Captain's Log: Friday, Oct. 25. I wasn't planning to have anything much for my report this weekend. I calmly sailed the ship through all the noise, but just this evening I noticed I had capital gains showing in the logs. I had a suspicion and sure enough, after some investigation it turns out my closing limit orders on WULF got filled. I had even forgot to monitor that. So all 12 contracts were purchased back at significant discount to what I had sold for very recently. This is interesting, because days earlier I had a chance to close out early for the same profit, but was debating on letting it ride to milk the rest of theta. I won't complain this time around there. An old expression, "When the market gives you a good early win, take it." So, I'm happy with it. Almost all miners are down today (aside from WULF and a few others). If things go south again for WULF, which knows, maybe I'll put on more trades. Not really much to update... the closing of the WULF position netted a small 1.1K profit $US from start to close.
Captain's Log: Sunday, Nov. 3 I managed to avoid Halloween this week, but not navigating the ship. I also carried out some trades. The 'Trump Trade' of (DJT) I decided to finally take profits. Delaying so long cost me, but I was not happy to see the race get so close at elections. This way, I was able to lock in realized profits, instead of having stock put to me as a bag-holder with the next presidency going after both Truth Social and X. Times are really in dire straights right now for the last of the free-speech platforms in the West. I also went long on CleanSpark (CLSK) for ONE LAST TIME this year (maybe?). Basically, I wanted more cash. I may be on assignment for VERV, if I don't close out properly this month. I need the cash. And as for MicroStrategy, I'm BAAAAAAACK. Really didn't want to, but my thesis is for still an increase to the upside in the near future. If it works, I get more cash. lol With that said, I need to sit tight again for a while. The next trade(s) I plan are to close out my losing position in Verve Therapeutics. I have no intention to roll as there is a liquidity problem. I'll just eat up the small loss and leave it at that. Updated Options Inventory: Cash holdings: Risk Navigator: In the meantime, I've finally started to get into the matter of taxes on the P&L for this year. In fact, I'm reviewing the next flight manual at this moment...
Captain's Log: Sunday, Nov. 10 U.S.S. Enter-Trump This week was our victorious voyage of the U.S.S Enter-Trump. To boldly go where no non-binary LGBTXYNOP194@!%^..??? has gone before! And what a crypto/shit-coin rally! Here's the summary of this week's trades from the ship's navicomputer: I decided to use the Trump rally as exit liquidity to close out our old but very profitable short-puts on Bitcoin futures, courtesy of the old Chicago Mercantile Exchange. In hindsight, it would have worked out better to hold them longer, but.... alas, when Mr. Market gives you an even greater victory, why not take it early? I also decided to load more DJT into the cargo bay. True, we had got out flat earlier and locked in small profits, but now there is much less risk on the table. I had intended to only do a couple contracts (which ever strike filled first), then wait for a possible pull-back before loading up more. However, while I was waiting for a fill, some whale came along and swept up all the limit orders on all the ATM strikes. Doh! Interestingly enough, during the very early hours in the morning that night, I saw a further selloff while profit-takers were trying to milk their gains. My plan was to take advantage of the further dip by loading up more into the cargo-bay during my lunch-break for the next day. A mistake was made.... By the time I was ready to barter for trade again, Trump Media had gone on another rip to the upside. Doh! I'm tempted to blame the drop of interest rates this week for that... but here's another thing that went against me: Doh!-- Doh!-- Doh!-- @#%^#$ Alas, there will be many more trading days and voyages in this unexplored galaxy, and this is 'only the beginning'. Current Options Inventory (as of Friday): Cash-is-Trash Levels: Less than 200K left until the 1MM mark. Risk-Navigator Computer: Battle Plan: Verve Therapeutics (VERV) is coming up on expiration Friday. The ship is locked & loaded to buy-back our short-puts. Unfortunately, the security is very illiquid. This will be the last time that the USS Enter-Trump trades options on it. Savers Value Village (SVV) is tanking again harder. Though their last earnings report showed buy-backs with more planned for this year. Lots of more store expansion coming, and strong efforts to pay down existing debt with also a large reduction of interest payments on debt being rolled over. And best of all, no Skamala Harris to force hefty new taxes on SVV and flush it down the toilet for at least another four more profitable Trump-years.
