Schwab is down -$5718.48 (-9.06%), Robinhood Taxable is still holding on to $1433.33 (10.15%) and MACD has fallen to -$759.65 (-13.35%) Combined trading is -$5044.80 (-6.08%). HUT, TGT, and HOOD are my worst positions, while ELF is the only position currently in the green. Lines in black are just individual strikes, I also added RKLB and VFC from MACD. First thoughts are there is so much red on the board. I am doing way better in the Taxable, still up 10%; than everywhere else. So I was looking at my position in TOST and its not down nearly as bad as HOOD and DKNG even though their charts kind of all did the same thing through earnings and are down today about the same from their pre earnings close. So maybe the way I traded TOST through earnings wasn’t a bad strategy after all. I also have $12,000 (75%) of the capital in cash (earning 4% interest). Since I know I’ll earn something for my money in Robinhood I’m more likely to let it sit if I don’t have a trade. CAVA, TTD, and ELF were all entered after the current selloff started, so I’m not sure I’d be in any better position if I had opened positions earlier. (albeit on different stocks). I’m still tracking CF and it sold off more after I exited but is only slightly down from where my breakeven would have been; my breakeven would have been lower if I was still in it though so it may have been positive. Anyway, it’ll take a few weeks to see if I am actually able to work down my positions. It seems possible I just have to wait til the sell off stops and stocks settle before I can actually get ahead.
Just rolled calls down to get some extra premium. Mostly I’ve just been watching the market going down and trying to figure out a way I can get involved in a better way. I’m limited to going long and using covered options positions, the only time I can buy an option is to hedge with a put, but I have to own the stock to do that. I wondered if I could use this hedge offensively. It seems counter-intuitive, but I think it could work. I bought a put on TOST and one on HOOD. HOOD is just a control, I just want a comparison. With TOST now my premium is -$583.78 and it jumped my breakeven to $45.86. Its 27 weeks until 9/19, so if I average $22 in premium a week until then my premium would be slightly positive and I can sell TOST for $40. I won’t make any money on the trade, but I have a guaranteed out. It seems like this would work. If it recovers before then I plan on selling the put around 50%. I could be totally wrong on this, in which case I set myself back a few months. I looked around with Google and couldn’t find anyone trying something similar. It seems counter-intuitive, but the math works. And if the math works why can’t it work?
HOOD, CAVA, DKNG, and TTD puts were all assigned. Cava was intriguing, I didn’t consider it that upside down. Last time I looked before it was assigned I was going to be able to roll it out and down. So does this mean people are cashing out and the market is going to turn? I don’t know… I just went down my list and rolled everything , I skipped ELF originally because its premium was higher than I wanted to pay and it was going to expire worthless. I came back later and closed it after the premium came down some. $170.68 (2.66%); or (2.43%) if you count from the 1st strike price of $70, for 3 weeks. Now I have $10K in that account to rescue either DKNG or TGT. DKNG already has 2 positions, so I’m leaning towards TGT but Ii’m going to wait until after vacation to see what happens. I was very aggressive with TGT $105 strike, that could turn against me and need help. Guess I’ll just sit back and wait for something to break. In the other Schwab account if the market is turning around CAVA and TTD seem poised for at least a bounce. I’ll hold them for a little while and see, I’ll just watch RSI and MACD to for exit signals. Positions from options Samurai are 2 wins and 2 open so I’ll probably go back to that when I want to open new positions. I’ll be back this weekend to share where my accounts stand.
Schwab is -$9186.81 (-14.51%), Robinhood is still up $1349.19 (9.55%) and MACD is -$1037.49 (-18.24%).Combined accounts are -$8875.11 (-10.71%) All numbers are figured from Dec. 30th. Everything is in the red. TGT, HOOD, and HUT continue to be loss leaders, although TTD seems to be trying to creep in there. Like I said Friday I do have $10K to try and rescue DKNG and TGT, but only $3K in the account with HUT, HOOD,CAVA, and TTD. I was thinking about it this week and I typically try to keep at least 10% cash reserve in each account. If I had one account that would work better, but since I have 3 accounts trading options I should really be holding enough cash reserves to at least be able to rescue one position. Having 4 positions and not enough money to do anything but ride them out is not good. The other thing on my mind is Debt Spreads. I was listening to something on protective puts and they talked about turning them into debt spreads would reduce the cost of the spread. But what would if you set you spread to engulf your stock price? Say I sold a 9/19 $33 Put on TOST for $400. TOST is $34.45 right now. If I hold to expiration and TOST ends up somewhere between $33 and $40 then the $33 put would expire worthless and my shares would be sold at $40. If TOST is above $40 I’m just out the difference in the spread. But if TOST goes below $33 I could get assigned early on the $33 Put. I am assuming the $40 put would stay open and would still sell my shares at expiration? This is where I am short on information and need to look into it more. I would be risking getting tied up in calls, but that would mean the price is rising and I may not need the $40 put anyway. If I get assigned at $33 I would just be reducing my cost basis. I’ll look into it more. It seems Schwab will let me make the trades, I’m just not sure I fully understand the possible outcomes of the spread.
