to get a Bitcoin ETF as well under their belt... Well, shit's going to get damn interesting in crypto either this year or next. Especially with Gensler getting smacked down by a judge just recently in his attack on Binance. Things are not looking too good for the SEC at the moment. And here is where our options lay: I usually don't do the LONG-CALLs thing, but I feel these are amazingly good lottery tickets. I'm happy to hear why this is wrong.
Friday: Jun 23 I have done no more trades in the last few days. Just watched Gensler get smacked down by court officials a few times, and the rush for BlackRock, Fidelity, etc. to get their S-1 approved for the first US Bitcoin ETF. If Blackrock wins (and they've only ever had one single ETF rejected in history), then I am betting that Americans will try to play catchup with an Ethereum ETF as well. I am seriously debating on buying even more Cardano, in case ADA gets added to an ETF. Surprisingly, Canada for some reason has not bothered to ETF Cardano after all these years. Staking of it is fully regulated though; so perhaps this will be on the horizon too by an adventurous institution. Needless to say, my premium is exploding upwards. Seems I get another 1K each day just for simply sitting on my ass. I think that's what Livermore said once... most of his money was from sitting and doing nothing Sonos has slowly drifted a little down again toward my 15-strikes, which is ok either way. I've got 28 days left for those contracts to expire. Unfortunately, The RealReal seems to be tanking just after I shorted PUTs. Now I'm glad I only shorted 17 contracts, lol. Not sure yet what happened there, hoping Michael Burry didn't exit his position. I'm also glad I purchased shares in BitFarms Inc. And my longs/puts are clearly aligned in the proper directions. I am really enjoying building synthetic stocks this year. Note: Being beat-down before like a Gensler by the courts, I'm not going to let hubris get the best of me even if this turns into a 50x bagger.
Friday, July 7: Still no further derivatives trades. Just sitting on my ass while I keep watching the scale move further into profits. At the moment, we broke the 10K barrier- the overall Total Options trade is over 10K in profit as of today. All my short-PUTs are now OTM (even the ones I sold ITM). I did purchase some more securities for the portfolio though. Another 1K of shares from Ether Capital ETF. I think I really need to slow down now on all the crypto stuff. I've got enough staked in other broker accounts as well. In 14 days from now, my 12.5 & 15.00 strike Sonos short-puts will likely expire OTM. Seems the general consensus on this being a dumb trade did not turn out so dumb after all. In any case, I'd still be happy for getting assigned as well. After the expiration though, I will sit & wait for the next earnings report (and hope) that the stock plunges another 20% in a single day. One IPO I'm keeping a close watch on is SVV. For now, I suspect it could be stupidly overpriced, but the FED looks like it has no choice but to keep cranking up interest rates and breaking more shit. We'll see how bad it looks in a few more months. I really would like to see Options getting listed for SVV.
Friday, July 14th: So, suddenly there is talk again of everyone assuming/hoping that inflation is going back down. And yet, at the same time, the chair is saying rates will be high for a much longer time than they ever suspected before. Now the goalposts have been moved AGAIN all the way down the road into 2025. LOL Sonos is back up in the $17 on its way to $18 and the earnings report is a ways off from coming out. After next week I will let those short-puts expire and continue with my plan of just sitting and waiting things out to see how bad those reports get. In the meantime, I am still digging into the S-1 filings for SVV. Word on the street is that post-IPO the company issued warnings to its team members that they are not allowed to post any negative statements regarding the company on social media. I wonder how that is even legal?
Friday, July 21: 0-DTE for my Sonos contracts. I took a couple of screen shots 10 minutes before market close. Despite Sono took another small hit today, we are still over a tick above the closest strike. This is one of those cases where I actually couldn't care less if we were on pin-risk or not. For now, I'll still sit on the little cash for some extra interest while we continue to wait for the next earnings report before laying more trades. It was also announced that the date for the next earnings will be: For the options overall, this week wasn't another big win as I had hopped with the others, but it wasn't bad either: I may just re-evaluate some further areas to deploy some of my generated capital when I do more research tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm doing some historical volatility calculations on SVV and doing preparations ahead of time, for when/if options get listed for that security. The next expiration date I will sit through, for now, is when The RealReal is due in November. As long as Michael Burry doesn't sell off his shares from Scion, I'm not too worried about ending up ITM.
Thursday: Aug 10 What an action-pact week it has been for earnings. So here's the cliff-notes: I had been doing quite some research on ThredUp stock (TDUP). This is a main competitor to The RealReal (and often cited as competing with SVV). I decided to eventually wait for the earnings statements, before shorting PUTs on the stock. Unfortunately, I couldn't get home before market close on Tuesday... which sucked because the stock was quite down that day by a large margin. Then to make it worse, by the time the markets opened the next day, the stock had already rallied 25% The RealReal also has been going up, which is ok for my existing short-puts, but didn't really change much. I also waited until today, Aug 10th for the earnings of SVV to come out. Mark Walsh did his call after-hours and it appears that the market liked what they heard, though I feel Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sax, etc. did not press him hard enough on the negative sides. All this is leading the stock to go up a bit higher in after-hours trading. I think I will continue to avoid going long on the stock until a better opportunity may present itself. Not sure... Now, the only other earnings of interest to me this week was Sonos. It looks like the markets did not like the results. Strangely, I haven't even had time to go over the updated financial statements (too busy here). But looks like I was correct in not renewing my short-puts any longer, as currently, she's below the $15 strike again. IV has been crushed, and I am not sure it's even worth getting the little premium for the 12.5 strike (next lowest under 15). I will possibly just skip Sonos altogether for a while because it is very cyclical and the data suggests the upcoming recession will hurt in 2024. On the flip-side, despite the profit margins are negative, they are very smallish in the negative so it's possible with a bit more cost-cutting, things could look more bullish in the next report, but I'm not smart enough to gamble on it right now. Time to sleep on it for a few weeks and see what better opportunities may present themselves. Note: I am also debating on shorting puts on Suncor, etc. It is becoming very unlikely the Eastern world is going to be 'nice' to the West again. Looks like dark decades ahead...
Friday: Aug 18 Big dip in the crypto markets last night. Unfortunately, I missed great entry prices because I had a very long drive home. (Never seems to fail!) I set up a bunch of trades today hoping for good fills and to catch someone needing to cross the spreads on margin-calls. Unfortunately no good bites. Near the end of the day, I started to tick some of my prices down and sold 4-contracts on CleanSpark. I have never dealt with this miner before, so now I have that under my belt. Time to play the sit & wait game again. If the rumours are true that CZ is selling off BTC to keep BNB above margin loans, then next week can be one hell of a disaster/opportunity.
Friday, Aug 25. Last night I went long a Micro-Ether futures contract through CME. It's been a while, and I wanted to get a little familiar again with trading futures as this is one of my weak-spots. Also, it seems CME recently added options on futures for their MET contracts. This is something I will study a bit and want to try at least once in the near future (no pun intended).