Captain's Log: Stardate Sunday Nov 17 Flight to the Savers Thrift Store, and the 40x-Bagger! There is only one proven thrift store in this galaxy with persistent free-cashflow. And due to another fire-sale occurring, I decided to take advantage and make a quick-stop there this week to add some more trinkets into the cargo-hold. Navi-computer: I didn't want to get too greedy. So only one more round-lot of Savers/Value Village (SVV) was purchased for inventory and added to our stack. As for offsetting trades, I had a limit order filled to get out flat on Verve Therapeutics (VERV).The trade was going bad and it was time to get out, though we were able to do so technically at a profit. If there was a downside story to exiting the VERV trade, it was that had I timed things better, we could have got out much cheaper if we had waited. But wait! There is more! It also turns out that if we had waited TOO much longer to get out of VERV, we would have had to pay even more as VERV closed at 5.38! Though to be honest, the tiny crumb-trades here were nothing to make any significant change in the trading-portfolio onboard the ship. But I do try to make an effort not to get sloppy. Cargo-hold option inventory: Trump Media has dipped again. Though we were unable to get a favorable fill. The attack plan has not changed much. Will attempt again if we can get in at a good price. Mile-Stone Achieved! We hit our first forty-bagger win. BTC calls that were purchased in 2023 for $0.26 a contract are now selling for 10.30 each. 10.30/0.26 = 39.6 ~ 40x Bagger! Next stop... voyage of the 50x Bagger. Danger... Danger Will Robinson!! Looks like tomorrow will be a very interesting day ahead! Cash-Is-Trash-Levels: Risk-Navicomputer: Battle-Plan: With no real drop on crypto this weekend, I see no reason to jump into over-night trading tonight on CME. I will take my time jumping into hyperspace again and should be on the prowl tomorrow before market-open. Hoping to catch a few whales in trouble on BTBT or BTDR. For now, I'm leaving the Savers thrift store, but (may) be back for the next fire-sale...
Captain's Log: Stardate Friday Nov 22 Danger Lurks We tried to play things safe, though the temptation to resist can be difficult. As more margin continued to become available due to portfolio profits rising, the ability to scale into more trades and pyramid up Livermore style was hard to resist. We indeed did take on more crypto positions -- courtesy of the Toronto Stock Exchange -- despite the warnings of Howard Marks that the market is highly over-valued right now, and the air tends to leave the balloon faster than it enters it. Navicomputer: For tax reasons, I didn't want to resort to leaps, so left the cut-off dates around April. That way, if assigned I have the option to 'take it' and resist including premium for the current tax-year. I had been hoping for pull-backs, unfortunately they didn't really occur in any meaningful way. So, I went smaller sizes for now. Shorted 10 more puts on Bitcoin ETFs (BTCC.B). Shorted 10 more puts on Ether ETFs (ETHH.B). These were very questionable, as I don't want to keep my ship too heavy. On the flip-side, there are also so many positive pressures for higher crypto assets, it's hard to sit on the side-lines. Cargo-Hold Options Inventory: Cash is Trash Levels: Just a tiny bit shy now of $40K (ignoring treasuries). Feels like a drop in the bucket and close to running on empty (at least not on fumes yet). Though, this is more than the average millennial makes in Canada on typical minimum wage. Literally impossible to live on these days. Risk-Navicomputer: Attack Plan: I did some further due diligence on MicroStrategy's (MSTR) convertible notes. To be honest, this was only a mind exercise, as retail has no methods to purchase. A quant who is a member of the crew though did draft up a schematic to summarize the math: And there you have it. It's really that simple. For a different battle plan though, one could purchase two different issues of MSTR bonds that are 'non-convertible', but pay over 6% coupon rates. These are rated under junk-bond status, so Michael Milken would be proud.
Captain's Log: Stardate Friday Nov 29 Unloading the MicroStrategy Inventory Earlier this week I started to get worried again about being levered on MicroStrategy on top of all the other crypto holdings in the cargo-bay. I continued to look over some deep-dive criticisms of MSTR by Mark Meldrum and he does make some very good cases for what can (and probably will) go wrong with the convertible bonds in play at some point in the future. Perhaps I'm too terrified and getting spooked too much by the already super-high premium to nav MSTR has, and past history of the MSTR bubble popping... but I decided to let the crew know we milked the last MSTR contract enough for this month/year, and it was time to move it out of the hold and be done with it. Navicomputer: That really was the only trade for the week. It is possible I may re-take on MSTR again in the new year, but that will only be done with Bull Put Spreads going forward. I'm happy with the few grand again I got from this, in such a short time (yes, including the drawdown to boot!) Holding-Bay Inventory of Options: Cash is Trash Levels: Risk Navicomputer: Flight Debriefing: What is interesting here, is that the ship's holistic portfolio surpassed over a quarter of a million in unrealized gains by this week. I will wait until the tax-farming droids give me an update on how much to cash-out before Jan 1st. Still ~30 days of missions ahead until the new year. Projected Flight Plan: The plan is to keep bleeding theta from our short-positions, and growing delta in the longs. If we hit any major solar turbulence, then we likely will deviate from the plan. Interesting to note, is I've been slowly looking more into the ES and NQ futures. Starting the new year, I 'may' add some of these runs into the inventory. Small sample sizes at first for a while. In the meantime, there's still a little bit of fiat cash sitting around in the cock-pit ($40K). I plan to raise a lot more in the new year and will see about converting more of it into bonds/t-bills.