Wednesday I had a quarterly meeting for work so I didn’t have time to write anything. I didn’t do much so it wasn’t a big deal. Next week I’m leaving for vacation so I just closed out everything that wasn't ITM. I won’t be trading and posting again until 4/4 after this weekend's performance update. First, the only thing I rolled in Schwab was CAVA. At an $85 strike I have $241 (2.80%) profit. So even if it continues to rise and another roll is impractical I still have some built in profit. If that closes I can work on getting TTD turned around then HOOD. TOST I only rolled to next Friday, since it's Robinhood it’s a lot easier to pick up my phone and roll it out again. I also got rid of the protective puts and set up a debit spread on TOST. Its sitting at the 4/25 $40/$37. That dropped my breakeven down to $39.67 on the shares I have. I believe my thinking on this is correct; If it stays below $37 the spread will have some sort of profit. If it goes above $40, I can just close it and move on. If it falls between the $37 strike will be worthless and my shares would be called away and I’ll get the difference between my breakeven and $40. I think this is a worthwhile use of the debit spread here because it came back some, but I don’t know if this is a turn around or just a pullback. To take care of the call I ended up rolling it to 4/25 $41, bumping the breakeven up to $39.89. It’ll be interesting to see what happens now. I kind of like this setup in concept. I’m throwing up an exit strategy with the possibility of earning a little if it doesn’t turn around. I did give up quite a bit of income (around $200) playing with this before getting to its current setup, and that by itself would have made the setup more attractive. Learning on the fly costs money.
Schwab gained a little this week but is still down -$7217.26 (-11.45%). Robinhood and MACD didn’t move much, they are $1262.70 (8.94%) and -$970.40 (-17.06%). Combined I am down -$6925.05 (-8.39%) an improvement of $1946.06 compared to last week. Only positions I’m carrying while I’m gone are TOST and CAVA. Cava is already positive where it closed Friday and the 4/4 $85 strike would give me around $241 (2.80%) for a 4 week trade. I like its setup on the chart though, so I might hang on to it for a while and see if it will move higher. The spread and call for TOST are all set for 4/25. Originally I was just going to keep rolling the call and collect more premium but its better to get it out of the way so I can just watch the spread. I was tempted to have rescue missions running on DKNG and TGT, I have just enough money in that account to start both. It’s not something I really wanted to get into and then leave. That’s it, too soon to tell if things are turning around, just going to keep grinding away.
Back at it, I just threw on some trades to get me through the rest of the week. Looks like RKLB and VFC were a little too close; I’ll sort that out Friday. I started a rescue mission on TGT. Knocking it out would be best. That would free up a good chunk of money. Still need to work on getting HOOD back on track. That’s next on the list.
Looks like tariffs are sucking all the fun out the room. Oh well, I can’t do anything about that. I noticed I have enough capital to run a rescue mission on HOOD. I’m a little torn to do that. I could run multiple attempts on HUT but the ROI isn’t as good. And if I want to burn all my capital on rescuing positions shouldn’t I be working on DKNG as well? On the other hand I did start on on TOST when I arguably didn’t really need to. Well, might as well… I picked HOOD, it left $500 in that account and it won’t take that long to get up enough to run one on HUT. Just more grinding and working down my breakevens.
Well, things were getting better. Schwab is now down -21.02%. Robinhood is still holding on to some gains $844.39 (5.98%) and MACD is down -$1878.82 (-33.03%). Combined I am down -$14,287.31 (-17.24%). I have rescues on TOST, HOOD, DKNG, and TGT, in a few weeks I should have enough to start one on HUT. CAVA is still hanging in there, only down -$585.66 (-6.81%) with its breakeven down to $81.05. The combined position in TOST doesn’t look bad either, down -$429.34 (-6.22%). Everything else is a bowl of suck I’m going to have to grind out. Everything isn’t all bad though, the gap between my performance and the S&P is shrinking. After hitting a high of 5.43% on 3/14 its shrunk every week since to its current 2.53% My performance vs. S&P vs. my 401K is something I have been tracking on the side, and I just added the gap performance this week. That’s all I got. So far its been a wild year, and its only April.
I just went ahead and rolled that since TGT is down below $90. Everything else is good enough to wait until Friday. I’ll probably keep TGT at least 2 weeks out until I can get the Put back under the stock price or its assigned.