Are you always a LEAP trader and if so are you happy with your overall profitability since the start of this thread? Happy Thanksgiving.
No. By definition, leaps = 9-to-12 month minimum DTE. I like to back-fill empty months with no Friday expirations if I can, to try to even out the loads. It's a double-sided question. Over all, I can say yes, because making money sure beats losing it. On the flip side, no. Because if only I knew THEN what I know KNOW in what happened, I could have made a fortune. (Well duh). lol Now to be fair, that's a stupid way to look at it, so again I'm happy, but I feel I have been getting sloppy with things. For example, my thesis was blue-chip cryptos and miners would have large upside growth. So what I should have been doing is getting even MORE aggressive on my ITM short-puts than I did. Because I was (perhaps thinking on taking on less risk), I was actually making things worse and making myself take on even more risk due to having to place even more levered trades to get the same income... I also could have done a bit better with my miner picks. It wasn't terrible, but for example, I bought long CALLs on HIVE. It's the oldest miner, but I got 'fucked' in a way because they came out with the news that they were not planning to go into hyper-drive, but instead resort to just sticking with a steady pace of keeping up with 2% of the BTC hashrate. Now, don't get me wrong, 2% of the entire BTC hashrate is a LOT of power - it's HUGE - but the investors wanted the moon (and maybe mars too), so HIVE severely underperformed most every miner except for a few like BitFarms and Argo, etc. I had a chance to still sell my long-CALLs on HIVE for at least a 10-20K profit, but I let it slip through my fingers trying to hit a much bigger payoff with a higher BTC price-point. But... the combo of poor investor sentiment, and theta-decay made me lose even those profits. If I could roll back the clock, and even rolled back further, I would have loaded up on Core Scientific for pennies on the dollar and reaped millions. But... I was a tad late coming into this space for that. I started out as an 'educational' experience with very little interest on miners, but I did learn a 'lot'. A good thing too, since the vol was/is insane and fun to play with. Even still, it's been 'literally' hours of miner/bluechip-crypto research EVERY night since I started trading crypto related equities again in 2023.
Captain's Log: Stardate Sunday Dec. 08 Examining Onboard Inventory at Smuggler's Run This week was a momentus occasion. After years of false-promises, Bitcoin finally hit the 100,000K milestone. To take advantage of this 'shot heard around the universe', I decided to do.... (drumroll please)... nothing! I continued to resist more leverage with the ship. Instead I kept it docked and hidden somewhere in Smuggler's Run while remaining silent and watching more shit-coin rug-pulls going around the galaxy. This likely isn't going to end well, just like the last time. The ship's droids did some checking on the inventory and how we've done with the portfolio year-to-date: Unfortunately there have been some changes to the universal IBKR port connection, and I could not generate my logging sheets from the broker as I used to in previous years for tax compilations. I'll have to get used to the new changes, which may take some time. But alas, I have more reviews to make anyhow and there is lots of work to be done with the new taxable capital gains. There is still the question of how much to split between this year and the next. I continued to read both the bullish and bearish reports on MSTR throughout the galaxy. There have been only a few worth listening to so far. Special bonus points for Pharma-Bro's take in MicroStrategy. My decision as captain of the ship, is to still stay out of MSTR for now, and bleed out more theta from half the cargo until closing out some short-positions before the holidays. It looks like we are only 75k now from reaching the first 1-Million marker onboard the ship. So far it's been easy-peasy on auto-pilot here. But this is what worries me... it's a little TOO EASY. Vol on the S&P-500 seems very low. It's already at unprecedented heights. Time to buckle up soon and get ready for a rough ride when Nvidia comes up short on earnings eventually...